Building character

By Katy Nesbitt

A friendship born on the set of an Eastern Oregon University theatre production led to alumni collaborating on a movie to be filmed against the backdrop of northeastern Oregon’s stunning vistas.

J.J. Hill, ’11, and Liberty O’Dell’s, ’11, movie, titled “Out of Character,” features not only EOU alumni writing, producing and directing, but 75 percent of the cast and crew are graduates.

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.

The storyline for “Out of Character” follows six people involved in a live action role-play game in the woods, O’Dell said. Live action role-playing, or “larping,” 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.

“The purpose of the script is to create something in Eastern Oregon and to showcase the local talent,” O’Dell said.

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.

“Our version is a celebration of imagination,” Hill said. “Think ‘Best in Show’ meets ‘Lord of the Rings.’”

The comedic undertones come largely from using the actors’ own personalities to heighten their characters, O’Dell and Hill said. In February they had a read-through with the principal actors, going over their characters and reworking scene sequences.

“When one actor was asked, ‘Who do you think your character is?’ he responded, ‘I get to make that choice?’ I told him we can only write up to our ability,” O’Dell said. “The actors are going to have a stronger understanding of who their character is and we respect their knowledge.”

Hill and O’Dell said they met on the set of EOU’s production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” 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.

“When 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,” Hill said. “Playing the game is a cooperative imagination experience where you don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

O’Dell said he didn’t play the game until college, but agreed that one of the most important lessons any artist learns is how to portray a story.

“Through games you step into character and explore different aspects of your personality, things you don’t do in daily life,” O’Dell said.

After graduating from EOU, O’Dell 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 — O’Dell in La Grande and Hill in Pendleton. Both said they returned to the region for the sense of community and the scenery.

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 — skills similar to larping and tabletop gaming, where characters are constantly working off of each other.

“One of the things we started with is knowing collaboration is the strongest way to make art,” O’Dell said.