Zombie Orpheus Entertainment Wiki:WikiProject Gamers

The purpose of this page (as of right now) is to collect notes from the audio commentaries of the various DG disc releases that can then be incorporated into the corresponding wiki pages.

The Gamers

Legend:
- P: Production (Matt Vancil, Ben Dobyns)
- C: Cast
- G: Gamer's Perspective
Chapters:
- 01: Opening Credits
- 02: The Game Room (Paula chewing on pen)
- 03: The Westhaven Inn (heroes looking at note)
- 04: A Ghostly Vision (heroes venturing forth from Westhaven, post inn)
- 05: An Accidental Death (heroes venturing through wood, post camp fire)
- 06: The Bandit King (heroes venturing through field, post river)
- 07: Berserker Rage (Mark arrives)
- 08: A New Friend (heroes walk over tree trunk)
- 09: Into the Dungeons (GM reads narration, post detect evil)
- 10: The Shadow (players relax, post trap)
- 11: The Game Room II (Rogar pulls open metal door)
- 12: End Credits (end credits)

Misc

wanted to make game in the film like D&D without being D&D [P1]
- mainly for copyright issues [P1]
at one point, DG considered to make ~ "like episode 15" in a continuing series [P1]
- hence, the viewer would be dropped right in the middle with ~ [P1]
- during that, one floor above an entire room was taken up by several computers, networked together, on which the editors of DH2 were in the final crunch to create the first edit of that picture [P2]
  - first premiere DH2: February 8th, 2001 [P2]
    - after that, the film was recut [P2]
Phil M Price was the main sound engineer for DH2 [P2]
- got very little sleep [P2]
most of the people who worked on the movie are gamers of some sort [P2]
Matt mostly likes to run campaigns [P2]
- had a lot of fun with the argument scenes (in which players are trying to one-up the GM and try to take control of the story) [P2]

Scripting

writer: Matt Vancil

Pre-Production

director: Matt Vancil

Casting

Leon Hunt was cast as Hunk [P3]

Production Design

Phil Woodard made the ballista for the film [P3]
- also made torches together with Steve (Payne?) and J. J. (?) [P3]
- was trying to make the ballista shoot [P3]
  - Vancil told him that it didn't have to shoot and only look good [P3]

Costume / Make-Up

Leon Hunt lent the most costumes and armour [P3]
Rogar's costume displays the crest of the House Locustwood in the Barony of Blathenor in the Kingdom of An-Tir [P3]
- part of SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), an organisation for re-enactment of pre-17th-century Europe

02 The Game Room

for copyright reasons the books were wrapped in paper [P2]
- a friend of Matt Vancil (Steve) had done that with his books in order to protect the cover [P2]
folders contained actual notes [P2]
- from a roleplaying game that Matt made for his gaming group [P2]

03 The Westhaven Inn

Hunk's armour provided by Leon Hunt [P3]
- made it himself [P3]

Filming

filmed from January to October 2001 [P2]
only 8-10 days of actual shooting [P2]
all were in school and working, so it was hard to get people organized [P2]
- creating costumes, location scouting, getting permits also delayed production [P2]
some shooting days were two to three months apart [P2]
all the stuff at the University (except for the final scene) was shot in January 2001 [P2]
- Hinderlie Hall, Pacific Lutheran University [P2]
  - many of DG (although not Matt Vancil) at one time were residents there [P2]

02 The Game Room

beginning scene one of the first shot scenes [P2]
death of Rogar's blood brother:
- scene was shot in far western Washington between Aberdeen and Ocean Shores [P2]
- to get to the location they had to park off a highway, off a clear cut (?) [P2]
- only a couple hundred yarts to get to the location [P2]
- figured, they could walk there [P2]
- but the forest was rotten [P2]
  - they would push on a tree 4-5 inches in diameter and it would crack and fall over [P2]
  - called it the Gram Cracker Woods [P2]
  - you'd put your foot down and crunch through two or three logs [P2]
  - and they also had to carry their equipment [P2]
death of Nimble's sister:
- downtown Tacoma by the old town hall [P3]
- didn't have a permit [P2]
- pulled up in about five or six cars [P2]
- ran down the steps in costume [P3]
- after shot was completed ran back to the cars and drove away before police showed up [P3]
- whole operation took less than 4 minutes [P3]
- set up angle so it didn't show anachronisms (e.g. street lamps) [P3]

