COSTUME

The first thing to do was to get them fitted for wardrobe. Now we hadn't had much time to prepare for this, and since we were shooting in Lithuania - which didn't have a long history of catering to western productions - we thought it prudent to see what  the costume designer had in mind for the characters. Brett gave them a brief of leather. He wanted the cast to suit the movie, a road-worn, beat-up, rough look. What came back was not quite what we had in mind since the Lithuanian costume designer hadn't really worked modern day films (having mostly done period pieces). We realised that we would need an advisor for the costume department. So we arranged for a couple of meetings with English costumers. On a trip back to Hungary, Alexandra, my girlfriend who had done costuming on many fashion shows, put together the looks she thought Duncan MacLeod should be wearing, a design portfolio of sorts. On my return to England the following week I showed it to Brett without telling him who had done it, since I personally hate favouritism. Okay, I know that's how it works a lot of the time, but I always believe that people should succeed on their own merit. When Brett saw the portfolio he said this was exactly what he was looking for and that we should hire this person since he hadn't liked anyone he had met in London.

When I told him it was Alexandra, he was pleasantly surprised. The next thing we did was tell Peter Davis that we wanted to hire Alexandra for the job. I think at first he was a little sceptical, but after Brett persuaded him, she was hired as a consultant. She quickly put portfolios together on all the other characters so we could decide on the final looks.

After finding the cast, Alexandra came to London to do our first costume fitting with most of the main characters. Since we were pressed for time, my mother also came to help Alexandra with the measurements; Mum had been a seamstress many years before. It looked like it was becoming a true family event. With the measurements in hand, Alexandra rushed over to Lithuania to meet the costume designer in order to decide what should be bought in London and what could be made in Lithuania. After all, London was expensive and in Lithuania we had a great costume department who could whip up something in a very short period of time - as long as they were given the right directions.

PROSTHETICS There were going to be two characters in the movie who would need prosthetic make up: the Elder and the Guardian. The actor we chose for the Elder, Patrice Naimbana, had a great voice and we knew that it would be important to have a strong presence come through the make up. It took hours to put him in both facial and body prosthetics that was carefully constructed for him. Once the original piece was applied, it took hours to mold, match, contour and shape it into the look that we wanted, because our intention was to make it look real. Brett spent a lot of time making sure that this was going to work because initially we had a little problem with the first prosthetic pieces that really didn't look lifelike at all. Brett had a very clear vision as to what he wanted the Guardian to look like and this became a controversial discussion during pre-production. From conception to reality there are sometimes problems. Firstly the Guardian’s costume: it was thought a little risky having the lead bad guy wearing what looked like a corset, but Brett knew what his villain should look like. The problem was making a costume that stayed in place. It took days for the costume department  to make the design that had been drawn and they began pulling their hair out. Alexandra suggested making it from individual pieces and  bunching up the leather so that the outfit didn't look like a Spandex body suit. But.... that meant making it by hand and by that point we were two days away from needing it for the first day's filming. The costume designer stayed up all night the day before the first day's shooting to finish it off. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the work because we needed at least one other costume for the stunt double and one more just in case of accidents.

The next problem was the prosthetic piece that was going over his chest and arms. The first material that it was constructed from looked terrible. It didn't even look like real skin. Not only did it not move when the actor moved, but the costume wasn't fitting over the top of it. Bill and Peter were very nervous about this. We had to shoot around these problems the first day of shooting until the next scene, which would be in another week's time when the correct prosthetic material would be available. After many hours in make up and wardrobe fittings, the Guardian was beginning to take shape. Christian even went so far as shaving his head and eyebrows to give the look that Brett had originally conceived. The test was whether this character was going to hold up on screen.

WEAPONS There was so much to do and so little time. We had done our homework on the characters and I had discussed with Brett the type of weapons we should have for the different sections. While in London, I had gone to the armoury to choose the type of weapons each of the Immortals should have,  depending on their style and character. Every one was going to have his own style. All the blades had to have doubles and triples made for them for rehearsals and in case of breakages. Luckily all the ones I chose were either able to be made in time for the shoot or had other duplicates already.

Some of us already had a weapon so that was easy, although I was also going to use another style weapon in this movie along with the katana. We agreed on Chinese butterfly blades that had been historically used to great effect in China to give us another kind of look. I had also trained in these previously with my Sifu, Vernon Rieta.

Each of the other blades was chosen for the type of character who wielded it. Giovanni’s, because of his simple, holy nature, would be a straight broadsword in style with no frills except for a large jewel in the centre to convey his innate vanity and greed. For Reggie, we wanted a cutlass from the 18th century because that was when he had been born and didn't know any different since he wasn't really a fighter. Zai was going to have a Chinese boxer rebellion blade to go along with his Asian tracker mentality.

The Guardian's blade presented a little problem. It had to be interestingly different. The blade I liked for him was visually interesting and it did have doubles but was very long and heavy to use. There wasn't enough time to make a new one so we decided to cut this version down to a usable size that would work on film.

Unfortunately we were doing things a little backwards since time was against us. I had to choose the weapons before seeing the actors who would be playing these roles and could only hope that the two would match.

We were soon to find out.......