Biagio is off editing our documentary Dying to do Letterman, and has entrusted me with the reigns to this week’s Scream Queens behind-the-scenes post.
Allow me to channel my inner-Biagio…
THE CAMPY SIDE OF HORROR
When we start developing a season of Scream Queens, we know there will be an episode that deals with the campy side of horror. Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves…it’s all too much fun NOT to include.
Plus, the chance to make a fake movie trailer for a campy movie in just one day is one exhilarating challenge. It gets everyone, from the cast to the crew excited. It’s the day that’s the most work, yet the most rewarding.
ZOMBIES & SQUIBS
For this week’s skills test we knew we wanted zombies rising from the dead. Surprisingly (or not) it’s very hard to get a cemetery to allow you to dig a grave and shoot there … something about messing with the soil (or waking the dead.) Plus, figuring out a way to bury our cast alive without killing them left us with limited options.
So we decided to go with above ground graves, a la the New Orleans French Quarter (those are scary!) and our fabulous art department went to town.
To add another wrinkle to the challenge for the girls, we introduced squibs. Now, if you’re careful, they don’t hurt you (in a sense that you get seriously injured) but some of girls will tell you they did hurt a bit. Sorry ☺
Anyway, the real worry was that one of the girls would get lost in their performance and, without thinking, put their hand over the squib. That would pretty much blow their hand off. As you can imagine, the risk of them having said hand blown off had eveyone behind the camera on edge, too.
As a fun side note, the squibs get triggered on a certain radio frequency, so there was some last minute panic as we wondered if our walkies, transmitters or any random Downtown LA stuff would set the squibs off with no warning.
Thankfully we were working with an expert who figured it all out.
The day started early in the morning after a torrential downpour, which meant we had to move our location about 300 yards to get it out of an enormous puddle. Fun things we deal with in production, oh and it was COLD!
Doesn’t my husband look cute up there?
The performances were all very different. That’s the hard part with camp, the line between good and overacting is very thin.
Sarah’s performance had us all laughing, but not in the good way, although A+ for effort.
Gabby got tripped up with all the technical stuff, and while the other girls were finding their footing in camp, Tai delivered the only believable hungry zombie. Congrats!
At the end of the challenge art department informed us they had a back-up lid in case something went wrong. So Biagio and I decided to give our crew the chance to bury us alive. They seemed pretty eager to do it! Thank God, Biagio saved the day and got us out.
HOMA CLASS – COMEDY
You know how they say “dying is easy, comedy is hard?” No kidding. In “TV time” on the show the class is edited down to about 5 minutes, in real life these girls tried to get laughs for close to 3 hours.
We were lucky to have Joe Wengert from the Upright Citizens Brigade teach the girls some specific improv skills. And even John Homa felt he learned a trick or two to add to his repertoire.
Upright Citizens Brigade member Joe Wengert tickles John Homa’s funny bone.
In the end, we applaud the hard work put in by our girls. Luckily for all of this, however, this is Scream Queens, not Queens of Comedy.
As long as they learned enough to put to use in …
VAMPIRE OUTLAWS
This is one of the moments we all live for each season. We get to make a trailer!!! Cool!
Then the other shoe drops … we only have one day to do it!!!
Seriously, it’s the most fun we have and the hardest work we do, but when everyone gives 150% all day, and the next morning you can show them a finished trailer, it just makes every ache worth it.
I WANT TO SUCK YOUR BLOOD
So not sure if you are aware, but apparently there is this huge vampire craze going right now. Seriously! So we wanted to jump on the bandwagon … (also last season our girls LOVED playing vampires, so after 4 grueling weeks in the house, we wanted to give them something they could really sink their teeth in, haha)
We also love westerns (who doesn’t?) and when our location manager Laura dangled the Universal Studios backlot in from of us, we almost squealed. Actually we did squeal. It wasn’t hard to get the network on board after that.
So here we are, early in the a.m. at Universal’s backlot, on the Western set. We didn’t think the nicely paved cement road would do it, so we spent the first hour of prep throwing hay everywhere. It looked awesome, although at the end of the night, when we had to clean it all up, we did hear a some minor cursing :-)
THE TRAM
All day, the Universal Studios Backlot Tram Tour (which hit a detour because of our shoot) would pass by at the edges of our set and announce, “To your right, an actual shoot for TV’s Scream Queens!” Not only cool for the girls and the crew (who cheered!) but particularly awesome for Biagio. His first job in L.A. was that tram tour guide at Univeral. Nice full circle moment.
Biagio tries hard to remember his tour guide schtick
ONCE IN A LIFETIME
The girls were thrilled. They understood how big this was. Many working actors never get the opportunity to work on the Universal Backlot.
Add to that fancy western clothes (vintage) with awesome fangs (custom designed) and they didn’t care how cold it was. And cold it was. Those of us behind the cameras had on multiple layers of clothes (about 10 layers on top, 3 at the bottom) and we were still freezing. Speaking of cold, here’s a little movie magic trick for you:
Our girls had big parkas and heaters between takes, but while on camera, they had to tough it out for their craft. It seemed the only place nearby where we could get back to normal body temperature was in a bathroom building a couple of hundred feet away, so that’s where we would sneak off to when we had a second.
RUN AND GUN
The shoot went great. We hit most shots if not all. The girls were troopers. Even Sarah, poor girl couldn’t help but swallow cold water each time she got dunked. But she held in as long as she could.
There was a moment where she thought she might need to go to a doctor, and knowing that would take her out of shooting for the rest of the day, she decided to stay and finish the trailer (she was also medically fine, although I think more than one got a cold, no pain no gain.)
It’s a testament to our awesome crew that we were able to pull off the day. First of all, Adam Sampson, our DP, ran around like a madman with the RED camera.
Flip cam footage of Adam Sampsom running the red as Tim Sullivan directs.
Our most awesome prop master Elvis Strange jury-rigged an air compressor to mimic a garlic detonation.
Our fantastic challenge supervisor, Matt Laesch, got us the greatest group of extras, him included.
Our amazing AD team got us done on time and on budget. And we personally, with the art department, tried to get tumbleweed to blow through the shot. Not as easy as it sounds, even the blower couldn’t get it done, so we ended up throwing it.
In the end, Caleb Emerson, Lead Assistant Editor, was on set capturing and organizing all the footage. And overnight, our edit team, led by Biagio himself, cut together the trailer we showed to the girls and the crew.
Here’s the original cut, shot and edited in just 22 hours. Still a little rough around the edges (you can hear Tim Sullivan yell “action” at one point if you listen carefully) but for a campy Vampire Western, we were pretty happy with the results:
AND THEN THERE WERE FIVE…
This was one of the hardest eliminations as we didn’t really feel like anyone deserved to go home, but someone had to leave. Sarah ended up being our 5th victim.
Sarah is a sweetheart and she had been struggling with some serious homesickness. Her beautiful daughter was waiting for her and she couldn’t have been more excited to be reunited with her.
While the other girls seemed intent on dealing with unfinished business on the show, Sarah seemed content with all she had accomplished and experienced. And don’t forget, as the winner of last week’s skills test, she’s also in a FANGORIA spread, on newsstands now. We’ll be seeing Sarah in the future, guaranteed!
We’ve got some more flip cam footage from the Universal Day coming, so be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to catch all of the behind-the-scenes action!