{"id":1131,"date":"2020-05-20T18:03:16","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T18:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/?p=1131"},"modified":"2020-05-20T19:20:40","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T19:20:40","slug":"building-character","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/building-character\/","title":{"rendered":"Building character"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Katy Nesbitt<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A friendship born on the set of an À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ theatre production led to alumni collaborating on a movie to be filmed against the backdrop of northeastern Oregon\u2019s stunning vistas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.J. Hill, \u201911, and Liberty O\u2019Dell\u2019s, \u201911, movie, titled \u201cOut of Character,\u201d features not only EOU alumni writing, producing and directing, but 75 percent of the cast and crew are graduates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a small grant, some out-of-pocket expenditure and a lot of volunteer support, the film’s pre-production began in November 2019. Filming is set to begin in 2021. Hill and O’Dell said they hope to have at least some scenes from the movie available to premier at the 2020 Eastern Oregon Film Festival in October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The storyline for \u201cOut of Character\u201d follows six people involved in a live action role-play game in the woods, O\u2019Dell said. Live action role-playing, or \u201clarping,\u201d is like a game of Dungeons and Dragons come to life with players dressed in medieval costumes armed with swords, shields and helmets. The premise of the movie is the principal characters are to stay in their fantasy personas for several days as they journey through the wilds of Eastern Oregon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe purpose of the script is to create something in Eastern Oregon and to showcase the local talent,\u201d O\u2019Dell said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hill said the movie is staged like a documentary or reality show about a fictional event, but he came short of calling it a mockumentary. Larping has been portrayed in film as a legitimate and entertaining hobby, like sword-play at a Renaissance festival, while other treatments portray it in a mocking form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur version is a celebration of imagination,\u201d Hill said. \u201cThink \u2018Best in Show\u2019 meets \u2018Lord of the Rings.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comedic undertones come largely from using the actors\u2019 own personalities to heighten their characters, O\u2019Dell and Hill said. In February they had a read-through with the principal actors, going over their characters and reworking scene sequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen one actor was asked, \u2018Who do you think your character is?\u2019 he responded, \u2018I get to make that choice?\u2019 I told him we can only write up to our ability,\u201d O\u2019Dell said. \u201cThe actors are going to have a stronger understanding of who their character is and we respect their knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Above, actors line up in their costumes. Below, directors and sound designers — all EOU alumni — shoot a scene on location.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Hill and O\u2019Dell said they met on the set of EOU\u2019s production of \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest,\u201d and became fast friends, spending time together playing Dungeons and Dragons, a role playing tabletop board game. Hill said he learned to play the game in high school and it helped him in the theater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I started acting I was nervous about being in character in front of other people, but Dungeons and Dragons got me over being someone else in a safe group of people,\u201d Hill said. \u201cPlaying the game is a cooperative imagination experience where you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen next.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Dell said he didn\u2019t play the game until college, but agreed that one of the most important lessons any artist learns is how to portray a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThrough games you step into character and explore different aspects of your personality, things you don\u2019t do in daily life,\u201d O\u2019Dell said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduating from EOU, O\u2019Dell studied and worked in New York for about five years. Hill did a short stint in New York as well, but both ended up back in Eastern Oregon \u2014 O\u2019Dell in La Grande and Hill in Pendleton. Both said they returned to the region for the sense of community and the scenery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They got involved with the Eastern Oregon Film Festival and get together with a handful of other actors once a week to do improvisational theater \u2014 skills similar to larping and tabletop gaming, where characters are constantly working off of each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the things we started with is knowing collaboration is the strongest way to make art,\u201d O\u2019Dell said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theatre alumni are on a quest to write, produce and direct a fantasy adventure film to showcase Eastern Oregon’s local talent and natural scenery. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":380,"featured_media":1132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,49],"tags":[23,43,50],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-stories","category-spring-2020","tag-alumni","tag-art","tag-theatre"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions\/1140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mountaineer-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}