Well folks, here we go, the first in a number of blog posts that you can expect between now and the beginning of March that will answer some questions from all of you, as well as looking at some of the pre-production process.

We got a number of thoughtful responses to my blog post asking what we should cover in terms of Behind the Scenes stuff on this blog. I have a file full of questions, but the first person I was able to sit down with and give some of those questions to was the Vancil himself!

BEAU: Let’s check in regarding the orcish dictionary first. Seth Davis asked how things were coming, and what words were most fun or challenging.

MATT: We’re at 850 words now, and I had approximately 200 words after JQ Season One. That does mean that some people still haven’t gotten me their words!

A complete answer the fun/challenging question will be in the foreword of the Orcish/English Dictionary, which we will release in a non-limited edition (date TBD, likely 2012), because there’s been so much interest in it.

Right away I knew the dictionary project was going to be a memorable experience when the first word I coined was “chin”, to be named after Bruce Campbell. The word is bruskambul in the Orcish.

The project has been fun and the expanding language has forced me to create more grammar rules.

BEAU: Which you love?

MATT: True.

BEAU: What languages did you borrow from for Orcish?

MATT: I borrowed from Latin and German for grammar and syntax. Mainly Latin for declension patterns (Editors Note, Via Wiki: Declension is inflection to indicate number, that is singular and plural, etc, or gender) and German for verb behavior and some sentence structure.

BEAU: Why?

MATT: They were the languages I studied, so sheer practicality.

BEAU: Do you have plans to create another language or three?

MATT: Plans to, yes, though I don’t know which would be next. Elvish is pretty well-established (Tolkien, etc). An arcane language would be fun, and I’d like to do a tonal language. So I’d get to broaden the scope of the studies a bit there. A Dwarfish tongue would be fun, too. Thing is, the need for Orcish was readily apparent, not so for any other language.

BEAU: Nick Kent asked how we got Bob Sapp on board. Would you be the right person to ask about that?

MATT: It’s not that exciting, I knew a guy who knew a guy. Our friends Craig Bell and Dave Heywood at Burning Sky Media are friends of Bob. Ben and I met with them about a different project, they asked us about JQ, we told them about the project, and Craig said, “You know who might be interested in this? Bob.” And Dave agreed.  When Bob was clarified as Bob Sapp, we
said "Yes please.” We met with Bob, pitched him the role, he liked it and came aboard, and so I wrote Karn.

BEAU: So did Karn exist before Bob?

MATT: Yes, he was in the world in later seasons, I just moved him into an earlier storyline.

BEAU: Changes like that lead into another question, from Alan Prichard. He wanted to know how characters are developed, since clearly what happens with them or what you do to them is fluid.

MATT: I start with a brainstorm of plotlines, ideas on note cards, character traits, loose lines of dialogue, wouldn’t it be funny ifs, and I narrow things down from there. Characters go through changes between drafts, things are cut or streamlined out. Sometimes you can see the characters start to develop based on vacuums in the narrative, growing to fill gaps.

Rilk, played by Jesse Lee Keeter, is a good example of that, he just started out as “Smart Orc”. He was simply going to be the thinker among them, but that led to him getting better lines and more to do, because that’s how he would have responded in the moment. Along the way, he evolved into a main character, with a name and an arc and everything.

Nathan Rice’s Roderick, the gargoyle, started out as nothing more than a character called Lying Gargoyle to counterpart the Truthful Gargoyle. But he grew to fill a role we needed, that of a foil to Kevin Pittman’s Glorion, as well. Both of these are also examples of how an actor’s choices can change a character as well. The hand off of a role to an actor is my favorite part of the process.

BEAU: Really?

MATT: That’s all about trust. Their performance will never be exactly what you pictured in your head. The actors you cast will have a different view of the character than you do. As a writer or director you often think of the piece as a whole, or the narrative as a gestalt entity. The actor can focus entirely on the reality of the character they are playing, and how their character will react in a given situation.

Sometimes you have to fight the knee-jerk “this is wrong” instinct that is limited by your original ideas, and watch what plays out. You can always adjust afterward, or do different takes, but I always want to see where the actor is going first, and it’s often a wonderful surprise.

I ascribe to the Teddy Roosevelt method of administration, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Hire competent people and stay the hell out of their way.”

BEAU: Did one character stay the same more than others?

MATT: I guess you could say Nara “stayed the same” more than the others, in that she started more guarded and tightly wound and it’s going to take her a while to loosen up.

JourneyQuest was originally more than 20 episodes, and she had a very gradual arc that paid off in the end. When JQ was cut down for various reasons before we started shooting, pretty much all of her arc got delayed. I was afraid that her rigidity and coldness would make her unlikeable when we’re really just seeing her from one dimension so far.

It really speaks to Anne Kennedy’s craft as to how well she played the character, when there was so little variation on the page. She doesn’t come across as one-note or underdeveloped, and much of that comes from the liberating scene in S01E07 when she’s drugged, and the interior Nara, her stream of consciousness comes pouring out. It would have been easy to play the scene clownish and farcical, but Anne kept it grounded and funny.

BEAU: Can you talk about how much the character changes after the hand off?

MATT: It’s hard to say, because honestly, I don’t remember how I saw them before, because that doesn’t matter. What matters is the reality of who the characters are now.