Production
The WB network cut short the final moments of the first airing of "Orpheus" for an emergency broadcast announcing that the United States had invaded Iraq. The episode was rerun the following Saturday.
Director Terrence O'Hara says the fight scene at the end of the previous episode and the beginning of this episode is "probably my favorite just because of the content of the show and the difficulty." The scene was shot in an abandoned bank in downtown Los Angeles and employed scaffolding to make the fight "more vertical" according to producer Jeffrey Bell. O'Hara explains that due to Alexis Denisof's bad back, the show-motion shot of Wesley carrying Faith was a difficult one. The fight scene between Angel and Angelus, which took two days to film, was something that Bell had "waited to do for four years." It was made possible by a split screen and a camera lock-off, explains O'Hara. "We played back to match shot for shot. He was hitting space."
The scenes of Chicago in the 1920s were filmed on Universal Studios' back lot. O'Hara enjoyed the look of the classic cars, although many of the moving cars were actually being pushed by the grips "because they were very noisy," O'Hara says. Additional scenes showing Angel and Faith reliving portions of the episode "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been" had to be cut due to length.
Jeffrey Bell says, "we apologize for the big, stupid floaty head" that appeared during the magical battle between Willow and Cordelia. He explains, "We had really great hopes for it and it just became something you'd see on It's a Small World in Disneyland. Just not quite as scary as we had hoped." During the final shot of Faith and Angel on the terrace, which Bell describes as "a hallmark of a Joss Whedon show - all the good-byes and the sentiments without anyone ever getting sentimental" - Eliza Dushku came to the set with laryngitis and could not speak. "This scene was supposed to be first up," says O'Hara. "I begged (show runner) Kelly Manners to keep it to the end of the day and let her recover, and she did."
Read more about this topic: Orpheus (Angel)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)