Posts Tagged ‘lucy’

the Color of a Character

Posted: 25th January 2013 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Uncategorized
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On the conscious and continuing use of color in character costumes, and how that impacts the telling of Night Zero’s various stories.

For many years I’ve been looking forward to writing a blog post on the use of character color in Night Zero, but every time it felt appropriate I thought of another future scene I’d want to reference, and again this post would be postponed. Now, at the end, that time has finally come.

There are many design ideas and decisions endowed into the world and detail of Night Zero, little touches here and there that are neither important to nor referenced by the stories we tell, but that mean a lot to us. Some are small actor choices that affect the actions and demeanors of their characters without being made explicit. Others are tokens and trinkets that represent untold stories, perhaps at one point intended to be explored but now known only by those who would have told them. These all are little treasures within the fictional world of Night Zero designed to help the actors connect with their characters, but the most significant and deliberate secret of the production design is part of the storytelling, not the story: the subtle use of color designed to help the reader identify, distinguish, and remember characters across the span of Night Zero tales.
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The Second Eulogy

Posted: 13th July 2012 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development, Episode 6
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This week in Episode Six, we said goodbye to our second established character, brought in some new and returning ones, and finished up a scene we shot over fourteen months ago.

The two central characters of this scratcher-attack scene, the messengers Vanessa and Mandy, were created for this episode with their actors-to-be already in mind. This scene was the first time on a Night Zero shoot for both of them, but they took to the unusual style naturally and both gave solid, powerful performances. Many months later, each returned (on separate occasions) for their appearances in the Originettes (Vanessa in “Sorority” and Mandy in “Syndicate”), but through the aforementioned cuts and consolidations, their storyline in Episode Six was reduced to just this one scene we’ve come to finish.

This scene, or rather the two parts of this scene (entitled “Flanked” and “Mandy”) combined, are a far cry from what was in the original script. Part of that change was the result of shuffling around the sequence of events in the episode, and how the various storylines overlapped. Another part of the change was dictated by our location, as we were unable (despite numerous efforts) to secure a dead-end alley where the duo would more likely find themselves cornered. Additionally, an earlier scene was cut wherein Vanessa’s leg is injured, so like Jeff Goldblum magically understanding the aliens’ computer language, so too do we have a plot element (a messenger who’s too slow) that makes no sense superficially due to what got left behind. But who’s really paying that much attention?
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The First Eulogy

Posted: 1st June 2012 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development, Episode 6
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On the character of Jill, a strong presence in the last year of Night Zero, who’s passing marks the first major casualty of Episode Six.

The very first scene of Night Zero introduces the idea of messengers working in pairs (even though some, like Marion, prefer solitude), and from early in the development of Episode Six it was clear to me that while all our messengers would be featured, Lucy and Jill would be particularly important in the day’s events. We first met Lucy in the fall of 2010, when she and the other messengers gathered to hear Nadia Nazarov’s pre-battle speech. She was just one new face among many at the time, but even then I knew that hers was a face we’d be seeing again.
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the Sisterhood

Posted: 14th October 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Behind-the-Scenes Photos
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On choosing the name “Sorority” for Lucy’s vignette, by way of discovering the message of her story and its place in the Night Zero universe

For a long time, this vignette had no name because we weren’t really sure what it was going to be. We knew the story, we knew the characters, but didn’t know what the message was, what it was teaching us about the world of Night Zero. In the beginning it was just called the Lucy vignette, and when we named Lucy’s sister it became the Lucy/Dee vignette. Based on their relationship, the only other name that really seemed to fit was “Sisters”, but we already had a great vignette by that name.

Another thing that was undecided about the vignette was the ending. We knew where act two began (with Lucy and Jill meeting) and we knew where they ended up (a pair of messengers), but when and how their first meeting would end was unknown. It seemed fitting to have a scratcher encounter with the two of them, so at least that much was assumed in every version. The number of scratchers would be more of a practical matter, depending on what our location was, how well-armed the two would be to fight them, and how many extras we’d be able to cast on whatever day we shot.
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Dramatic Character Changes

Posted: 23rd September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Concepts & Development
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On the reintroduction and transformation of Jill from the ‘Inertia’ vignette to ‘Sorority’, and the unexpected surprises along the way.

In every fiction serial, especially those in visual media, one of the great creative freedoms comes from the opportunity to show existing characters in dramatically changed roles. From alternate-timelines like Fringe and Buffy, to space/time-leaps as seen in Heroes and Battlestar Galactica, and all the hundreds of alternate/non-canon comic book lines, there are few things as rewarding to the long-time fan as the complete displacement of a character (or characters) into a new environment, a new perspective, and a new aesthetic.

With Night Zero’s non-linear vignette style, we’ve done a number of time-jumps with our characters with varying changes (but no parallel universes or time travellers… yet). The ‘Sisters‘ vignette placed the Nazarovs back in time but without much noticable shift in personalities, mainly because not much of their personalities had been revealed in the serial to that point. Yevgeniy’s appearance at the end of that story was a fun change in appearance, but his real character change was in the vignette ‘Devon‘, which looked at him as a fresher, more rambunctious leader. And of course there’s the character of Jezebel, who changes dramatically at every turn and yet still remains ever the same.
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The Relay Vignette

Posted: 9th September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development
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On the origin of the hallway chase sequence, a shelved vignette known only as the ‘relay vignette’, and how its transplant into ‘Sorority’ led to some interesting decisions.

The hallway action sequence that separates the two acts of ‘Sorority’ is a piece that I’m very proud to have included, for a brief but action-filled interstitial. The sequence itself is more than a year old, and was initally developed as the third act in a story that never got so far as a real name, only a working description: the relay vignette.

The relay vignette was a sequence of three separate scenes, hitting on three separate factions of post-apocalyptic Seattle and underscoring how, despite their differences (differences which are fully explored and understood in the serial), each faction can be brought to work together given the right motivation. Additionally, it was intended to be an action-heavy piece, developed during production of the action-light Episode Five, as a way to continue challenging ourselves and keeping things fresh.
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