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I1E2 - Empire Queen Interview
22 Plays1 year ago
In a kingdom where magic is forbidden, a charming trio of adventurers embark on a dangerous quest in search of the legendary Sovereign Wand, which is needed to overthrow an evil queen and restore magic for all.
I sat down with the main cast and creative minds behind Empire Queen, Chris Dane Owens, Jason Schulz, and Ciel Post to talk about inspirations, the journey 15 years in the making, and more! Check out the video that started this WHOLE journey, Shine On Me.
Here's where you can find our wonderful guest:
Chris Dane Owens: Instagram, Twitter, Website, Youtube
Ciel Post: Instagram
Jason Schulz: Instagram, Twitter,
Here's where you can watch Empire Queen:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to VJ Talks Interlude
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello, welcome to VJ Talks Interlude. While VJ Talks season three is on the horizon, it's not quite ready yet. So in the meantime, I've got a few episodes I'll be putting out between now and the return of season three in Q1 of 2025. So enjoy.
Interview with Empire Queen Creators
00:00:42
Speaker
Hey, everybody, um it's VJ Harris. In case you don't know, my pronouns are they, them, he, him, and something funny. And I am here with the with the, ah Jesus. I'm here with not only the cast, but also like the creative minds behind um Empire Queen. I didn't get to do this at Gen Con. This was planned, but we did get to pick it up here. So I'm very excited to be like presenting this interview to you. And now we're going to like have our amazing guests ah introduce themselves. And then we're going to jump into some questions. Hi. I'm Christine Owens. Sorry, we missed you at Gen Con, but I'm glad you're feeling better. ah And I'll take it to Jay.
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah. Hey there. Jason Scholz had a great time at Gen Con. Really enjoyed it. It was a first time experience for it and look forward to being able to discuss this with your fans. Hi, my name is CL Post and I play Aura Winter in Empire Queen.
00:01:34
Speaker
Excellent. Thank you. And okay, so my my first kind of question here is, so I know that like this um Empire Queen is like as insur inspiration and like kind of um homage to like Harry Potter, Shrek, the Princess Bride and whatnot. I'm kind of curious if there's any like inspiration or homage being paid that people would be surprised to know about is actually in there.
00:01:53
Speaker
Like
Empire Queen's Inspiration & Evolution
00:01:54
Speaker
I'm um as a like a game designer, I'm always telling people, hey, take inspiration from everywhere. So I love hearing if there's any like secret things that people aren't quite aware about, like might have gone into the creation of something. I can answer that on one front. um There's a little Moana nod in it in that Sterling's character winds up getting beached on a tropical island and he has his Moana adventure.
00:02:20
Speaker
And there's another little ah hidden reference with a nod to Charles Dickens' A Christmas character Carol in a particular line with one of the throwbacks of the mid-1900s movie.
00:02:34
Speaker
e i Okay, I watched the film and I have no idea which line it is, although I also haven't read um aris red or seen a Christmas carol in years. I'm gonna have to go back and watch it and be like, hmm, which one? And like really update this interview later, be like, I found it. Yeah, yeah little Easter eggs, fun for the audience to try to go hunting for them.
00:02:54
Speaker
and um Ciel, anything you wanna add to that or I'll move on to another question. No, I mean, I, I'm trying to think, but I think the guys managed to put in every, you know, classic fantasy, a nod to every, every classic fantasy film I can think of. We got even a little Pirates of the Caribbean swashbuckling. That's true. Yeah. For sure. I can definitely believe that. Oh yeah. I can definitely believe that. Um, so the, this next question, it's for all three of you. Uh, so.
