Matt Vancil Q&A


Well folks, here we go, the first in a number of blog posts that you can expect between now and the beginning of March that will answer some questions from all of you, as well as looking at some of the pre-production process.

We got a number of thoughtful responses to my blog post asking what we should cover in terms of Behind the Scenes stuff on this blog. I have a file full of questions, but the first person I was able to sit down with and give some of those questions to was the Vancil himself!


BEAU: Let’s check in regarding the orcish dictionary first. Seth Davis asked how things were coming, and what words were most fun or challenging.

MATT: We’re at 850 words now, and I had approximately 200 words after JQ Season One. That does mean that some people still haven’t gotten me their words!

A complete answer the fun/challenging question will be in the foreword of the Orcish/English Dictionary, which we will release in a non-limited edition (date TBD, likely 2012), because there’s been so much interest in it.

Right away I knew the dictionary project was going to be a memorable experience when the first word I coined was “chin”, to be named after Bruce Campbell. The word is bruskambul in the Orcish.

The project has been fun and the expanding language has forced me to create more grammar rules.

BEAU: Which you love?

MATT: True.

BEAU: What languages did you borrow from for Orcish?

MATT: I borrowed from Latin and German for grammar and syntax. Mainly Latin for declension patterns (Editors Note, Via Wiki: Declension is inflection to indicate number, that is singular and plural, etc, or gender) and German for verb behavior and some sentence structure.

BEAU: Why?

MATT: They were the languages I studied, so sheer practicality.

BEAU: Do you have plans to create another language or three?

MATT: Plans to, yes, though I don’t know which would be next. Elvish is pretty well-established (Tolkien, etc). An arcane language would be fun, and I’d like to do a tonal language. So I’d get to broaden the scope of the studies a bit there. A Dwarfish tongue would be fun, too. Thing is, the need for Orcish was readily apparent, not so for any other language.

BEAU: Nick Kent asked how we got Bob Sapp on board. Would you be the right person to ask about that?

MATT: It’s not that exciting, I knew a guy who knew a guy. Our friends Craig Bell and Dave Heywood at Burning Sky Media are friends of Bob. Ben and I met with them about a different project, they asked us about JQ, we told them about the project, and Craig said, “You know who might be interested in this? Bob.” And Dave agreed. When Bob was clarified as Bob Sapp, we
said "Yes please.” We met with Bob, pitched him the role, he liked it and came aboard, and so I wrote Karn.

BEAU: So did Karn exist before Bob?

MATT: Yes, he was in the world in later seasons, I just moved him into an earlier storyline.

BEAU: Changes like that lead into another question, from Alan Prichard. He wanted to know how characters are developed, since clearly what happens with them or what you do to them is fluid.

MATT: I start with a brainstorm of plotlines, ideas on note cards, character traits, loose lines of dialogue, wouldn’t it be funny ifs, and I narrow things down from there. Characters go through changes between drafts, things are cut or streamlined out. Sometimes you can see the characters start to develop based on vacuums in the narrative, growing to fill gaps.

Rilk, played by Jesse Lee Keeter, is a good example of that, he just started out as “Smart Orc”. He was simply going to be the thinker among them, but that led to him getting better lines and more to do, because that’s how he would have responded in the moment. Along the way, he evolved into a main character, with a name and an arc and everything.

Nathan Rice’s Roderick, the gargoyle, started out as nothing more than a character called Lying Gargoyle to counterpart the Truthful Gargoyle. But he grew to fill a role we needed, that of a foil to Kevin Pittman’s Glorion, as well. Both of these are also examples of how an actor’s choices can change a character as well. The hand off of a role to an actor is my favorite part of the process.

BEAU: Really?

MATT: That’s all about trust. Their performance will never be exactly what you pictured in your head. The actors you cast will have a different view of the character than you do. As a writer or director you often think of the piece as a whole, or the narrative as a gestalt entity. The actor can focus entirely on the reality of the character they are playing, and how their character will react in a given situation.

Sometimes you have to fight the knee-jerk “this is wrong” instinct that is limited by your original ideas, and watch what plays out. You can always adjust afterward, or do different takes, but I always want to see where the actor is going first, and it’s often a wonderful surprise.

I ascribe to the Teddy Roosevelt method of administration, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Hire competent people and stay the hell out of their way.”

BEAU: Did one character stay the same more than others?

MATT: I guess you could say Nara “stayed the same” more than the others, in that she started more guarded and tightly wound and it’s going to take her a while to loosen up.

JourneyQuest was originally more than 20 episodes, and she had a very gradual arc that paid off in the end. When JQ was cut down for various reasons before we started shooting, pretty much all of her arc got delayed. I was afraid that her rigidity and coldness would make her unlikeable when we’re really just seeing her from one dimension so far.

