messengers « Journal Zero

Posts Tagged ‘messengers’

the Color of a Character

Posted: 25th January 2013 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Uncategorized

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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Think of the Children

Posted: 4th January 2013 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development, Episode 6, On Location

On the development and production of the “Orphans” epilogue with Axel the skullhunter, Sam the messenger, and more than a handful of children in the woods.

The first of the Night Zero Epilogues is brief, but loaded. I don’t recall exactly how or when I decided to frame the entire saga under a participant narrator, but even the first assembled draft of Episode Six has this scene nearly word-for-word as it appears in the final comic.

Choosing a narrator involved serious considerations. It would have to be a character who recurs enough to be remembered on sight, but far enough from the center that they wouldn’t need their own closure. It would have to be a character capable of caring for children but unexpected enough that it would warrant notice. And finally, it would have to be a character who survived the bloodbath without a strong allegiance, so that they wouldn’t be notably absent from another of the Epilogues.
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Enter the Bloodbath

Posted: 26th October 2012 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Episode 6, On Location

On the creation of the Bloodbath sequence, the high-action three-way battle crescendo climax of Night Zero: Episode Six.

This current sequence of the finale, which we refer to as “Bloodbath,” is the climactic evidence of the Episode Six philosophy: go big and go outside. It’s one of the last scenes we shot, due to its scale and complexity, and was an incredible accomplishment by all members of the Night Zero team. With more than fifty extras, more than a dozen cast members, and nearly two dozen crew, we descended upon an abandoned building at the Sand Point Naval Base and spent a weekend creating and shooting chaos.

The production required an expanded basecamp, to quarter the masses of participants, the makeup, and food from potential rain and wind participation. While there was some wetness to manage the morning of the second day, overall we were very fortunate with the weather and managed to shoot for two full days with minimal interference. Base camp was well secluded on the opposite side of the building from the shoot location, which added travel time for actors and production assistants but allowed the cameras to roll all day long while base camp managed its own responsibilities.

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The Second Eulogy

Posted: 13th July 2012 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development, Episode 6

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

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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A Syndicated Location

Posted: 13th January 2012 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Syndicate", Behind-the-Scenes Photos, On Location

On the day of the shoot for the Syndicate vignette, and how all the pieces came together to create this final origin story.

The shoot for Syndicate was a long and busy Saturday, tucked in the basement lounge of the Rendezvous bar in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. Crew call was our standard 9:00am arrival, with Jana setting up her makeup station while Eric, Justin, and Jason loaded in the light gear. The shooting area was divided into two halves, with the script moving from one to the other and then back again. Our first setup would be the “middle act” in the far room, so all our gear was staged in the near room and we set to work making the space our own. Fortunately there wasn’t too much we needed to alter to create the scene we wanted—we put out a table, pushed some chairs to the side, and took some signs off the wall; but overall, the look we were going for was already there.

To avoid a huge rush of costume and makeup demands at the same time, the cast call was staggered and as our talent arrived and got ready, we began shooting some of the closeups and two-person shots. By 11:30am the whole group was there, and we did our wide shots and group conversation. Wide shots can be tricky in a place like that, not because of the distance of the walls (we have wide lenses to take care of that), but because with low ceilings all of the lighting gear and electric becomes visible. It’s possible to crop the photos to remove the lights, or digitally remove the stands and gear, but as I’ve lamented many times in the past, just having the light visible on camera really screws up the HDR tonemapping process. But we shoot on location, and that’s just part of the price we pay.