Teleidoscope

Tue, Sep 04, 2007

More Robin

Posted at 10:01 pm MDT to Media

One of the speakers on the commentary tracks mentioned (during a scene of heavy drinking and the aftermath) that the cast and crew were very well rehearsed for such a scene. "Banned from every pub in Bristol".

About twelve or fifteen years ago there was a very small convention in Denver for fans of British SF and Fantasy television. It was held in January or February. I don't remember the name of the convention now, and it was never repeated (there were rumors of financial irregularities on the part of the organizer). The two special guests were Danny John-Jules ('Cat' on Red Dwarf) and Marc Ryan, who played the Saracen Nasir on Robin of Sherwood. (The character who was ripped off for the Morgan Freeman character in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves).

Both actors were wonderful speakers, especially when they were on stage at the same time. Apparently almost all British performers of their generation spent time (on their way up) working in the music halls on the various piers (Brighton and so on that were holiday destinations. So they had a great deal of experience in common. And very good timing.

I remember Marc Ryan mentioning the after-hours activities of the Robin of Sherwood cast and crew, though I don't remember many details after all this time. He did have an advantage of playing a very taciturn character (he had exactly one line in the first 6 episodes) so he didn't need to worry about learning (or forgetting) his lines.

One thing I remember that Marc Ryan said is that the reason Michael Praed's eyes always looked a bit odd was that he could not wear contact lenses, and his vision was very poor without his glasses. It didn't stop him from running around in the woods, doing many of his own stunts and doing sword fights and such, but apparently it occasionally made things ... interesting. I'm not sure which would be scarier: seeing what I was doing, or not being able to see it.

And I'm quite sure I wouldn't want to be a stunt man having a sword or quarterstaff fight with someone who can't really see what he is doing. Or what I'm doing.

One thing that has been mentioned in the commentary tracks and that really shows up now that I know to look for it: the extras in the crowd scenes aren't just people in costume standing around. The costumers and Assistant Directors provided names and character descriptions with all of the costumes, so the actors knew who they were and who their relatives were and what they did for a living and a little of their life history. So the people in the backgrounds of scenes are going about their lives and doing little meaningful things and reacting to each other, not just standing around. People buy and sell things in the markets and gossip with specific other people. There are communities on screen, not just bodies.

They also managed to have a lot of children on camera in non-speaking parts by encouraging the cast and crew to bring their kids to the sets and putting them into costume when an appropriate scene was being shot. This made the village demographics less peculiar.

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