00:03:26
Speaker
Uh, my first thing I'd never heard of, um, Empire Queen, and then I got the email about it. And so of course I went and like watched everything. I read everything I asked for like, Hey, can I get a link to actually watch it as well to ask questions about it? Of course. And went down this rabbit hole of like, Oh, this has been like a 15 year journey. Like I found the. the original um music video which i didn't know existed until that point i was like oh this is really good then like the new york times um the interview with uh william shatner i think it was so i'm just kind of curious for like all three of you since all three of you were like i think all jason i i'm were you also i feel like you were also in the music video were you or am i yeah you know the first music video i was in there for about five seconds the second one i think i made it in for about 15 seconds
00:04:11
Speaker
Okay. Cause I was like, i I was like, I'm pretty sure I saw all three of you in the music videos. um And I guess my question is like, like I said, this has been like first music video was 15 years ago. You had the second music video and then also you have this, ah this actual movie. What was it like this like 15 year journey from then to now?
Production Insights & Challenges
00:04:28
Speaker
Well, I will tell you it's been exciting and really fan supported. um You know, when Shine on Me came out,
00:04:36
Speaker
We just put it up on YouTube and I was still working on my album. I wasn't even thinking about will that launch and all of a sudden it went viral at the time and um just so much press and interest happened. And it was around that time that we got approached by a pretty significant Hollywood agent and they said, hey, what you guys have done is really cool. Would you think about maybe making a movie? And because the imagery was designed to look like the trailer to a movie um and they're going, well, this could be a movie. And so We made a secondary music video, Lightspeed, which of course features CL and J also. And so that continued the story in the saga. And I think what was really important in the making of the film was we tried very hard to contextualize for fans of those two music videos in particular. A lot of the imagery that you see in the music videos is contained within the film and explained in ah in a hopefully a cohesive way.
00:05:30
Speaker
um It's been fun. I had a lot of people saying, you've got to make a movie. um When's the movie coming out? And then once we we announced it, we're like, we're making a movie. There was just just a tremendous wave of this is great. I can't wait to see it. And um and you know, we're on this journey of having the film keep expanding. ah We will be on streaming on Prime shortly.
00:05:52
Speaker
ah We've been on TVOD initially, ah transactional video, and then we'll be on i iTunes, Google Play, and Voodoo. So our distribution is really expanding as we go.
00:06:04
Speaker
And of course this Gen Con best feature film win is always a good thing too. Yeah, of course, which amazing, like congratulations on that win as well. um but I got to interview another ah ah another like movie producer and movie winner and they also won at Gen Con. So um obviously it's not me, but I'm like, hey, if I get to keep interviewing like winners of Gen Con movies, I'm gonna enjoy that a lot.
00:06:28
Speaker
ah Jason, what about you for this like 15 year journey? Well, you know, initially, you know, I had a little character in both the music videos and was doing more of the work behind the scene, running camera and some cinematography, especially on light speed. You know, and the interesting thing is, you know, we've really evolved through this process because ah Shine was shot on 35 millimeter film and it wasn't cheap.
00:06:50
Speaker
And then some years later with the advancement of the digital revolution, ah we were able to shoot light speed for about 10% of what we spent on shine. And so that's what triggered the idea of like, you know, people are saying this looks like it could be a ah movie. It's a movie trailer. ah we We started to really believe like, well, you know, if we can do the light speed you know five minutes for seventy five hundred bucks like start timing that out a little times that out a little bit it's like what could we do like you know ninety minutes for and we start realizing it was doable and so we shot some test scenes and then we all wound up reprising our characters from the music videos and we brought everybody that was originally.
00:07:28
Speaker
ah involved with the project back into it and then had to learn how to give ourselves a voice because the music videos obviously don't have dialogue so it was a very interesting evolution going from music video no dialogue to full feature film that was now two and a half hours long which you know We thought maybe we could split this up into six episodes the way streaming seems to be working now, but we decided to go with the feature film version of it. We thought that was a little bit more fun. So at any rate, a lot of little twists and turns, but you know it's effectively just an expansion of the the music video and in a much more ambitious and magnificent way than we ever thought we would be able to achieve, honestly.
Character Development & Accent Adoption
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's actually a really amazing, and honestly, I'm gonna be honest, I'm glad that y'all just had it as one. I i know stream streaming likes to do like you know the episodes, but I am a big fan of like you know just a solid feature film that's however long it needs to be to get the story told. That's right. It ah reminds me of being younger. If it was six episodes, people would probably binge it all in one day anyways. That's right. yeah Exactly, exactly. So yeah, I'm actually really interested in like your thoughts about this as well.