It really speaks to Anne Kennedy’s craft as to how well she played the character, when there was so little variation on the page. She doesn’t come across as one-note or underdeveloped, and much of that comes from the liberating scene in S01E07 when she’s drugged, and the interior Nara, her stream of consciousness comes pouring out. It would have been easy to play the scene clownish and farcical, but Anne kept it grounded and funny.

BEAU: Can you talk about how much the character changes after the hand off?

MATT: It’s hard to say, because honestly, I don’t remember how I saw them before, because that doesn’t matter. What matters is the reality of who the characters are now.

Tony Becerra Q&A


Rarely seen in public, the shadowy figure known as Tony Becerra worked on JourneyQuest Season One in addition to having worked with Ben Dobyns on a number of projects. As I understand it, he is a master of what he does, organizing, planning, scheduling, monitoring, and supervising. We were lucky enough that he took a few minutes out of his near-frantic JQ Season Two prep to answer some questions from Beau and our fans.


Beau: Tony, what is your exact title on JQ?

Tony: I am 1st AD on JQ.

Beau: Tell me what you did today that was your job as 1st AD.

Tony: Currently we're in pre-production for JourneyQuest Season 2, so today my job entailed working out the Fight Training schedule for some of our actors, working on budget issues with my Producing team, resolving a few standing issues with the Screen Actor’s Guild, threatening our behind the scenes team, working on flights with our Production Coordinator Vanessa Eng, and having 3 other chat windows open while talking to you. I'm texting people confirmation on things while discussing base camp needs with my Producer and 2nd AD Kat Ogden. I’m also concurrently working on 4 other projects in various stages of production, and spent 5 hours tech scouting on another project.

Beau: Suffice to say you're busy. Can you give me the same example for what a day on set will be like for you?

Tony: Calm. Everyone I need to talk to, discuss and strangle, will be within arms length. On set is always easier than pre-production. Pre-production is about paperwork, anticipation, and preparation, which I never care for. When I'm on set, my day is mainly watching everything we've spent months planning for, going off according to plan. If we've done our job right in pre-production, then we don’t do as much work on set, just time things out so they go according to plan.

My day is spent, well, a little differently than on features or commercials. This is a grass roots effort, so the beginning of the day we're setting up basecamp, saying good morning to each other, checking in. Once we get things running, myself, the Director and the Director of Photography head to set and start talking through the scenes for the day.

With this series, we've mostly had the good fortune of working with the troupe from Dead Gentlemen, our constant actors, who know so much about each other’s performance, that our rehearsals are often speedy, and already planned out in advance, so that on set the actors get last notes, fly into make up, and show back up on set shortly. And, with the high page counts (number of pages filmed per day) we really appreciate that extra effort that all our actors bring with them each day.

By lunch the producers and myself go over the next day’s call sheet, plan and make additional calls if anythings is needed or start on tomorrows to get a jump on things, and the crew returns to set and knocks out the rest of our day.

Beau: Awesome, thanks. Leslie asked about weather concerns. She noted that the weather looked temperate on screen in JQ Season 1, but it's obvious from behind the scenes stuff that was not the case. Why do we film in March, and how does the production overcome poor weather conditions?

Tony: The weather on JQ1 was so random, there was no planning on it. We shoot in WA state which, if you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes and it'll change. We really lucked out in the first parts of the shoot with Kevin Pittman, where we had beautiful sunny days. But we shot inside. And then when Christian had to shoot in his "Meat Henge" costume, it, of course dropped to the 30s and started raining.

We film in March because of availability frankly. It’s before the feature and commercial season, and before we lose cast to their theater runs.

And since the budget is what it is, whatever weather is coming down, that’s what we film in. Rain or shine we really cant stop for much of anything.

Beau: Great. I know I've seen emails flying around about this already, and Nick Kent asked: “What is involved in getting people to a site? How is that coordinated?”

Tony: It takes a lot of people frankly, and one solid plan. As the 1st AD, I make the schedule from the script, and organize it to what makes the most sense, After finding the location, and looking over all the issues or benefits for it (bathrooms, parking, a place for base camp.), we create the callsheet, which is the working document for the day’s work. It contains the call time, shoot location, what we're getting done there, who all is arriving, their times to show, makeup times for the actors. The night before, we contacting everyone on the crew to make sure they get the call sheet, they know where they're going, and they don’t have any further questions. Then it’s just a matter of everyone getting there on time.

Beau: We also had a question about location scouting and so on, how much are you involved in that?

Tony: Well, I'm directly involved. You have to know all the parameters of where you're shooting, because you are the person who everyone goes to for answers. Bathrooms, basecamp, distance to set, best route to set. Is their parking, is their power. These are all things I have to see first hand so we don’t have any issues when it comes time for filming. A location may look perfect, but if it’s not perfect to film at, or doable on the budget we're under, then we need to move on.


Thanks for reading folks. Preproduction is going great guns, so watch for more updates, including video footage from behind the scenes of various aspects of JQ2, coming soon!