Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I'm pretty used to being on the inside of geek culture. That doesn't mean I don't have a lot of blindspots, mind you, but when I'm going to cover something I try to read up on it.
For instance, going into interviews for the original Iron Man I made sure to read the original run via trade paperbacks so I'd have an idea of what to talk to Jon Favreau about.
In short, I'm the guy on these set visits that sees the references to original source material, be it JRR Tolkien or Stan Lee, and loses his shit. Well, usually I am. But not this time.
While I've been addicted to video games since playing Burger Time on my grandparent's Colecovision, World of Warcraft was never my thing. Thank God for that, too. If I was hooked into MMORPGs I wouldn't ever do anything ever. The little tastes of that I had on console with Diablo III and, to lesser degree, Destiny have sucked hundred of hours of free time from me. I can't even imagine what it'd be like if I got sucked into WoW.
And I tried. Thankfully, consoles have broken me from PC gaming (and the fact that I don't have a good gaming PC helps that, too) and when I tried to play some in the months before I visited the set of Warcraft I literally was too dumb to understand the keyboard controls and inventory system.
So, while I'll admit my gaming time has probably pushed way past “reasonable time management” (and will be even worse when Fallout 4 comes out), I'm just saying it could have been a whole lot worse.
It was actually pretty fun being on a set and watching the other journalists on the visit losing their shit over famous WoW weapons realized in real life and not having clue one what was great about it.
Hopefully that doesn't disqualify me to write about my experiences on the set in your eyes, but if it does all I can say is that I had no idea what half the stuff I saw represented, but I can say it all looked really cool. From the costumes to weapons to even the rough digital effects we saw you could tell that Duncan Jones was putting a lot of time and resources into getting the details of this world right.
There's nobody crazier for Warcraft than Ducan Jones... well, that's not true. I have friends that work at Blizzard and have seen some of the stuff they have to deal with fanbase-wise, but I can confirm Jones is a true blue fan.
I was lucky enough to find myself in the editing room with him on Source Code. The big news that day was Sam Raimi getting attached to the Warcraft movie and I remember Duncan shaking his head sadly. “He'll do a great job, but man... that's my dream project,” he said.
I have not read the script and as of this writing haven't even seen the trailer that will be out when this posts, so I can't tell you how the overall product is going to turn out, but if it fails it won't be because Jones doesn't get the material or feels beneath it.
It was pretty fun doing this visit with a group of Warcraft fans. Hitfix's Donna Dickens in particular was fun to watch because she's super into WoW and when we arrived at the art department and she saw a model of Stormwind (the capital city of the humans) she lost her shit. Donna was my go-to for info whenever I saw a sword or ax or building and had no idea what it was. Which was most of the visit.
The art department and model room was a hell of an intro. Art on the walls showed Human and Horde designs. The humans were mostly bearded, but in shiny Arthurian silver and gold armor. The orcs were definitely beat up and a little feral looking, but even in the concept art their eyes were filled with intelligence.
There were creatures, too. The one that stood out to me was a giant stone golem. He was a hulking creature who dragged his arms on the ground.
There was also art for a set we would visit a little later. It was known as the Energy Chamber and we were told a big battle happens there. The art showed a big circle in the middle of the oval room with blue lightning coming out. I don't know who's fighting or for what reason, but I do know that the Stone Golem will be involved.
The next set we visited was an Orcish viewing platform hut that will eventually be overlooking a huge Horde camp surrounding a rectangular stone portal with green light emanating from it. I don't know my WoW lore very well, but if I understood what they were telling us there were going to be tons of human in cages amongst the orc army and those humans were somehow being used to power the portal. I'd be willing to bet that process isn't too pleasant for the captured people.
Gul'dan, a powerful orc chieftan and I think the main heavy of the movie, is overseeing this and this is his hut. It was decorated with tons of bizarre fantasy skulls. Apparently skulls are a currency for the orcs and the more giant and vicious the skull is the more it's worth. Other tribes use these gifts to curry favor with Gul'dan so he'll allow them passage to other areas.
Orcish language was imprinted on metal in this hut and we were told that they hired the same lady who wrote out all the Kryptonian language in Man of Steel.
We saw a few other completed sets that weren't being shot on that day, including one that was a long, rocky ledge that will be the location of an important conversation between the humans as they're out hunting down some orcs. This set was built to accommodate a fully working waterfall.
I asked how much location shooting was done and they said it was very limited. Only two days on location, the rest in studio. That can be dangerous, making everything look stagebound or CGI'd all to hell, but I can say that the sets I saw were incredibly detailed.
Before I got too confused, we sat down with some of the actors and producers to get a feel for the story. The main thing they stressed was this film wasn't just a simple good humans versus evil monsters. Jones was adamant that the story be a balance of Alliance and Horde points of view. There are good and bad guys in each camp.
A couple of the lead Orcs are actually good guys. That's Durotan, played by Toby Kebbell, and Orgrim Doomhammer, played by Rob Kazinsky.
Let's take a second here... Kazinsky was the biggest WoW nerd on the set. I think he even gave Jones a run for his money. You expect Warcraft players to look more like me, frankly, but Kazinsky was over the moon. The man acted like he won the lottery getting cast in this film and as this character, who is a biggie in the lore of the games.
Kazinsky was asked about his relationship with Kebbell's Durotan and he described it as Butch and Sundance in nature.