00:08:33
Speaker
um ah I love movies. I don't often get to like talk to people on the behind the scenes and the idea of like starting as like ah um having a role in a music video um and then getting to be like one of the main actors in like a movie 15 years later is really like kind of intriguing to me ah in that regard. Oh, trust me. It's intriguing to me as well because if someone had shown me a crystal ball, you know, 15 years ago and said, this is going to be what's gonna happen. You're gonna meet these two very creative and sweet guys and become basically family. And this is where you'll be in 15 years. I think you are absolutely out of your tree. um It's been really fun, you know? I mean, I i met them um at Warner Brothers. I had just gone there for a commercial audition and didn't get that commercial, but um met ah Jason that day.
00:09:30
Speaker
and And then he introduced me to Chris and and um Chris approached me about being in his music video. And and I thought, oh, well, that'll be fun. It'll be a fun day of work. ah Cut to, you know, I guess hundreds of days of work and many, many years later. um And just being on this really fun journey with these two guys, I know, you know, really consider my family, so.
00:09:58
Speaker
Oh, I love, I love to hear that. um So important question for the three of you. Clearly you all don't have the and accents that you had in ah in the actual um movie, which I was unsure because sometimes people can throw me for a loop. Like somebody has an amazing American accent. I'm like, you're British? Or it was like, you know what?
Creative Decisions & World-Building
00:10:16
Speaker
I don't know. We'll find out when the recording starts for sure. um Well, okay. Actually, Chris, I did know you didn't have that accent because I'd seen the William Shannon room. But for for the other two, it was like, I could be surprised.
00:10:27
Speaker
Um, I am curious about like for each of you, what kind of went into like choosing the accent, like, um, and kind of staying in a character with it. I, um, I mentioned previously, I designed games. I also run them for people and I try to do like kind of stay in character with voices and whatnot, but it's kind of hard for me, except for one very specific one. And that one has like a a little like, um, trigger phrase I have to do to stay in it. Um, helps. Yeah. But so I'm just really curious about like the ah the whole process behind it for each of you.
00:10:56
Speaker
See how you want to take that first. Yeah, so my mom is is British. So I've grown up around um English accents. Obviously that whole side of the family has them. So I I think I can slip into it pretty easily.
00:11:11
Speaker
um ah I don't know, my my mom gives me a hard time. She's like, no, that's not quite right. um but But yeah, is she she, anyways, so so it's kind of easy for me and i'm I'm always walking around the house doing weird character voices anyways, just for fun. um So yeah, I think I was trying to help the guys a little bit with that, cause you know, i'm I'm around it a lot, but I don't i don't know.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, she was definitely our dialogue coach on that. You know, what we did a test scene early on and we were still, you know, trying to figure out like, what is a voice? I was a little bit raspy, throaty at first, you know, just trying to figure out like what sounds right for the character. And it just, you just have to play around with it a little bit and see what sounds, you know, the most appropriate. And honestly, it's like, you know, it's not spot on British, but you know, we're not in England in this movie. We're in Hilarion. We're an amalgam of things. We've got ship captains and we've got knights and we've got damsels in distress. and you know we've got um you know it's it's it's It's no particular timeframe. It's no particular location. so you know We've just made it our own universe. Yeah. To Mira Jay's sentiment, Sayle was a wonderful dialogue coach for us. she you know Sometimes you get it nearly right, but then a very American version of the word comes out and she'd be like, no, no, do this.
00:12:28
Speaker
And I also went to school in England for a while. So I got my ear a little bit tuned to that too. um And that was part of the fun too. Part of the joy was being different characters from a different land with different ways of speaking and addressing things. um that That was really a joyful part for I think all of us.