03 Westhaven Inn

room in inn
- location: Fort Nisqually (Port Defiance Park, Tacoma) [P3]
- had to pay to shoot there [P3]
- up in one of the towers [P3]
  - wanted to make it look like one of the rooms of an inn [P3]
- reason, why they were allowed to film there, was that people had filmed there before (e.g. for the History Channel, The Learning Channel) [P3]
commons of inn
- location: Canterbury Ale & Eats (Capitol Hill, Seattle) [P3]
  - Medieval theme restaurant [P3]
- window looked out on the street (with various anachronisms on it) [P3]
  - hence, pinned up some sheets behind the window to hide this from sight [P3]
- table has no legs [P3]
  - Matt brought a table cloth to the shoot to hide that [P3]
- the bar in the film isn't an actual bar [P3]
  - stagged banana boxes (in which they brough their props in) and threw a blanket over it
- bar patron is sitting on another of the tables [P3]
- his legs are thrown over to the side [P3]
  - very uncomfortable position [P3]
- all of the things Nimble is stealing are laying on the table he is sitting on [P3]
- bar patron: Steve Payne
  - also pyro technician of the film
- Rogar is being played by Matt Jay (instead of Matt Shimkus) in this scene [P3]
  - Matt was on set, but had an emergency and had to go home [P3]
  - Jay is the same size as Shimkus and hence could act as body double [P3]
  - framed the shots so that Rogar is hidden most of the time [P3]
  - luckily, Rogar doesn't have any lines and is laying on the table for all of the scene [P3]
- according to the script, Mark was supposed to be in the scene as well [P3]
  - but Chris Duppenthaler also couldn't make it [P3]
  - Matt thinks scene works better without him [P3]
- Steve blew 8 takes in a row, because he was laughing [P3]
  - one of those was Matt's fault [P3]
- Vancil wasn't supposed to be in the film [P3]
  - part that he wanted to play was the one of the bar patron [P3]
  - did a couple of takes [P3]
    - one was straight, but they liked the one with the Norwegian accent more and hence put it in the final cut [P3]
  - Leon Hunt's back was hurt at the time, so he couldn't play the role [P3]
  - tried to put Steve (Wolbrecht or Payne?) in the armour [P3]
    - didn't fit him [P3]
  - Vancil was the only one with the physique to wear it [P3]
- they didn't know if they would be able to get a ballista [P3]
  - so they recorded the lines at the gaming table also with "catapult" instead of ballista, because they thought it might be easier to get one of those [P3]
- no white table cloth after Hunk splattered [P4]
  - instead black plastic back in order to keep the table clean of the tomato sauce [P4]
  - used chunky spaghetti sauce for the spladder effect [P4]

Cinematography

Post-Production

opening credits

opening graphics done by Shawn Mullan [P1]
- created character potraits from still shots of the film [P1]
GLE: Guile (common sense, ingenuity) [P1]
music was timed for the opening credits [P1]
- main themes are introduced here [P1]

Editing

Score

credited composers: Ben Dobyns, Michael Bottorff
some of the music written by Steve Wolbrecht [P1]
- then started working of DH2 and was too busy to continue his duty on ~ [P1]
- hence, Ben and Michael took over [P1]

Sound Design

voice work for the stabbing scene was recorded a year after shooting [P3]
a lot of dialogue was recorded for the film in post-production [P3]
- none of the actors recorded at the same time [P3]
- but actors were able to get into their characters enough to make it feel like they were interacting [P3]

Visual Effects

Chapter 4

Cast

Commentors: Nathan Rice, Emily Olson, Matt Shimkus, Phil M Price, Evan Shimono

A Gamer's Perspective

Commentors: Monte Cook, Nathan Rice