Behind The Scenes And on The Set With Anthony De Longis

At left: Rena and Daniella, as "Ariana" and "Tai Shan", fight an intense battle with the soldiers in the forest .

For the next three nights we covered a sword duel in the style of a friendly "Rob Roy" duel between Rena and Daniella's characters, Ariana and Tai Shan. Daniella had a ballet and Spanish dancer background but was also fairly new to the sword. I coached Rena in English while Milan worked with Daniella in Czech and Danny grabbbed as much coverage as time allowed each evening. The days were spent filming dialogue in the forest locations as well as a pitched battle with Ariana and Tai Shan battling the soldiers of the evil queen. This split schedule only gave us a few hours each night to cover both dialogue and action for these vital night scenes. The night we filmed our first master of the sword action, Milan clapped loudest of all and was delighted with Rena's performance. Petr Drozda awarded me the official stunt cap from the Czech Republic Stunt Association, team Filmka. I was accepted as one of their own.

Thursday I helped Rena and Mark prepare for the sword battle between Ariana and General Turgo. Rena and Marc Mero had fought together many times in the ring but swords were a first for them. I don't think their past battles had ever called for Rena to kill him either. Just to make the ground extra slick we had a nice cold rain all morning that turned the mine exterior into a slippery mud pit. Everyone rose to the occasion and the group battle was down and dirty but effective. Rena killed Marc beautifully, like it was something she'd been considering for quite awhile. Just kidding.

At right - Anthony and Milan strike a pose in the set of the Castle's Great Hall. The two are dressed in priestly robes.

Milan and I had such a successful collaboration that the script was changed so that our two characters could have a battle of champions in the great hall. We spent Friday on one of the soundstages at North American Studios throwing ideas and cool moves at each other, evolving the story together based on responses to each other's ideas. Braun McAsh, the Highlander: The Series Sword Master, and I had evolved the "Duende" episode in just this manner. This is my favorite way to work but it is very rare to have a partner as skilled and experienced as Braun or Milan. The Sword Master usually has to work out every fight by himself and is always limited by the skill of his actors. Here the governors were off and we were only limited by our imaginations and the story we were going to tell. Needless to say, it was a wonderful day.

My scenes in front of the camera would start on Monday so wardrobe and makeup concerns were addressed and choices made. This is always a very important time because once you're on camera, you're established and any bright ideas are too late. It's also very important to make sure the costume is practical for the action the script demands. In twenty-seven years as a professional actor both onstage and onscreen I've discovered many truths. One that is seldom discussed but is true nonetheless; your wardrobe and props will always try to kill you, usually when you least expect it. More on this later.

I was very impressed with Lloyd Simandl's North American Pictures production company and Milin Studios. It's the second largest in the Czech Republic, and they've filmed dozens of features with actors such as Judge Reinhold and Thomas Ian Griffith as well as numerous Czech productions. Their EFX and CGI (computer generated imaging) are state-of-the-art and the locations are beautiful and date back to the fourteenth century. The studio itself had four sound stages and includes a heated water tank with filters and filming windows and underwater camera capabilities. Rena spent Saturday shooting a green screen fall and then her actual fall into the water tank. The next several hours were spent filming her fight inside the tank. She was a real trooper, and Petr Drozda's team gave her good support. I helped a little with a fight inside the mine and then Milan and I went back to working out our fight.

At left - Anthony and Rena rehearse their fight at the forest location. It was a beautiful day, with the sunlight streaming through the colourful fall foliage.

Sunday would have been our day off but with only fifteen days to shoot a feature length project Milan and I met to show our routine to Petr and Danny. Then Rena, Danny and I went off to scout the forest location to see what had to be prepared before cast and cameras arrived the next day. Rena and I practiced our routine on the spot, always a good idea, because the ground was uneven and a little slippery. Showing the moves to Danny in the location gave him a jump on planning his coverage with tracks and camera. He was ready to shoot right then. We practiced until sundown and magic hour. Shafts of warm, golden light shining through the trees painted a gorgeous picture that Marc captured on film with both of our cameras before we called it a day. We still had to move from the Hotel Starosedlsky Haradak to a new hotel closer to both the studio and our next location - the castle at Tocnik (pronounced Tochnik).

At right - the next day, Rena and Anthony peform the fight for the camera. Although the forecast was for clear weather, the fog rolled in, making more work for lighting.

Six forty-five the next morning we were on the set. The beautiful shafts of light streaming through the trees had been replaced by a heavy ground fog that made the day very damp and cold. Rena's costume didn't have the layers that mine enjoyed but she was a trooper. We kept her bundled up between shots but it was still tough. Now God is a great art director. Even though the light was totally different than the day before and what the weather report had promised, the heavy fog gave the whole scene an ominous, ghostly quality. Million dollar production value that we couldn't have done without help from the Man upstairs.

To see more photos of the fight, and some other scenes from the movie, visit Anthony's At Work Gallery for Film. Ariana's Quest can be found at the top of the page.

At left - To capture the blades clashing, Anthony and Rena position their blades so cameraman Yaramir and his focus-puller can rehearse the shot. Behind the blades is Producer/Director Danny Virtue, and at right is Sword Master Milan Slepicka.