00:12:48
Speaker
Excellent. Excellent. Um, okay. So very, uh, kind of important question. Well, they're all important questions, but I'm kind of curious, is there anything that got left out of the final cut that like you really wanted in there, but it didn't work or something like that wasn't and necessarily in it to begin with, but then you go back and you watch it and be like, Hmm, it would have been really interesting to like had the opportunity to add it now that I've seen the full thing together. I know I can add for myself. There's really nothing on the cutting room floor that isn't in the film in some version.
00:13:19
Speaker
as you've seen the movie that we do a lot of montages which have swirling images and plow through footage very quickly, ah which I'm really happy about because it's in a way of like putting in everything that you think is your treasure, but doesn't have to take up too much time. um No, so from my perspective, we really don't have much that we shot that didn't end up in the movie at all. And I'm grateful for that.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, we I mean, there's a little bit of dialogue that you can be more efficient with, and we've trimmed the dialogue out of some scenes, but I would say most of the scenes are represented. and um We did make an attempt at shooting one of those post-credits little ending tags, but we took the story in a different direction after that, so we did not wind up using that. But I would say that we we probably used 90 6% of the things that we conceived of in terms of the scenes and shots in the film. There was one, Chris, you remember, we did the dragon flyover with CL and we wound up not using that particular one, but I mean, it's so minimal. We have probably a two minute scene of that. And that was actually nice footage too. You're right, Jay. The bonus footage on the DVD. That's right.
00:14:28
Speaker
I mean, I'll say things that we didn't intend on being in the film, but that just naturally are in it. or It's like all three of us getting injured. Like anytime you see us falling or tripping or scraping our arm or what have you, um that's real. We're actually, we are falling or we are actually getting scraped. We do our stunts. We do our own stunts.
00:14:53
Speaker
But you know, we were very humble sized crew. So I mean, it's like, you know, we don't we didn't have a studio budget. We had a very modest indie budget. So you wind up wearing a lot of different hats and stuntman is definitely one of them. Yeah. Now I believe that. um So kind of talking about the world building a little bit, like I think ah what was the process for world building for this actually, like from the names of the spells and the monster to like the literal riddles um that were created for this?
00:15:23
Speaker
Well, I think that as we progress within our story, we knew that we wanted certain pillars that ah helped to inform the quest, if you will. And so part of that was um ah just the structure of the story to get from A to Z. And then along the way, you want, as Harry Potter fans, I think that informed a lot of our inspiration for fun names, for things, for character names. ah Jay came up with a fun character names, Ciel did.
00:15:52
Speaker
um Our executive producer, Kiki Coral, she had some fun names. I i like fun names. so um So that was part of our process as well. They kind of could come from any direction. um Jay, I don't know if you have a comment about this too.
00:16:06
Speaker
ah Yeah, I mean it was you know a little bit somewhat on the fly even, you know, and realizing that we were adding a character or a character or you know a bit of um scenery and so forth. So, you know, um I guess it's because we're programmed with our sensibilities for fantasy that a lot of this stuff came naturally. ah Chris certainly was the author of this universe from the outset.
00:16:28
Speaker
But a lot of us, you know, just put in our own creativity as we were on the fly, coming up with various things. And, you know, I'm not sure if I think I came up with Cordelia and Chris came up with Crumworthy, you know, that type of a thing. But you had Philologus Crumworthy, which is a great name. Yes, I came up with Philologus. That was a great name.
00:16:46
Speaker
And we weren't sure about, remember mud break? We weren't sure if it was mud. We weren't sure which, right. i think yeah I think CL decided which one he was going to be. Right. And then we had to keep reshooting it because every time he'd say it was once it was mud brick, once it was mud brick. Anyways, yeah. But Poppet, the mouse, is a nod to my my Papa growing up. He used to call me Poppet. So That's a nod to him. And then Quinley the horse is a nod to my dog's ah girlfriend next door. but The dog next door. that
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah, so you see, BJ, that ideas can come from anywhere.
