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| Aldran and the Half-Orc face off. |
This
isn't your typical 8-bit reenactment of a role playing session. This is what it's truly like to experience
the nerdom that is a Dungeons & Dragons role playing session. With the aid of a battle map, several game
manuals, and a set of dice, not only does this crew of friends control their
characters in a medieval fantasy adventure, but their imaginations play out in
an epic cinematic fashion.
*Note:
On a technicality, we were not using AD&D, but another role playing system
called GURPS.
Director's Notes:
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| L to R: Erica, TouYa, Zach, Chris |
I
wish I had gotten a photo of TouYa as he carried Erica on his back through the
high grass and bramble. It was quite the
sight to see. He led the way for them
with his sword drawn and thrust out before them. Both of them were in costume, which added to
the effect of our warrior carrying the maiden safely to their destination. I was already
there waiting for my cast to get through the foliage to the open ground
where we shot the campsite scenes.
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| A lot of classic studio shots came out of thimovie. Does this one look familiar? |
I
had discovered the location an hour beforehand, which is a sad piece of
information when you realize that it was only a five minute walk back to where
we set up base. After parading through
the forests for an hour or more looking for a good place to shoot (this is why
you location scout beforehand), we set up base at a little pavilion in a
spacious clearing. I ran off to check
the surrounding area for spots to shoot the various scenes. I was in a rush. A few "shortcuts" later, I happened
upon the place to film the campsite. I
didn't want to mess with the shortcut through the trees again, so I took up a
path to get back to base. Well, I went
the wrong way, and my 3-5 minute walk turned into a 35 minute run.
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| What did the gamers use for characters? That's right, Star Wars Monopoly pieces. |
Schedule-wise,
we were doing horribly. We intended to
meet at 7a.m., go over the script by 9 or so, hit up Good Will for clothing, be
on set by noon, and be done by 6pm. I
thought we'd only be at it until 4, but I said 6 just to be sure. I'm not going to go through all the details, but instead we lost a
person at 6:30am, got a new person (miraculously) by noon, got on set by 2, I
got lost, we started closer to 3, and the camera battery died by 7.
That's
right. My battery died. I found out that morning that my good battery
was shot, so we only had the smaller battery to work with.
The
nice thing about shooting the gamer scenes was that I had an outlet, and we had
as much time as we needed. Good thing,
too. With that many bodies in that small
of a space, with all the lights on to give the best lighting, it got very warm,
and we got very slap-happy. Production
came to a giggling halt when Zach could no longer say Moldric's name
right. A slip of the tongue, and Moldric
became "More-Lick," and "More-Dick."
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| Another classic STS movie still |
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