Continued from previous page...
Orpheus ~ Episode 15 with Terrence O'Hara & Jeffrey Bell
Orpheus, written by Mere Smith, picks up as the second-parter to
Release where Angelus, having battled a recently released Faith, has just
bitten her. "This whole big fight was shot in an abandoned bank downtown,"
explains Jeff, regarding the opening teaser. "We wanted to do a very different
fight, something more vertical and so we brought along the scaffolding and had
the fight so it would feel different then what we did in the past." Terrence
(director) admits, "It's probably my favorite just because of the content of
the show and the difficulty, the most challenging." In the opening scene of Act one
Terrence points out Alexis' bad back and although Eliza doesn't weigh very much, the
show-motion shot of him carrying her to the bad was a difficult one but showed
his dedication. "I really also think Rob Kral's score is really effective
in this episode," Jeff points out, "not something you always hear, but you really
feel and I think it sets the whole mood and tone. It really helped to tie in
different time periods together." In the flash back sequences Terrence talks about
the filming on Stage 5 and the bringing to life of Ellis Island. "The fun thing about these scenes was trying to get David as both Angelus and Angel and then setting up the split screens and of course he had to go through full makeup to change."
Moving onto Chicago in the 20's was filmed on the back lot of Universal Studios. "This was a lot of fun just because of all the old cars. There are some occasions you'll see in close-ups cars moving by where the grips are actually pushing them because they were very noisy," Terrence admits. Unfortunately, a flashback of Angel and Faith walking into scenes of the Hyperion during the 50's from the episode Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been from Season three had to be cut due to length. A highlight of this episode was an idea Tim Minear tabled which was to bring Willow [Alyson Hannigan] to be the catalyst for re-ensouling Angel. While Alyson's availability was limited, she was working on Buffy as well as filming American Pie, her two days on the set made it even more enjoyable because she and Alexis were engaged at the time. "It was a lot of fun working with these two together in this scene since they are a couple. You can see how much care that Alexis has for her. It was really quite nice to see and they work well together," Terrence recalls. Terrence points out in the donut shop scene with Angel and Faith that, "The gunman here is actually Eliza's brother Nate."
In Act three when Willow and Cordelia battle spell casting, Jeff jokes about the visual effects, "For all you video game fans we apologize for the big, stupid floaty head. We had really great hopes for it and it just became something you'd see on It's A Small World in Disneyland. Just not quite as scary as we had hoped." Another major accomplishment of the episode was the ultimate Good vs. Evil. "We've been waiting to do this for four years," admits Jeff, "Angel verses Angelus." Terrence explains the Act four opening fight scene in the alley was created by, "A split screen, a camera lock-off and we played back to match shot for shot. He was hitting space." The entire scene took two days and was certainly a dynamic highlight of the season. Terrence explains that in the final shot of Faith and Angel on the terrace, Eliza came to the set with laryngitis in the morning and could not speak. "This scene was supposed to be first up and I begged Kelly Manners to keep it to the end of the day and let her recover, and she did." In the closer, "I think this is a Hallmark of a Joss Whedon show," admits Jeff, "it's all the good-byes and the sentiments without anyone ever getting sentimental."
Home ~ Episode 22 with Tim Minear
As part of another in-joke, Tim Minear (writer/producer/director) explains that he had to find a way to conclude what had happened previously; Angel and the gang had ended world peace by killing Jasmine, and that Lilah was back from the dead to offer them the L.A. branch of W&H. Tim chose the latter to happened off-screen during the commercial and opening sequence so that when the viewer returned the offer had already been made, causing a long moment of silence within the characters and also proving how ridiculously long the opening credits on Angel were. "I watched the clock for 40 or 50 seconds and have each actor just shift uncomfortably for about a minuet. It got pretty hilarious after awhile but I got all the pieces. And Stephanie just kicked it out. So once my name is clear of the screen," Tim laughs, "someone will speak." Tim admits this his episode was close to being ten minutes over which is huge in terms of shooting scripts. Listening to his commentary gives a tremendous insight to the story for the various scenes and additional dialogue that he had to edit out of this final episode of the season. And if there is one person who can carry an entire episode commentary by himself and make it enjoyable for the listener it is certainly Tim Minear. Act two opens with our first introduction to the new W&H offices as Tim explains, "This location I believe is in Thousand Oaks. It's a very large business complex that I think houses many different companies. They were kind enough to let us come in on a working day and bring in our giant film crew and all of our equipment and our actors and we shot it while they were working. It was a great location, had a lot of depth and we did very little dressing for it."
In the opening of Act three, where Lilah and Angel are discussing deals, the scene was actually shot on two separate days, "I didn't give him [David] anything to do in terms of reacting and making a choice so on a day of pick-ups and a day Stephanie wasn't there - showing how great David is - this shot here David is playing to the wall." Tim admits the most terrifying night of his life was the scene of the White Room. "We got this leopard," he recalls, "and in fact, when we put these two shots together that's green-screen - it's a split screen. The endless room is CGI, and the cat is on the same stage that J. is on but they're on at different times and then we put the two cuts together. But it kind of got out of its chain and J. thankfully didn't tell me until the shot was done and they had it back in its chain because I would have run screaming from the room like a girl." In the sporting goods store scene, Tim points out the shot of Cordelia, "My shot of Charisma, she came in for this shot, she'd just given birth and she was great. She came in just to do that for me." In the final scene in the store Tim explains, "Angel comes down with the knife and the prophecy is fulfilled, the father will kill the son. I'm really proud of the last four seasons of the show but I do think it was time to shake up the pyridine a little bit that could continue the novel approach. We also felt that we finally found the metaphor for young adulthood."