Danny covered our action with a series of effective and efficient setups. A tracking shot followed the action through the trees. The movement of the camera mirrored the movement of the action. Our DP was named Vladamir and he was first rate. I knew the first time I saw a camera rehearsal on the monitor that Yaramir, our cameraman, was something special. With these three covering the action, I knew we were going to get what we needed on film. We had "overs" on sticks, which means a camera on a tripod shooting over the shoulder of one actor for coverage of his partner's face. We also did "hand-helds" for added movement and intensity and I even reached my arm and sword around both camera and operator to protect them while he shot closeups of Rena through our flashing blades.

They brought in two horse doubles for my chestnut and Rena's black. These were rearing horses ridden by expert doubles. The professionals shot a double rear with the horses facing off and Rena and I each got to sit our mounts for our own closeup coverage. They gave us the added safety of a curb chain to try to make sure the horse didn't go over backwards but it was still very exciting.

At right - Anthony with his riding double at the forest location. Some things, like rearing horses, should be left to the experts.

My costume was a subdued earth tones version of Robin Hood's Merry Men. It had a leather hood that my double wore up to hide his features for the rear and the long shots that Danny had planned to cover while I was doing dialogue the next day. This meant that I had to ride into the scene with speed winding my way through the close set trees, pull my hood back, turn the horse to a second mark, then dismount. Not as challenging as a night ride charging through the mountain trails of Malibu with my Aussie mate Colin. This was the moment that my wardrobe chose to try and do me in. I'd gone through an entire fight and dialogue sequence and the costume was just fine. It didn't restrict my movement and I let my guard down. When Danny told me the hood had to be up, we pinned the hood to hold it in place and I took my position.

My horse was very sensitive and quite spirited. Now horses who have worked on a set learn camera dialogue. When they hear "rolling" and "speed", their muscles tense and bunch and the fuse on the dynamite is lit. They know that "action" is their cue to go and most horses come off their marks like a racehorse exploding out of the gate at Santa Anita Racetrack. In Spain, directors were instructed to whisper their instructions in a calm voice and to substitute the names of fruit for "action." Many was the time a horse sequence would begin with a quiet call of "banana" from the director.

At left - Remember the statement, "your wardrobe will always try to kill you?" This one was no exception.

But back to the Czech Republic. On "action" my horse lept forward and I started to guide him through the close set trees on the very narrow path towards camera that we had selected. About half way to my mark, the explosive pulsations of the horse caused the heavy leather hood to drop in front of my eyes blinding me to the trees rushing up to greet us. Naturally I reached up to clear my vision and it was back to first positions. Suffice it to say that we tried everything to keep the hood where it needed to be. I remembered stories that Harrison Ford had stapled Indiana Jone's chapeau to his skull. Five takes later we had sewn the hood to my shoulders so that the hood was squashed into my head. We finally got our shot and I had survived another wardrobe death conspiracy.

That evening Milan's girlfriend Ule was visiting. They invited me out to dinner and we met Petr Drozda at a local watering hole. Upstairs was the poolhall, downstairs the steak house, bar and bowling alley. Now I'd learned "dobrey den", "skosha" and "pomalu," which mean "good morning", "rehearsal" and "slowly," respectively. Milan speaks almost no English and Petr's is only slightly better. The Spanish I'd learned in Almeria was no help and my long unused high school French was nearly useless. This was particularly frustrating because every time I wanted to make myself understood to the crew or the stunt team on the set the necessary phrases were right on the tip of my tongue, in Spanish. Sigh.

Fortunately, both men spoke German. Ule spoke excellent English and German and carried a Czech/German dictionary for when she got in over her head with Milan and Petr's Czech. Between my poor French, poorer German and Ule's abilities as a translator, we all understood each other enough to laugh, a lot. It was a real tower of babble, United Nations dinner conversation but it worked. I found that the excellent Budweiser beer, named after the local town, helped my pronuciation of Czech phrases considerably.

Finally a spot opened up on the twin bowling lanes jammed against the wall behind the bar. Now, I used to bowl ten pin with my father, and when I first moved to Canada, I tried my hand at five pin with its three palm-sized spheres and wider pin placement. This was a game I'd only heard about in Rip Van Winkle. Yep, it was nine pin made even more surreal by the fact that the pins were suspended from strings like marionettes. So after your first ball, the automatic pin setter would yank all the pins from the floor in a crazy cartoon dance and magically replace only the ones you still had to hit. There were no spots on the floor with which to line up, and to be certain you didn't cross the foul line, a chain hung suspended just below knee level, ready to take you out if you tried any funny business. I think the chain also encouraged rolling the balls under the chain instead of pitching them down the alley.

My first thought when I hefted the heavy honeydew melon-sized ball was: "where's the holes?" The balls are just a little too large to control effectively but we all did our best amidst a great deal of laughter. Petr would put his back to the wall, the ball almost disappearing inside his big hand, line up his shot, wink at me and proclaim confidently, "System!" It sounded like Boris Baddinov was about to make beeg trouble for moose and squirrel. He then proceeded to throw his ball into the gutter. Milan fared somewhat better and bowled some impressive strikes. Like perfect hosts, they let me win, by one pin. It was a wonderful evening and language proved no impediment at all. "System" also became our code word on the set for any good plan gone awry.