Directing Revelations 6:8

My third directing gig was the largest one I had attempted. It was the 100th episode of the series. The script was a two-part story, the first “Comes a Horseman” and Revelations 6.8”, which was the 100th episode itself.

The story was about how the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were actually Immortals and were uniting again to conquer the world. I know, grand themes on a little television screen, but it had a lot of possibilities. The episodes were going to be shot first in Vancouver by Gerard Hameline and then in France by me. I had nine days to shoot "Revelations 6:8", and I could see there were going to be several challenges along the way. Firstly we were away from our normal shooting scenario. We weren’t in Paris, we were in Bordeaux, and it was the first episode of the season in France, which meant that it would take a day or so for the crew to get into the swing of things, which is pretty normal and the reason why many directors like working with a crew they already know.

The next challenge was finding the right sets to use. Luckily I had a good locations scout who found me an amazing World War 2 submarine base to use as the Horsemen’s lair. It had originally been written as a castle somewhere in France, but this was going to be so much more visual.

Therein lay the third problem: How on earth were we going to get the crew to not only shoot all over the city with small company moves each day, but to also move across such a large set as the submarine base in such a short amount of time?. Ken Gord, the producer, was a little worried since I also wanted to use a crane on two of the nine days, but I assured him we could get the job done if we planned everything meticulously.

usig a crane creatively I have always felt that you can use a crane creatively and hide the fact that you are using it until you really have to. Cranes give a scene scope and grandeur, and I love using them although they are problematic in the amount of time they take to set up. I wanted grandeur, not only because of the subject matter, but because it was the first time a European co-production had actually achieved 100 episodes that were shown in over 80 countries across the world. So it was quite a big deal. I had effectively used a crane while shooting "Methuselah's Gift" and used it for two scenes in one day. One for the end of the show as a one shot set up and the other during a dialogue and action sequence with five actors, extras, a car explosion and gunfire. So I had proven I knew how to use it effectively.

The first day of shooting "Revelations 6.8" was very exciting. We had to start by shooting a scene from the previous episode, a flashback sequence that could only be shot in our location. Not that I wanted to lose a couple of hours but we decided that it would give us the opportunity to have part of the crew build the crane for the first shot. We had timed each scene so that we knew how long it should take us during the day so that we could guesstimate where we needed to speed up and try to finish on time. We finished the flashback scene right on the money and moved over to the crane that had already been set up and was ready to go. It looked like everything was moving smoothly. The only thing left to do was to counterbalance the weight of the camera operator and focus puller who sat on the front.

There are several different types of cranes, This was one of the least expensive since we had spent money on a remote action crane for another day. As I was talking to the camera operator, crew members were loading the counter weights on the back. Suddenly there was a loud crash. Everything then seemed to happen in slow motion. The camera operator and focus puller shot into the air and flew off the crane when it was about three meters high. The crew jumped back from the falling weights in the back, I dropped to help the camera operator and suddenly looked up to see the camera flipping, about to swing back down again. As I looked around, I saw the focus puller scrambling one way and the camera operator running the other with the seat still attached to him. Looking up again, I saw the camera had held and was swinging to and fro above us. After a moment we looked around and found that no one had been hurt. But how had this happened? Apparently, someone had forgotten to put in a holding pin in the arm of the crane, so at a certain point it just gave way. It was going to take at least an hour and a half to fix. Great. It was the first day and we had overtime already.

The next few days the crew and cast did a fantastic job helping me carve a way through the episode and without too much more overtime. We had used the crane well, the acting was solid, and the special effects and the sets were looking great. No other accidents happened, although we did have a little incident when one of the baboons who was supposed to be locked in a cage got loose, scaring a couple of set decoration crew half to death. They then proceeded to lock themselves inside a cupboard for about half an hour, while the rest of us continued filming on another set until the baboon was finally caught three hours later.

BIGGEST CHALLENGE

Before we knew it, we were on the second-to-last day, and this was where our biggest challenge lay. The script called for two simultaneous quickenings, (huge explosions around the actors who are “receiving their defeated enemy's life force”), yet we had never tried a double quickening, partly because shooting one took three to four hours. The only way to do this and have seamless transitions between the action and the explosions was to use four cameras, another first on Highlander. Two cameras would take the main actions and explosions. A third would cross-shoot so you could see both actors in the same frame at the same time, and a fourth floated on a boat.

I used a boat so that we could film the initial explosions in the first area and then float across to film the main ones in the second. Then, on the next take we would reverse the action. Now all I can I remember from that night - apart from the fact that the explosions were huge and setting cameras way into the early hours of the morning - was the fact that the next day my back and legs were really sore. I also remember the very last minutes before wrap, running along the silo telling the boat with the camera on it to pull away and roll camera so that I could get an end to the sequence - a shot that only took about 3-4 minutes - before the crew collapsed and went home to a well deserved sleep.

Once we got into editing we found we had a lot to choose from. A great problem to have normally, but when the first cut came in at 65 minutes, we knew we realized a lot of good footage was going to have to go. It was a shame because we didn’t have enough to turn it into a 90-minute movie of the week, but we had too much for a regular episode. Once the episode was finished, although I saw things that I could have done better, I was very pleased with the end result.