FEATURETTES:
Prophecies: Season 4 Overview ~ 39:00 minutes
A variety of cast and crew come together to discuss and recount the events during the course of Season four. Joss, David Fury, Steve and David Boreanaz recap the opening of the season with J. August, Alexis, and Jeff offering where each of their characters are at this point in the series. Wesley locates Angel at the bottom of the sea. "Luckily for both of them he does find him and drags him up, recovers him and brings him back using his own blood which is a sort of beautiful twist in a way," recounts Alexis while Amy explains that Fred and Gunn keeping the organization functioning while Wesley was off looking for Angel. Connor is playing the good dutiful son, when in reality he had sent his father to his death and when Angel returns he sets the score straight. "He confronts his son and tells him to leave the hotel and finds things out for himself," explains David B. Commenting on Fred and Gunn's relationship, Amy says, "We started off pretty strong, going into six months of going out, which I think is long for a Joss Whedon show," Jeff offers that their characters don't kill people, only demons, and so Fred's desire to kill Professor Seidel, who sent her to Pylia, was for Gunn to kill him thinking he would save her. "One thing I love about Joss shows is that there are moral consequences. If you take an action there is a consequence to that action," admits Jeff.
|
"When I saw myself in the full makeup I started to move the same way the body looked,
it's like Schwarzenegger on steroids." ~ Vladimir
|
"Rarely, if ever, do you get away with something. It may take awhile but eventually it will come back and bite you in the ass." Jeff Bell
Vincent recounts Cordelia's return, albeit memory loss, while David B. tells of Angel's concerns, "I think you find him in a place of desperation, trying to kind of hold on to something they had in the past and hopefully spark something of her conscience." Connor starts to learn life on his own now falls under the evil spell of Cordelia. They discover the death place of Darla and the birthplace of Connor - when The Beast arrives which causes all the gang to finally come back together. "Wesley comes back to the fold 100% and we take on The Beast," says J. as Steve adds smiling, "And then they rush over to destroy it, somewhat fool heartedly, and The Beast basically kicks every body's ass single handedly." Alexis also offers, "That was a way to signal to the audience that we're going to another level with this." The riff continues between Angel and Connor while the Apocalypse goes on, on the outside. "The idea was to bring in a beast who was truly epic and apocalyptic," says Joss, which opens the storyline of bringing back Angelus to the mix and the misplacing of Angel's soul. But even the actors forget who there are dealing with some of the time. "Angelus' return to the series was fun for a lot of reasons because it was really great to watch Angel, I'm sorry, ohh, I just called David Angel," laughs J. August, "To watch David relish playing that role."
Watch a clip from the Angel Season four overview with cast and creators
WinMV Hi-speed
WinMV Lo-speed
Then came the return of Faith. Joss states that, "Eliza just brings such incredible intensity and integrity to the screen the moment she's there." Along with Faith also comes the arrival of Sunnydale's favorite witch. "Having Willow on the show is really exciting because there's nobody whose energy is more different than what we do on Angel than Alyson Hannigan," explains Joss. Jeff and Steve explain the arc between Darla and Angel having a child which led to Connor's affair with Cordelia to bring about this ultimate evil upon the world. Gina Torres introduces us to Jasmine, the omnipotent Goddess who brings her own evil onto Los Angeles. As the gang comes back to reality, Connor and Cordelia are left behind and Angel enters into a Hell dimension in order to defeat Jasmine. "The interesting flip on that is that the apocalypse was actually world peace," explains Fury. "It puts them in a grey area which, hello enter Lilah Morgan again, who offers them the keys to W&H." Offering the gang with every available world access to evil at their fingertips to fight the demons from the inside sets them up for their next adventure. "We've got them in the belly of the beast at W&H," concludes Joss, "the question really is can they get through that without getting corrupted themselves."
Fatal Beauty and the Beast ~ 6:00 minutes
Vladimir offers his own insight into
the fun of being The Beast
|
Vladimir Kulich, The Beast himself, introduces the viewer to the character and its creation along with Gina Torres who presents her alter ego, Jasmine. "This kind of a villain, because it was a theatrical thing, is easy because it was fun," admits Vlad, "It's campy, to me this was a joy to do."
A joy that took three and a half hours in makeup, for the face alone, and another 45-minutes for the suit and the body makeup. Gina offers the counter element to ultimate evil by being beautiful and offering world peace to the mix yet being more evil than evil itself. "When Jeff Bell first spoke to me about this character," Gina remembers, "he said, 'We had in mind what we wanted this person to be and we just thought, Gina.' And to put me in this kind of role where I don't follow any rules; this strong, woman of color, 'And by the way, when you turn evil, we're thinking of you throwing cars, how's that?'" Gina laughs. From Beast to Beauty, evil is in truly the eye of the beholder!
