Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Episode One: The Magic Eightball Commentary

first episode was really fun to shoot. it was the one where i took the most liberties with the characters... from here on out, largely the Reformers will be speaking words that they wrote themselves in their various debates they had between them.

Some explanation of the episode:

the reformers match up like this: Erasmus modern counterpart is the Anglican, Luther is the Lutheran, and Calvin and Zwingli are UCC.

Zwingli is an iconoclast and that's why he likes the library (unadorned Bauhaus/International style) and takes down the picture of Christ that Erasmus hangs up.

Luther posted the 95 which was very famous. Zwingli had his own list which was 63 aspects of what he thought was the Christian religion. Calvin read all of these, including other works by Erasmus and the Brethren reformers, and encorporated and debated all of their concepts in his Institutes which is a massive work that he constantly worked on. So after Calvin gets the superior parchment and pen (he stole from the Lutheran) he will constantly be working and writing and only looking up to synthesize debates other reformers are having.

I really enjoyed what the actors brought to the script, i wish i had more film training to capture their energy and work, but think this final cut has more pluses and is pretty close to what i had in my mind. Luther's famous "By Satan's Smokey Ass" phrase (that i got the most comments about) was adlibbed by the actor Jim Siburt, who also suggested the ending song by the Super Furry Animals which i love!

Episode Two is coming up next! Stay tuned!

1 comment:

Sally said...

Wow! What a lot of work all of you put into this! It looks like you were having fun though! Makes is so funny that I know you all and understand that in many ways the casting was spot on!