The Odyssey in miniature. Odysseus is seduced by Calypso, escapes, controls his primal urges to do it with a siren, makes his way home, does twelve shots of bourbon, is reunited with his wife, and kung fu fights all the suitors that have taken up residence in his house. All in less than five minutes!
We don't have the first video in the series of four that made up our sequence, but we do have the other three, written, directed, and edited by Samantha Price, Andrew Heder, and myself. All three are the original director's cuts and not the one minute, five second monstrosities that we had to create for our 210 Production class.
The first is Sam's video, The Seduction of Calypso, where Odysseus is seduced by Calypso and put under her spell. It's only broken when Zeus sends down a lightning bolt to break it:
My favorite part of this video is Andrew's 1920's wobble-walk. I can't get enough of it. You'll also notice the highly exaggerated first step out of the doorway at the very end of the video. This was the third take that we did of this particular shot. Each time the step became larger and larger, until we finally wound up with this.
That's John "J-Bone" Roney on the piano. Although she's only visible in a few shots, the girl on and/or by his piano is Britnee Pignotti, who was also our Penelope.
The next is Andrew's video, where Odysseus is tempted by a siren while on his journey back to Ithaca:
Before you compliment me on my sultry noir voice, I have to tell you it's not me--it's Andrew. In fact all of the dialogue in this video was recorded in post, with all the additional sounds in it (such as the heels hitting the pavement as Sam walks down the steps and the sound of the matches lighting) added later. Andrew did a fantastic job of syncing the voices to the original mouth-movement. The narration goes to show just how many noir films he watched to replicate the tone and feeling of this video. By the last week of working on this project he was able to switch into "noir mode" at will and talk like that whenever he wanted.
I especially like the shots he chose to make this. He spent a lot of time repositioning our bodies in-between takes while we were shooting, and the result is that nothing in here is coincidental. The canted angle on that dolly shot, the high angle with the hand that Sam is holding her cigarette reaching toward the camera--they were all carefully constructed.
Lastly, we have my film, where Odysseus returns home in disguise and finds his house full of suitors. The only way that he can prove that he is Odysseus is by taking Penelope's challenge to do twelve shots of bourbon in less than a minute:
The scene where Andrew does the shots is sped up to ten times what it originally was. There's also a motion-blur effect that makes it look like he's taking them even faster. The voice-over during the ending credits is something I recorded while Andrew was doing additional voice work in post.
A special thanks to Andrew for uploading his video and Sam's to YouTube so we can all watch them, and an extra special thanks to everyone who helped us make these videos possible. As Doc Sandler once said, "If it wasn't for them, we'd be English majors."
The Story Behind the Shooting For our final video project in Production 210 each group was required to choose a myth or fairy tale to base their one minute video on. We're allowed to do any style or genre we want, so long as it's based on the original story. Normally each member of the group does their own take on their particular myth or fairy tale, but when we chose Homer's The Odyssey we decided that each of us should do a one minute portion of The Odyssey so that when they were all put together they would tell the entire story of The Odyssey (more or less) in four minutes.
Due to the shenanigans that ensued in our 210 class we began shooting on Tuesday, April 15th. While going over the script for Andrew Heder's video we originally planned on only doing a few shots for the sake of the dallies due that Thursday. Andrew wanted to do his portion of the project on the part of the The Odyssey where Odysseus is tempted by the sirens, except in the style of a 1940's black and white noir, with Odysseus stalking the streets at night when he runs into a prostitute (the siren) outside of a gentleman's club.
Andrew was going over a mental list of the different shots he wanted to get and I did a read-through of the script just for kicks, trying on different voices for the noir character. He was having a hard time thinking about how the shots were going to work because the guy he had in mind for Odysseus was shorter than Samantha Price, the girl playing the part of the siren. While reading the script he asked me if I would be willing to play the part of Odysseus. I told him I'd be happy to--playing a 40's noir character has been one of those random things I've always wanted to do. Since both Sam and I were free that night we decided to shoot all the footage for Andrew's video.
On the left we see Andrew Heder by the camera and John Roney (who was a great help with all of the filming) standing in the background.
Getting everything together required some prop juggling. I had black pants and shoes but I would have to borrow a white-collared dress shirt, tie, and blazer from Andrew and a fedora from John to complete the part.
Funny thing about filming guys in suits--there always seems to be some issue with the blazer. When we shot JDC Energy Drink! a number of years back I included a clip in the out takes where I ask Josh Hubbard, "Do you have a suit jacket that I can borrow?"
Josh replies, "A black one?"
I said to him, "Yeah, doesn't matter. Why? What other colors do you have?"
"I have a brown one too, but, you know?"