They're part of the Frostwolf Clan, a more tempered section of the Orc population. Dollars to donuts they don't quite approve of what the baddie sorcerer Orc (Gul'dan, remember) is up to harvesting these poor people to power his green portal thing.
I asked the producers if we'd get a Leeroy Jenkins nod and they answered a “No comment” with a sly smile. That was pretty much the extent of my WoW knowledge, so I shut up and let the rest of the people who knew what they were talking about grill for answers.
Before visiting the active set Duncan was actually shooting on we stopped by props and costumes and that was one of my favorite parts of the set visit. The Alliance weapons and armor were all done by the geniuses at Weta Workshop and the Horde's armaments were done by The Prop Shop.
They're not the only armored ones. They actually scanned the horses they were going to use so they could create custom armor for them as well.
Looking closely at some of the weapons, I saw some of the WoW folks nerding out. I asked what it was about and they said there were Ironforge logos to be seen, which in-game is a famous Dwarven forge... think of it like the Hattori Hanzo of sword-makers in this world.
Again, the marks were small so it's possible that might even be seen by the casual observer, but there's that attention to detail I keep telling you about.
We also saw the giant Gryphon saddle that had a large sword attached. Another geekout from the group as this sword was recognized. The sheath was blue leather and there was an ornate lion head on the hilt. Pretty sure this sword belongs to Travis Fimmel's Anduin Lothar and if that's true then a little bit of research tells me this is the Great Royal Sword of Stormwind. Don't take my word for it, though. It's just an educated guess!
Lothar doesn't just wield this giant sword. We also saw this kind of crossbow gun that he's going to be using as well.
Another standout was a giant Orc shield that had a big, evil-looking skull with horns in the middle of it and chains hanging off of it.
The costumes were pretty neat, too. There was a mage's cloak in particular that was fascinating to see up close. It was velvety black with bird feathers on the shoulders and back. It was predominantly a hooded cloak with the inside of the hook a shiny silver metalic fabric and velvet black on the outside. There were deep purples to the cloak itself and the fabric had a quality that kind of made the colors shift in the light, which we were told was hugely liked by Duncan because he thought it was like a great VFX trick that he could pull off without any digital work.
The Alliance stuff was all very regal in blues, gold and silvers. Lots of lion imagery in patterns and etchings.
There are also elves in the movie as well. Blizzard sent very specific race and character guidelines and they paid attention to all them, but in particular the elves (I was told) were right out of the game. It looked a little Wizard of Oz-ish to me, with light and dark green fabrics and gold patterns.
All together the costume department created over 700 complete costumes for this job.
It was finally time to visit the actual working set, which was housed in a giant studio. I immediately thought of Christmastime when we walked in because the set was a muddy hill reconstructed with real soil, grass and pine trees. It was the pine trees that set off my Christmas sense memory.
The set was so big that we had to stay on one side of it, out of the shot, while they did a full take. We saw Alliance soldiers on horses charge over the hill and out of sight on “Action!” and heard the grunts of people and sounds of fighting until “Cut!” was called and we were able to venture to where the action was.
What greeted me on the other side was a fully constructed Orc encampment. Among the huts were two large stick cages, maybe 10 feet by 10 feet each, filled with dirty peasant looking humans.
The shot was what could be described as battle chaos. Alliance in shiny silver armor charge in, some on foot, some on horse, and men in grey mo-cap suits representing Orcs meet them. I saw one Alliance soldier slice an orc with his sword as he runs by, but the focus of the shot seemed to be one Orc throwing an Alliance soldier against the stick cage and thrusting up with his sword, impaling the man.
They achieved this with a rubber sword hilt (the blade will be put in digitally later) and putting the stunt human on a rope and pulley system, which lifted him up some three feet in the air when he was impaled.
It looked to be something of a rescue mission as in the background one of the Alliance guys was able to open one of the cages.
When they got their take and were resetting for the next one we were shown some early digital stuff, most impressively an early render of Kazinsky's Orgrim that was just in grayscale, but looked impressive even then.
We got to chat with Duncan a little bit when we got back to set. They were setting up another battle scene, but this time involving the King and Paula Patton's Garona, a half-orc/half-human character who is a central figure to the history of the game, apparently.
While their doubles were out setting up the action, Duncan pulled out his phone and, with a mischievous grin, showed us something. It was a practical effects test video of a human being writhing and suddenly glowing from within, kind of like Lo Pan in Big Trouble In Little China.
Of course, the WoW people immediately called that it was clearly a mage who dabbled in something he shouldn't have and the magic was consuming him. Duncan just smiled and said the animatronic was done by the same guy that did the creepy-real Jake Gyllenhaal torso in Source Code.
The final shot we saw them do had the King (Dominic Cooper) pointing his sword at Garona as she kneels on the ground. Behind the King was the charging wave of war horses with Alliance soldiers firing these weird steampunk-y guns with big puffs of smoke coming out. We saw them film the mo-cap Orcs getting taken down by the dozen by these weapons.
And then we were whisked away and our day was concluded.
I left out a couple things that could be big spoilers or fun easter eggs for WoW fans, but for the most part that was my trip.
I hope some of that made sense to you guys, Warcraft fans or no.
Before I sign off, I have a few more pictures to show you. Some are some neat BTS stills and some are finished product moments. Take a gander at these suckas!
And that's it. Thanks for reading along, squirts! 'Till the next one!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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