Let's take "Lord Winbigler's Folly," for example:
After brunch with friends one Sunday morn (probably less morn and more afternoon, honestly), we found that the neighbors were having a garage sale. The usual crap with dangling pricetags was strewn across the sidewalk, but one thing immediately caught our attention - a large, brass telescope. Now, the thing could be an antique, or it could be Restoration Hardware 2009. There's not much way for me to know and I really didn't care, either way. The thing looked cool and would make a great prop, one way or another. So I bought it right away.
The next two hours were well-spent sitting on my friend Adam's couch, looking towards his dining room. This was unusual as congregating in the kitchen is the norm in my circle, but we were still so full of pancakes and french toast and omelettes that walking another 30 feet was far too much of a chore. Thus, from the couch, nursing our bloated bellies, the whole story came about:"So, what the hell do we do with a telescope?"
"Well, it will have to be by the window, with someone looking out it, no?"
"Yeah, he should have a beard, too. And be all stuffy. In an old suit...hmmm, maybe he's steampunk?"
"Oooh, we haven't shot steampunk yet! But the whole room is great - what's going to fill the rest of the room? We should put more people into the shot."
"There needs to be all sorts of action going on - maybe there's a fight in the far corner?"
"And some other action over in this corner? Maybe something is being spilled? Or things flying through the air?"
"OOooh, yeah! Just lots of chaos! With lots of people! And we should definitely be in this one, maybe hidden amongst the rest of the characters!?!"
"We're going to need some old maps."
"I've got those, but we'll need a lot of old bottles laying about, too."
"Oh, I have those. There should be old compasses, too."
"Got em. What about having people making dynamite on the table? We could have large scales for the measuring gunpowder or something?"
"I have scales!"
And so it built and built and within two hours, most of the details and characters were all scripted out in our heads already. We had debated between going steampunk or not again and again but finally decided to make it more of a period piece and not get too crazy on the metalwork and fantasy-science...for this one. Maybe another time.As Adam travels a lot, and to Southeast Asia quite a bit, his house is filled with all sorts of furniture and knick-knacks from his travels. So we thought the setting should be Hong Kong and then we wouldn't have to move (too much) furniture around. As neither he nor I are Chinese, we figured we could be British and tie it in with their occupation and imperialism of the area. We wanted to make it old-timey, so we figured the turn of the century was an interesting time and the year 1899 was chosen.
Between the two of us, we actually had far more of the required old-timey props than is reasonable.
Days later, at some modest get-together in the same room, Adam and I were energetically attempting to explain our new idea to some other friends and Adam just stood up and told the story as if it was how he heard it from his grandfather a hundred times, who had heard it from his grandfather a hundred times. It was incredible. Instead of saying "well, these guys are over here, and she's standing over there, and flying checkers are over there" as I would have done, he just let this perfectly eloquent narrative flow. Everything was tied together on why each character was in the room and doing what they were doing. The shady characters involved were all described as "mostly British ruffians" and "ne'er do wells" and they were in Hong Kong as part of some carefully orchestrated plot of treachery.The next day, I realized that we hadn't written down a single word of this and I asked Adam to try to remember what he had said. From that, he came up with the working back-story that carried us through the entire project. The year was changed to 1839, the actions of our characters were tied to real historical events that triggered the First Opium War...and the ending of the story took a very different turn from the original concept. In a moment of brilliance, Adam just added one final touch - that after all is said and done, the whole thing is a failure.
The name Winbigler was stolen from my "Book a Day" project, Ping Chang was a city in China that Adam and another friend of ours got kicked out of once, and other names just fell into place, either just by sounding old-timey or taken from ancestors (Elizer Hull was derived from someone the person playing that character was related to, and my character's name, Henry Fusselman, was my great-great-great-great-grandfather's name. We had a carefully woven narrative and series of events that, in the end, was futile. None of it mattered. And none of it changed history.
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June 14, 1839.
The British Empire has been chugging steadily into the Industrial Revolution, fueled in part by Chinese tea. In exchange, the British have been importing vast quantities of opium to China, creating a drug-addled dynasty beholden to British political and economic whims. Lin Zexu has tired of seeing his country becoming crippled addicts. He has composed a letter, soon to be delivered to Queen Victoria, informing her that he has confiscated and destroyed the 20,000 chests of British opium due to arrive in Hong Kong any day now.
In a veranda overlooking Kowloon, Hong Kong, Lord F. Alastair Winbigler looks out over the bay, his stoic face belying his racing mind, occupied with calculating the next moves he will make. Intent upon amassing a personal fortune from both tea and opium, he too has his sights on the sizable shipment soon to arrive in Hong Kong. His plan is already in action. Behind the Lord, the hotel's table is a flurry of activity. Armed with sextants and compasses, his shrewdest strategists assess the port and access routes on a variety of well-worn maps. Bottles of rum, broken quills, and other detritus attest to the lengthy debates which have surrounded these maps. Also competing for space on the table is a bombmaking operation. Two lackeys, skilled in the art of conflagration, carefully measure black gunpowder and prepare bundles of explosivese for the coming siege.
