"It can be seen as a feature film made up of 12 different episodes, so it's got that episodic nature, but it's also, when it's all put together, it's own feature-length piece." "Working on 'Vireo' was extremely different in that it's almost like a feature film when put together," he says. "Within the editing process itself, we had a roadmap in the beginning, but we found ourselves making changes to that roadmap based on what seemed to serve the story the best in the moment when we were editing," Leonard explains. It wasn't always from the time period that the team initially thought would work in a scene. It was a matter of finding the right musical take and the right visual take to fit the scene. "The jump cut helps us realize that we're seeing these jumps in time and space."ĭirector Charles Otte shooting for episode ten of "Vireo" | David Soderlundĭaniel Leonard, who has worked on various " Artbound" shows, as well as " Artbound Presents Studio A" and " Lost L.A." for KCET was the editor for "Vireo." He worked with Otte to make those transitions between time seamless. "You could do the same scene with the same staging and essentially the same camera work in a different costume, which allowed us to use jump cuts to go from time to time," he explains. To do this, Otte filmed different takes with Vireo in different costumes. This is because Vireo exists in multiple time periods and her various incarnations overlap throughout the story. The opera was shot with live musicians and live singers, but it also unfolds in a way that is different from live performances. The process of bringing "Vireo" to life continued through editing.
"It was something that we had to get right the first time and shoot it," he says. Otte points out that they had done rehearsals and had done enough work in the location scouting period to know what they wanted out of this shoot, but it was still a challenge. They had to be off the island by midnight, Otte recalls, so everything happened fast. Since Alcatraz is a National Park, the "Vireo" team had to work around the tourists. Lisa Bielawa Furthers Philip Glass' Legacy
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"Before we signed on the dotted line for a car, we sent a hurdy-gurdy player up on one of the free days to sit in the car and see if he could play in the backseat of the car," she recalls. Bielawa points to the scenes featuring a hurdy-gurdy player performing in the backseat of a car as Vireo and Caroline alternate driving. Some of the music was written to fit the locations too. This was across the board, not just with the young ones that were growing, but also with the whole cast, as they deepened their own understanding of the characters." I could be inspired by what I heard the singers do. The composer adds that she was able to write for Sabal's maturing voice before they resumed shooting in May. "The composing of the episodes could be reactive. "I could come back from a shoot that happened in January of 2016, for example, and hear the changes in her voice that were starting, her voice was starting to grow," says Bielawa. Bielawa notes that, while a young woman's voice can mature between the age of 16 and 18, Sabala's work on "Vireo" led to both her singing and acting techniques developing a lot during this time. This proved to be beneficial, as the opera's lead, Rowen Sabala, was only 16 when they began work. The process of making "Vireo" took about two years and Bielawa wrote as they went along. "It was amazing, the process of excavating the Vireo box. "I found sketches and things that I had, musical ideas, harmonies or little fragments of melody that I had made 20 years ago," says Bielawa. Bielawa notes that while there isn't any music used from the older drafts "verbatim," the influence of earlier incarnations of "Vireo" is present. Twenty years later, "Vireo" came to life as an episodic opera. Filming episode seven of "Vireo." | Bernie WireĪfter Bielawa met Erik Ehn, the librettist for "Vireo," the story began to take shape as an opera, albeit one with more traditional scenes.