Future of Empire Queen
00:17:26
Speaker
and And in fact, our script was elastic in the sense that When we were filming, especially when we were in Portland, we discovered a lot of things along the way and we said, let's get that, let's get that on film. um Maybe, for example, there's a scene where Jay gets refreshed by um the the the tears that are falling from the rock. ah of a laryon and um that was just, we didn't scout that. We didn't know it was there. We just shot it. And then we repopulated it with the narration of what exactly happened. And that was really fun for us. we If we do the sequel, which I'm hoping we do, we would like to have it be as open as possible so that we can discover things along the way and just grab them, figure out how to put it in later.
00:18:07
Speaker
Hey, excellent. And I mean, I guess since you mentioned the sequel, like can I'll go to like kind of like my final kind of combo question. One, what ah what is the like, as of right now in your mind, what is the future for Empire Queen? And two, and like if you could have your wildest dreams like brought to screen or in any medium, right? Because ah um you know there's you've got a a fun fantasy setting. There's tabletop role-playing games that are always looking for new things in there, that kind of thing. What is like what is the full future wildest dreams come true for Empire Queen? So one's the like, hey, what are you immediately thinking and kind of working towards? And two is like the wildest dreams of it.
00:18:46
Speaker
Hey, if I had to yeah a Funko doll, that'd be great.
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, for us, we want to keep doing this. This is really fun. um It's our own universe. We all have our characters, and we can take it in really exciting directions. um As you see in the film, there's two other kingdoms, and evil is pervasive. And a lot of people have to learn magic that has been suppressed in this realm, including Jay and my characters. We've never even held wands before. And so for us, it's it's new and exciting.
00:19:20
Speaker
And um I think kind of the sky's the limit. We'd love to make another movie. Having a gaming universe would be super fun, super cool. And um you know as we head down the area of merchandise, that's always nice. I saw that with music. I got lots of people sent me photographs of themselves wearing my T-shirt as a musician. And that was always really great. The support is wonderful. It means a lot to all of us. CL, what is your thought about that where this project could go?
00:19:50
Speaker
I mean, I love, let's see, I love theater, so I think Empire Queen, the musical. Love it. Would be great. And let's see. Oh, Empire Queen fruit snacks. That's really good. We have to give a nod out to Nicholas Repetto speaking a musical. This is right there on that one. Yes. It's a little blurry there, but sorry. Empire Queen, this is our CD soundtrack, which is... Can you back it off, Chris? yeah Let's see, about two hours of original music. um
00:20:21
Speaker
Sorry, guys, for all the reflection. There we go. That's probably the best version of it. Perfect. It's a wonderful soundtrack. We just want to tell the world how much we love Nick Repetto. We did a great job. He did Symphony Orchestra. It's 80 piece orchestra, choir, horn section. It's just beautiful music and it's really a character in the film.
00:20:40
Speaker
huh
00:20:42
Speaker
So I think that's that's our our goal, Vijay, is conquer the world with Empire Queen. And you know it would be fun to get it would be fun to get a theatrical version of this going somewhere, somehow, you know because we're on streaming now, but it'd be nice to see it on a big screen. Yeah, that's a good comment, Vijay. It looks so good, Vijay, on the big screen. we're really We were delighted. We had it on a huge projected screen at a screening, and it was like, wow, this looks really, really
Closing Remarks & Gratitude
00:21:07
Speaker
good. We've been watching it on monitors as we edit it.
00:21:10
Speaker
but it's very satisfying to see it. It's quite beautiful, if I do say so. I'm not beautiful. She's beautiful and he's beautiful, but I'm not. Don't sell yourself short there, Chris. um I'll definitely keep an eye out to see if I can't get my hands on a big screen to watch it on um versus the monitor that I was also watching it on as well. um But with that, again, I want to thank y'all so much for like jumping into a call with me and doing this interview, and I can't wait to share this with the rest of the world. Thank you. But yeah, thanks for being here. Thanks, PJ. Yeah, yeah it's been a pleasure. This is fun.
00:21:43
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening to this interview. Now enjoy Shine On Me, the music video that launched this amazing journey 15 years ago.