Frustrated with the countless hours of seemingly fruitless debate, two of the Lord's thugs have reached their breaking point. After countless games of checkers and bottles of rum, an argument has erupted. The checkerboard is flung into the air, red and black pieces flying helter-skelter. The Lord's plot would not be possible without a turncoat, of course. The beguiling enchantress, Song Xi Xiu fans herself and scarcely hides a smirk as she watches over the scene. Having already been paid handsomely for access to the port commissioner, her profit is guaranteed, regardless of the success of the final siege. The commissioner, Ping Chang, still occasionally struggles against the heavy ropes which bind him to a chair. As if the injuries he's already sustained weren't enough, one of the Lord's lackeys is relishing in the opportunity to deliver another productive blow to the commissioner's already bludgeoned face.
And all the while, the Lord's mistress, the delicately perfumed, flaxen-curled Madame Mountbatten, patiently enjoys yet another cup of prized tea, while she envisions her coming days presiding over their very own Caribbean island, complete with sugar plantation, rum distillery, and most importantly, vast staff of servants to tend to her every whim.None of these individuals know that their whole plan is to come to a disastrous conclusion, and that Lin will, in fact, destroy the 20,000 crates of opium, heralding the start of the first Opium War. But for now, let us relish in the potential of this highly coordinated effort.
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The whole thing was in vain. What better mood to start a project of this scale with?
As a test, we did a mock-up shoot and composited 6 Adams and 5 Kevins as all the characters...just to see if we could even FIT eleven people into this room and have it make sense. It's funny looking back at this image now and seeing how very close it is to the final image, T-shirts and clean-shaven mustaches aside. Once we realized that this might actually work, the real process began.
Over the next three months, characters were cast and re-cast, facial hair was grown, more and more props were acquired (more than a few trips to Chinatown) or made (paper mache bombs!) or borrowed (sextants!). Costumes were bought, fitted, rented and even hand-made. Most of the wardrobe would be rented, but for the character Prewitt Prug, a British thug who was purely hired muscle, we figured he should be wearing the most raggedy clothing possible, just barely hanging off his body. In fact, as it was set in July in Southern China, it would have been hot and in all probability, 
Prug would most likely be shirtless, shoeless and have some torn pants hardly clinging to his waist. The original idea was for an unhealthy amount of his ass showing even, but, when I realized that he would be punching the equally near-naked Port Commissioner, Ping Chang, it would have been too much skin showing in one corner of the photo, as Chang would be shirtless as well, having been tied to a chair with large ropes. So a dirty shirt was given to Prug, but his pants were made from nothing more than burlap and twine, sewn together with a pencil for a needle.
At the vintage costume rental shop, the characters truly started to come to life as people began to play around with different combinations of pants, shirts, suspenders, hats, monocles, wirey glasses, pince-nez, who gets a pipe? Who gets a cigarette? It was great watching people get excited over one thing vs another that led to a more defined version of who they were becoming.
To further deepen the story, each person cast was asked to write their own character's bio. Since everyone was given the same back-story on the final image, it was up to them to explain who they were and how they got to that moment, that room. Those who didn't have the time to write something out, was told not to worry, as I would be happy to write as many of them as needed. Tying in made-up characters to actual historical events was too much fun and, in the end, Adam and I wrote more than half of the bios, either by ourselves or together.
The day before the shoot was spent collecting all the costumes and prepping the set. It took all day to get the whole table arranged just right, the lanterns hanging in the right spot, the checkers suspended from wires here and there... In the evening, our Port Commissioner came by for his haircut. 
The "queue" style haircut was imposed by the Qing Chinese and we wanted Ping to look just right. Adam shaved about 3/4 of his head, and left just the back portion. We pinned a nice ponytail to complete it and he was set. While this was going on, I was in the next room, preparing bruise and black eye make-up on myself. Going out that night looking like that was a great success. 
We hit up Lowe's Hardware for some last minute hardware and then went to Capitol Hill for dinner. Although I didn't feel it was a particularly good make-up job, there were more than a few comments from people thinking it was real. I'll have to play around with it in the future and see how more realistic I can get it.Eventually, Adam and I were up late, writing the last few bios into the wee hours as I finished up Prug's burlap pants.
Yet, somehow, it always seems to all come together.
The shoot itself only took a few hours. The main shot was split up into 4 different parts, as I wanted a particular lighting on each area and it made more sense to shoot it separately and composite the quadrants together. The Greek professor schooling the British ruffian at checkers in the lower left of the frame was shot together, then Winbigler himself and the two cartographers were shot together, completing the left side.
Mountbatten was shot by herself up top, then the whole right side was shot together, so the action of the five characters over there blending together better. 
While shooting Mountbatten, the Port Commissioner was being prepped on the other side of the frame - tying someone to a chair and covering them with fake blood is always fun. He was incredibly patient, though, and sat through not only Mountbatten's shoot, but also while I went around and lit everything on the table separately. The fake blood we used was mint flavored and he didn't seem to mind, too much.A few spit takes to get the right blood spray from his mouth while being punched, a few takes to get the checker players angry enough, a few takes to get the cartographers arguing properly about their differing strategies...it all came together frighteningly close to how the original idea was scripted, but actually seeing the right faces in the right clothing amongst all the clutter that we had been collecting for months? This is why I do this. Sure, I love the final photos from the shoot. But it really is all about the process that makes it so fun.