"I don't want to look like I'm going to a funeral. I want to look like I'm promoting a drink!"It is only in hindsight that I realize that the black blazer would have made it look more like I was going to a funeral and the brown one would have made it look like I was trying to promote a drink.
Similarly a question arose this time around about the proper color of the blazer:
Me: Do you have a suit jacket I can borrow?
Andrew: Yeah, I've got one.
Me: Awesome. Perfect.
Andrew: Wait--it's gray. Do you think that will be okay?
Me: Andrew, it's a black and white film.
Andrew:...Right.
Samantha was decked out in a corset, fishnet stockings, and heels. To the right the two of us are standing outside on location as we prepare for one of the scenes.
There was one problem, however. Because we were shooting a 40's noir film I would be required to smoke, which I had never done before. And when I say I've never smoked before I mean I had never smoked anything. Not a single cigarette, cigar, or hookah. Andrew bought me a pack of Marlboro Reds and showed me how to light a cigarette and breathe the smoke into my mouth without getting it into my lungs. For the first hour of the shoot I could not make it work and had to have someone else light it for me. (By the end of the night I would not only have mastered the art of lighting a cigarette but I'd also be chain smoking in-between takes as a recourse to being so tired.)
Lighting the cigarette was all the more difficult because Andrew insisted on using matches instead of a lighter. He wanted to capture the flare of light across my face whenever I lit a match. (He had been watching clips from Double Indemnity on YouTube for the last few weeks, formulating ideas for the kind of noir he wanted to create.) We did manage to capture the flare but because of the wind that night the match rarely lasted long enough to light the cigarette.
The shooting was made all the more interesting by the dialogue scene that Sam and I had in the video. Although it would last only thirty seconds or so in the final cut the different angles and takes required meant that we were standing extraordinarily close to one another for more than an hour and a half. Andrew was constantly directing and repositioning our body postures to try to capture the best shots:
Andrew: Okay, Sam, take about half a step to your left. Now take a small step forward...A little more to the left. Okay, now try to move in a little bit closer. Good. Now Stefan, lift your cigarette to your mouth and take a drag from it.
Me: Andrew, if I lift this cigarette to my mouth I'm going to burn the tip of Sam's nose.Needless to say, I had few complaints about the arrangements of the talent.
When we finally called it a day at around 1am we had been shooting for three hours and had gone through half a pack of cigarettes and two boxes of matches. We all wreaked of cigarette smoke. My throat felt like an ashtray and I wound up taking Sudafed PE for the next three days because my sinuses were so thoroughly trashed.
------------------------------ We shot some footage in-between classes on Wednesday in spite of a massive power outage that cut off the electricity to half of Tucson late in the morning on Wednesday. Fortunately that did not hinder our work ethic. Or our awareness.
During a phone call on Wednesday about 11:30am:
Me: Andrew, what's going on?
Andrew: Not much. I just got up from a nap.
Me: (While thinking how eerily similar that sounds to something I would say) Are we still shooting today?
Andrew: Yeah, why wouldn't we be?
Me: There was a massive power outage that just hit half of Tucson. Did you lose power?
Andrew: Maybe...My clock is flashing the wrong time at me.
Me: Yeah, well, the entire campus went dark about two hours ago. They're just working on getting it back now.
Andrew: Really? Huh...I had no idea.On Wednesday night we shot Sam's portion of the project. She wanted to do the part of The Odyssey where Odysseus is seduced and put under a spell by Calypso as a 1920's silent-era film. She had a friend of hers, Nicole, play the part of Calypso and Andrew played the part of Odysseus (Andrew would have normally played the part of Odysseus in all of our videos but the project guidelines stipulate that we cannot appear in any of the videos we direct.) I gave Andrew his white-collared dress shirt back and lent him my bowler for the part. John was on hand once again to provide technical support and to fill in as a jazz piano player. Britnee Pignotti, another friend of Sam's, also stood in as an extra laying atop the piano John was playing. The girls were all wearing 20's flapper dresses to go with the genre of the film. I helped Sam with arranging the shots and providing in-put when asked for it.
The shoot went well. Andrew and Nicole had to learn how to dance the Charleston before we began and they performed admirably. We spent a lot of time on the part of the video where Odysseus leans in to kiss Calypso but Zeus intervenes with a lightning bolt that snaps him out of his enchantment. While the flash of light for the lightning bolt would be created in post (by this time we were calling our production group FIIP--Fix It In Post) Andrew still had to act surprised about where he was and drop Nicole to the floor mid-dip when he realizes what is going on. Once again the necessity of acquiring a number of different angles and takes meant that Andrew had to drop Nicole to the floor again and again--and again and again and again. She insisted that she was never in any pain but the dull thud of her body hitting the floor lead me to believe otherwise.
