UNCLE DUKE
A wargames legend in a Fantasy Film: Part 2 of 3
Last month Peter Adkinson offered to allow us a glimpse into a very special piece of wargaming history. This month he continues his narrative! Ed.
In the first part of this piece, I told the story of how I met Uncle Duke and bought some of his “Extravaganzas” to put in a fantasy film. By the time I returned to Seattle with three of Uncle Duke’s Extravaganza collections, plus a Roman legion and an army of Amazons he “threw in” to the deal, Steve Conard, my creative partner for Chaldea, had a script for our first Chaldea film.
By this time we had done quite a bit of soul searching about how to approach telling an epic fantasy story, with lots of characters and fighting, and high quality production values, but on a limited budget. Basically, it can’t be done. Since we refused to reduce the scope of the story (“go big or go home!”) or – alternatively – to go campy, we had to improvise. For quite some time Steve had been pushing for publishing the story as a digital comic book series. I wasn’t very thrilled with this because I really wanted to work with actors. He pointed out we could add voice over to the comics, which would mean casting the characters and working with actors in a studio. But I’d just finished film school: I really wanted to film things, dang it!
ACTION!
So we hit on the idea of mixing a comic art style with live action.
The idea is that the whole thing would be edited together like a movie, but most of it would be comic art, with some motion graphics, and some of it would be live action cinematography. This seemed interesting, but we weren’t sure if it would “work”. Would it be jarring to switch between these media?
I told Steve that before I dedicate probably the rest of my working life and quite a sum of money to this project we needed to do a test. I said: let’s do a sample episode. I want that episode to start in what we came to refer to as “comic-land” and stay there for at least seven minutes: long enough for a viewer to sink in to it. And then switch to live action and live there for at least seven minutes... and then switch back!
This was all on top of the requirement that the film should feature an Uncle Duke extravaganza and feature a lead character named Reiswitz as an homage to real-world Prussian who invented wargaming. And then – on a lark – I threw in the idea of adding Uncle Duke as a cameo.
Steve loved the idea of including Uncle Duke, so much so that what I imagined as a bit part turned into essentially a costaring role.
CASTING THE DUKE
So I called up Duke and asked him if he was interested. If you know Duke you know he jumped at the opportunity. Duke was not a shy man: any chance to ham it up! I was a bit worried about whether he could act, but Duke assured me he could do it! Since I was still pretty inexperienced as a filmmaker I didn’t really realise how big a risk I was taking, casting someone who I hadn’t actually auditioned into a co-staring role. But there was no putting that genie back in the bottle.
My instincts were he could do the job and I went for it. We set a date for the production and I bought airline tickets to fly Duke and Anne to Seattle!
Look for the conclusion of this editorial in the next issue and learn about Uncle Duke’s adventures on the set of Chaldea: War Room. ■
Peter Adkison is the owner of Gen Con and in a prior life was the founder and CEO of Wizards of the Coast. In 2012 he started a film company and his first major production, Chaldea. Vheck it out on: worldofchaldea.com/uncleduke