kdemoen@oocities.com
Q: Who is Tony Wolf?
A: He worked on the series. For
more information, go to the William Tell Faq.
Q: How long have you been in the film
business? Are you working on anything right now?
Tony: My first feature film job was
as a stuntman in Peter Jackson's "Brain Dead", a cult horror movie
released in North America as "Dead Alive". I think it still holds
the record as the goriest film ever made. That was in 1989 or
thereabouts.
Right now my work is divided between fight and stunt
co-ordination for features and TV, teaching stage combat and
physical theatre through acting schools, and fight directing for
plays. I'm also working on another series by Cloud 9 (the WT
production house) - this one is called "the Tribe", a sort of
Mad-Max-meets-Lord-of-the-Flies futuristic adventure series for
teenagers.
Q: Where was the series filmed?
Tony: Various locations and studios
within Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand.
Q: Do you happen to know how many
episodes were filmed?
Tony: I think there were 18 in all.
Q: Did you have fun working with the
actors and actresses?
Tony: In general, yeah. Sometimes
we were pressed for time, in which case we had to get right down to
business. I was impressed with the cast's professional approach to
the fight scenes - they had very little prior experience in any
sort of stage fighting or stunt techniques, but most had some
experience with martial arts, dance, or other movement disciplines,
so they picked up the techniques very quickly. We always stressed
that the fights were like exclamation points in the script, which
served to bring events to some sort of climax or spin the story off
in a different direction. The cast appreciated that the fights
were opportunities to act, rather than just being "action for the
sake of action".
Q: How long would it take to film a
fight scene? I imagine it would vary a lot.
Tony: That depends on a number of
factors: the complexity of the scene as it's written in the script,
the available shooting time on the day, the amount of prior
rehearsal time (crucial!), whether stunt doubles were required for
any of the action, etc. By way of example, the final broadsword
duel between William and Xax took a full day to shoot.
Q: I read an article that someone
had posted from you. In it you mentioned that the deathwands were
fragile. What were they made of to be so fragile? And what were
some of the things you had to do to work around that in the fight
scenes?
Tony: The deathwand blades were made
from perspex, so that they could glow when activated - they looked
great, but they were brittle and surprisingly heavy. The handles
contained a concealed activation stud and a battery pack. Our
original brief was that the deathwands could stun with a strike or
kill with a thrust, and that only Xax, Kreel, and Xaxian Warriors
could operate them. Later we saw William and Aruna master the
wands as well. Because of the weight and fragility issues, I
developed a style in which the wands were never used to block
attacks, nor were they ever blocked with another weapon. In
practice, this meant a lot of creative ducking and dodging, or
parrying with the free hand or forearm, which in turn leant the
fight scenes a unique look - fluid and evasive, rather than the
high impact, sword to sword style you'd see in Xena or Hercules.
I wrote a manual, "the Beginner's Guide to Deathwand Fencing", and
passed copies around to the cast and stunt crew to keep a
continuity in what the weapons were capable of and how they should
be used. So what began as a "style" born of necessity actually
developed into something of a motif for the show, and also served
to underscore the lethality of the deathwands.
Q: In the same article, you
mentioned that you had designed some of the weapons in the
"Gladiators" episode. Which ones did you design? Where did you
draw your inspiration?
Tony: The script called for "sticks
and spears", but I felt strongly that we should develop something
that offered some unusual possibilities. After all, you're dealing
with an alien culture here - actually, several alien cultures. In
terms of the weapons for that episode, I contributed the designs
for the metallic nets (based on Roman retarii gladiators), the
spiked gauntlets (also inspired by ancient Rome), the t'ang-lash
(my own name for 8-foot ropes tipped with weights, vaguely based on
South American bolas)and a number of small combat shields similar
to Elizabethan era bucklers. I think there was also a
single-handed, broad-bladed battleaxe in there somewhere. We
consciously avoided anything resembling Asian weaponry, because it
was felt that they would clash with the show's Fantasy/Medieval
European flavour. Also, because the gladiators were in training,
it didn't seem logical to give them swords or other deadly weapons.
The spiked gauntlets were quite popular with the crew, although the
t'ang-lash was my favourite weapon - I was hoping we'd get another
opportunity to feature it.
Q: Speaking of designing weapons,
who designed Will's crossbow? And what was the inspiration for its
unique shape?
Tony: I assume Will's original bow was
designed by Dan Hennah, the production designer. I don't know if
he had any historical precedent in mind, or if he just liked the
look. Fans might have noticed that Will sometimes flips that bow
around with the shaft projecting along his forearm, so he can use
it in hand-to-hand combat. That was something that Kieren came up
with in our early training sessions. The larger, more elaborate
crossbow that was introduced later - it might have been in
"Doppelganger", I'm not sure - was actually supposed to have been
lost or destroyed at the end of the episode, but Kieren liked it so
much he arranged for it to replace the original bow.
Q: What's the strangest/funniest
thing you remember happening on the set?
Tony: This isn't really strange or
funny, but it was kind of cool. It was Katrina Browne's birthday,
and the wardrobe and makeup people gave her an amazing action
figure of herself as Aruna. I guess it was a Barbie doll or
something originally, but they'd obviously spent hours creating an
exact copy of her costume in miniature, and an in-character
hairstyle and makeup effect ... it was really a beautiful gift.
Q: In your article, you mentioned
that the deathwands were made out of prespex. What exactly is perspex?
Tony: Probably a local term, I
don't know the American equivalent ... it's a kind of transparent
resin that can be molded, in this case to resemble crystal.
Q: Did any of the actors get hurt in
doing any stunts or acting?
Tony: No, they were very careful.
Anything that was overtly dangerous was handled by stunt doubles.
They did perform most of their own fight scenes though.
Q: If a fan wanted to somehow get ahold of one of the stars, is there an
address they could write to? Or do you know of any way to get more
information about the stars?
Tony: That's a bit outside my
field. I believe there's an on-line reference source or chat-room
about Australasian (Australian and New Zealand) actors, but I don't
know where it is.
Do you have a question for Tony?
kdemoen@oocities.com
Get your own Free Home Page