Meanwhile I chatted with Britnee off-screen and discovered that she owned an imitation cigarette that lit up and produced its own smoke just like a real one. Fancy that?
------------------------------ After learning that the dallies would be due the following Tuesday instead of that Thursday we planned to do one more major day of shooting on Sunday. Allison Lefton and I still had to shoot our portion of the project. Allie was doing the very beginning of The Odyssey, with Penelope lamenting her husband's absence while being dogged by suitors. I was doing the very end of The Odyssey, when Odysseus returns home and slays said suitors. Since both our videos were contemporary pieces and required actors for Odysseus, Penelope, and suitors, it made since to shoot both of ours on the same day.
I should point out for the benefit of everyone who's not a literary buff that our interpretation of The Odyssey is a very loose one. The original story actually starts with Odysseus infatuated with Calypso on her island, and a good portion of the text is devoted to the efforts of Odysseus's son trying to bring his father home. We not only started much earlier in the tale, in what would technically be considered The Iliad, but we also completely took out the fact that Odysseus has a son in the first place.
I called all the guys I knew in Tucson that I thought might be able to show up to act as suitors. Allie called a number of her friends as well but had trouble finding people. Sunday was 4/20 and in youth culture that date is treated as a national holiday. We might as well have been asking people to work Christmas.
We asked Sam if Britnee would be willing to play the part of Penelope. She had only a bit part in costume in Sam's video, so we figured hardly anyone would notice if she also played Penelope in ours. Andrew was once again our Odysseus. We asked Sam and Britnee to show up at Andrew's apartment at noon and told all the suitors to show up at 2pm in order to give Ally time to shoot the scenes she needed of just Penelope and to give me time to shoot scenes of just Odysseus. We thought Britnee would be available all afternoon for the shoot, but Sam called us on Sunday morning to tell us that she had another commitment and that we'd only have her for a few hours.
This was a major problem. Both Allie and I had shots that included both the suitors and Penelope, and we'd only have a half hour overlap between when the suitors would show up and when Britnee had to leave.
Making the best of the time we had we shot all the scenes that Allie and I needed of Britnee and Andrew. Britnee turned out to be a phenomenal actress as Penelope, nailing many of the speaking parts I gave her (from a script she hadn't read beforehand) in only one take. Her voice was pitch-perfect for the part and she was an excellent compliment to Andrew as Odysseus. At two o'clock enough suitors showed up on time to film the scenes we needed of everyone.
In the original story Penelope issues a challenge to the suitors: whoever can string Odysseus's bow and shoot an arrow through twelve up-turned axes will become her new husband. How exactly you're supposed to shoot arrows through axes is something of a mystery to me. The only mental image I can reference for that is an episode of the PBS series Wishbone which showed this scene. It works somehow--trust me. None of the suitors are able to string the bow. Odysseus, in disguise, emerges from among the crowd of suitors, strings the bow, and shoots the arrow through all twelve axes with ease. Afterwards he (along with his son) kills all the suitors.
Actually the original story is fairly graphic in its description of the slaughter. Odysseus and his son go to the armory (in those days, every household had one) to gather weapons and completely butcher all of the suitors. Afterward the housemaids clean up the blood and bodies, and then Odysseus has them killed as well. Gory stuff.
Wanting to keep the video clean and modern, I decided to go with a kung fu fight scene instead. Rather than having a bow and axes, Penelope's challenge would propose that any man who can uncork Odysseus's favorite bottle of bourbon and do twelve consecutive shots in less than a minute would become her new husband.
Since Andrew couldn't really do twelve shots of actual bourbon we used watered-down Diet Coke, which looks very similar. Steven Bosse, Austin Clements, Stephen Whitney, Tony Laurino, and Donny Gabai played the parts of the suitors. The all did a great job of making a show of struggling to uncork the bottle, and then looking impressed when Odysseus showed up and started doing one shot after another. (The pseudo-bourbon does look quite realistic; while showing the dallies in class kids were gagging at the sight of Andrew downing so much alcohol.) After that we filmed a kung fu fight scene involving all the suitors, ending with Odysseus and Penelope (filmed earlier that day) walking through the body of fallen suitors to the bedroom.
The footage came out remarkably well. Andrew was worried that the somewhat small size of his apartment would be a detriment to the shoot, but it actually worked in my favor because it made the group of suitors appear to be larger in number. The lighting situation was also good. It was sunny for all the outdoor shots and Andrew's apartment had lights in all the right places to prevent any dark spots (a major stroke of luck, considering I had never seen Andrew's apartment prior to shooting). We called it a day around 5pm.