Watch the Angel cast discusses The Beast character
WinMV Hi-speed
WinMV Lo-speed
Unplugged: Season 4 Outtakes ~ 3:00 minutes
Outtakes are probably the most anticipated bonus that are offered in DVD sets and, as usual, are far too short. The viewer does get a good sampling though of all the on-set antics often discussed at conventions. We see a nice spattering of David's hilarious dancing, the extended scene of Wesley from Spin the Bottle as well as the 'shiny car demons' scene where everyone's continual laughter is exposed. David flubbing his lines is captured as is Amy 'loosing it' to the floor, literally. Skipping, yes there is skipping. But the most outstanding outtake award must go to the scene where Angel is being force-fed a cup-o-blood. Seems it went down the wrong pipe and while David tried not to laugh and cough up blood at the same time, although very gross, it is also very funny. Another 'miss' were the overage scene's from Tim Minear's Orpheus episode, especially the Hyperion flashback.
Last Looks: The Hyperion Hotel ~ 5:30 minutes
Stuart Blatt gives a guided tour
of Angel's Hyperion Hotel
|
Stuart Blass, production designer, gives a wonderful overview tour of the Hyperion hotel set. "It's pretty great to be involved with a project that so many people have embraced, not just for the story but for the look of. It was really important from the get go for Joss and David Greenwalt that this show had a very real feel to it." In a section-by-section walkthrough by Stuart we learn the back story from Angel's past with the hotel from the 1950's interiors which were all shot on Stage 7 to the main lobby, exterior garden, to Angel's apartment on the second floor. This was the honeymoon suite which was also, during the course of the season, Cordelia's room as well as Fred's room. "Here we have the best kept secret of rooms in the hotel, this is Jasmine's suite. Jasmine lives in the mother of all suites," explains Stuart. "This brings us to Angel's hotel basement. The basement of the hotel has gone through many changes, it's been on three different stages, it's been through three different design processes, always retained the same kind of feel and look of the high brick walls, the upper windows." Along with the upper loft of Connor's apartment which was also created in the basement. "The hotel set was beautiful and fun to use," closes Joss. One of many Angel sets that will muchly be missed.
Malice in Wonderland: Wolfram & Hart ~ 8:00 minutes
Always a big player in evil we come to what will be the catalyst for the remainder of Angel's run, "Wolfram & Hart, from the very start my thought was, 'Don't give him a nemesis, give him a group of nemeses,'" explains Joss, "This is an important thing for a hero story, that the bad guys are legion and the hero is few." Fury explains the differences between the big city of Los Angeles vs. small town Sunnydale, "The evil's more insidious; it puts on fancy clothes and talks in big words." Steve DeKnight and Stephanie recount Lilah involvement. "I'm the only female W&H lawyer, all the men kept dying which is like genius," Stephanie laughs, "I'm really not bad I'm just written that way." We visit the various players, the moral grey areas for the characters, humanizing their characters, and the relationship between Wesley and Lilah which Alexis comments on. Jeff talks about telling Stephanie that Lilah was going to die. "But that doesn't mean that you're gone because this is a Joss show and so since she's been dead we've had her back," offers Jeff. "Having lost the battle and not necessary the war is where W&H is at," says Stephanie, "it could still have the possibility of challenging the good guys with a little bit of bad."
Angel and the Apocalypse ~ 7:00 minutes
Mike Gaspar (special effects coordinator) talks about how busy Season four was for Angel in the effects department, besides demons and gags and invisible people. Vern Gillum, director of Apocalypse Now-ish recalls, "There were a lot of creature shows on Angel and they were trying to separate this one out." Kelly A. Manners (producer) talks about the fight on the rooftop. "It was probably the biggest thing we'd done at the time," admits Jeff Bell. The Beast, being a creature from the center of the Earth, and all the Apocalyptic warnings with birds smashing into windows and the flood of rats, "It was kind of the best of Hitchcock," admits Vern. The stunts in the fight sequence are explained by, a not-seen-enough, Mike Massa (stunt coordinator), "He threw me through a ratchet 45-feet off the roof, air-ram through a pillar, we threw Wesley on a wire up onto a hard deck, we had Gunn on a wire doing gainers to the edge of the roof. Just destructive, brutal, brutal, big knock-out, drag-out stuff," says Mike with a smile. Digitally, Zoic Studios, who does the Angel visual effects, can come up with just about anything Joss can imagine, 'How about a rain of fire, can we do that?' Sure! One element Joss stated early on and wanted to hold throughout the season was a feel for the Operatic. "This was a sweeping, operatic year for us and I think we certainly delivered on that!" states Steve.
Watch David Boreanaz discuss Angel
WinMV Hi-speed
WinMV Lo-speed
Written by CoA Staff Writer, Kristy Bratton
If you have any comments for CityofAngel.com regarding this Review feature, we would love to hear from you. Just email us at: comments@CityofAngel.com
