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Modern Prometheus was supposed to be a small episode for me. Ken Gord the producer had mentioned to the writers that it might be a good idea to give me a smaller one to direct, not because the last one had been unmanageable but because it had been a busy year. What we got in return was an episode with two sword fights, two quickenings, two music playback scenes, scenes with 5 main character in them, two high fall stunts and a carriage race. All in 8 days of shooting. That was small? That said I loved working on it. I think this episode was my best technically. I was learning more and more as I went along and had wanted to try some different things. The story was about the famous writer Lord Byron who as immortal had lived through the centuries trying to stimulate his senses with drugs, alcohol and anything else he could get his hands on that would get his adrenaline running. In present day he was like rock star. This gave me the idea to shoot a lot of the episode like a music video. The final fight and quickening scene was edited exactly like a video which I think was a great idea by the editor Don Paonessa. |
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In this particular episode, unlike others, we also had the reality of a real life historical figure to deal with. When the script first came in I was a little excited but also disappointed with the content. They had stayed totally away from mentioning Byron’s works and concentrated on just his debauchery. I felt we had to use some of his works in the piece to give reality to the character. So I went away and read Byron’s life history. Once I had done that I decided to create the very last action sequence with him reciting some of Byron’s very own poetry. What I found was a quotation that I thought fit the topic of trapping Byron's
adversary - Duncan Macleod - before the final kill. The twist was that Macleod gets the best of him and finishes the poem that he too
knows well. |
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I wanted this episode to be different in feel in the present and the flashbacks. I wanted the scenes in the past to be shot more like a play. This meant I would try to let the camera role in certain scenes and let the actors “play” until a specific moment when I felt we should come in for a close up. Also I wanted the flashback scenes to have a richer feel in the colors play since it was a time when there was an air of romance and politeness. It was a time when Byron was partying it up with some of his friends - Mary Shelley being one of them - who was the author of the science fiction novel ”Frankenstein”. |
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While shooting the whole of the flashback sequence I could hear classical music playing in my head. The location was perfect and I was able to film some very wide shots with the sun perfectly placed to give a romantic backdrop to the race. The interior sunroom scene I filmed long lens on a dolly to give it a soulful, artistic feel. The debauchery scene I shot almost in its entirety in one dolly shot moving from one character to another. I even had a goat led in to the beginning of a shot to give the feeing of the debauchery that the audience never really sees. The last day we shot the sword fight and the quickening, which had a double meaning to it. Mary Shelley who is present at Lord Byron’s revival from the dead after he receives The Quickening, is inspired to write the novel “Frankenstein” where her main character is awakened by lightning. So I used this fact to levitate Byron’s body and make the lightning course through his body as if he were a puppet. In the Present I wanted a more grittier washed out look depicting Byron’s lose of self and used the camera to portray an uneasy feeling that he had for the world. The present day scenes were shot using more hand held and static cameras to make the quick cuts needed to give it a different feel. I wanted to have this eclectic yet frenetic atmosphere of rock and Roll so I also used weird angles on the cameras. Casting Byron's Ingenue as a young Jimmy Hendrix look alike also created the feeling that this boy who had major talent was easily seduced and destroyed by Byron’s hatred for himself. |
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The culmination of this was the final fight sequence and quickening. I wanted the look of an MTV video clip and used odd angles and dutching (tilting) the camera to give it an odd feeling. When Duncan MacLeod kills Byron, I wanted to levitate MacLeod as a metaphor for Byron’s rising greatness that only reached so far before it was eaten away by his ego and his unbending necessity to use hallucinogenics to fire his creative mind. The episode had gone well , we were pretty much on schedule, I had done a huge amount of work that I thought was going to cut well and then came the final day, the day of the final fight. The interior of the warehouse we had chosen was good, the choreography was working well, but then … during one of the first takes I was hit in the face next to my left eye with a sword. Stoooooooooop. I had to be hauled off bleeding to my trailer and required a couple of stitches with no anaesthetic to close the cut, otherwise the swelling would be too obvious. For the next three hours I filmed the rest of the final sequence cheating my face away from camera to hide the marks. Once we finished that scene I then had to finish my directing on Highlander with one last stunt sporting a massive black eye with three stitches to boot. This was 'not' the way I had intended to finish. However, I was happy with the work that I had accomplished in this particular episode as it was technically my most interesting effort thus far. |
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