Staying In

When I got my advanced copy of the Dr. Horrible DVD, I was dismayed to see that one of my favorite ELE applicants, Fury of Solace, hadn’t made the cut for admission into the Evil League of Evil. I had been sure that with its slick production values, a great song and a killer twist of ending it was a lock.

Bad Horse’s loss is the Internet’s gain because Fury of Solace isn’t going to go away. Fury of Solace writer, director and portrayer Emmett Furey talked to Staying In recently about the villian’s origins, the making of the video and what future evil adventures you can expect from Fury of Solace. You’ll also get a sneak peek at art from the upcoming Fury of Solace comic.

Where did your inspiration for the story come from? Was the concept something you came up with on your own or was it a group effort?

“Fury of Solace” was something that I dreamed up on my own, but it definitely has two distinct influences. One was M. Night Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable.” We learn over the course of the film that one of the characters has come to think of himself as a super villain, and he continues to ply his evil trade very much in hopes of finding his counterpart in crime, the hero to his villain. But that realization is saved for a twist ending, and for some years now, I’ve thought it’d be more interesting to tell a story where this kind of postmodern take on a classic superhero origin myth is not the end of the story but the inciting incident.

The other big influence was a line spoken by Mr. Rictus in Mark Millar’s “Wanted” (the graphic novel, not the movie). Rictus had just murdered a pair of innocent bystanders, and one of his henchmen asked what they should do about the deceased’s young son, who had seen it all happen. “Leave him,” Rictus told his lackey. “With any luck, he’ll spend the next eighteen years training himself to avenge these idiots and give me someone interesting to fight when I’m an old man.” That line always stuck with me, and those two ideas coalesced in my head into “Fury of Solace,” the story of Emmett and Laurel, an unlikely couple who live together in southern California. Laurel is better known to the world as The Orphan, the blue-haired hero who patrols the streets of L.A. by night in search of wrongs to right. Ten years earlier, Laurel witnessed her parents’ grisly murder in an L.A. alleyway, and from that day forward she decided to devote her life to helping the helpless. What Laurel doesn’t know is that her boyfriend and the man who murdered her parents are one and the same. Nor does she know that Emmett has an alter ego of his own, the masked super villain called Fury of Solace, who terrorizes the city of Los Angeles in his own misguided attempt to make the world a better place.

Did you always have the twist at the end in mind or did that come to you later on in the process?

That actually came later in the process. As much as I loved the premise, I didn’t think that would be enough to carry the entire video. I thought it needed to end on just as strong a note as it started. I forget exactly when in the process the twist came to me, but once it did, there was no going back.

I noticed that quite a few people lent their services to the project. Did you all start this together as a group effort or did you recruit them for the project?

Well, as it turned out, we definitely had a larger crew than your average ELE application video, but in a lot of ways, I felt like we had the bare minimum required to get this off the ground. Most of the time on set, the crew consisted of Jeff Sobel the DP, myself and my co-star Laurel Rankin. I was definitely the catalyst that kicked everything off, but I literally couldn’t have done it without the cast and crew. “Fury of Solace” was my second opportunity to work with Jeff Sobel, who did an amazing job shooting the pilot for a web series I co-created called “Bumps in the Night.” Laurel and I go back a long way, we both got our undergraduate degrees at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Nick DeMatteo has written scores and original songs for so many of my projects that I’ve lost count, and he did a phenomenal job writing the music for “Lot in Life,” the song featured in “Fury of Solace.” Concept artist Evaun Wallington designed the logo, helped design the look for the characters, and is penciling the first of many forthcoming Fury of Solace comics (Check out his art blog at www.drafturgy.com). And Michael Schachtner helped design the costumes. I can’t thank my collaborators enough for being willing and able to band together to make this insane deadline, and for their willingness to do so completely for free. I do plan to continue “Fury of Solace,” and hope to keep the entire crew onboard, to the point when I can retroactively pay them for all of their hard work and then some.

How long did the video take to make from initial conception to the end of filming?

I was fortunate enough to be in the audience for the “Dr. Horrible” panel at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, where Joss and company first unofficially announced the Evil League of Evil contest. By the end of that weekend, the seeds for “Fury of Solace” had been sown. I immediately set about recruiting my cast and crew, but as weeks dragged into months with still no official announcement of the contest rules or deadlines, the knowledge that the “Dr. Horrible” DVD was projected for a Christmas release made me suspect that we were going to have our work cut out for us. Sure enough, when the official announcement did finally come, would-be ELE members were given a mere 17 days to produce their application videos. Even though Nick and I had written “Lot in Life” prior to the official rules being posted, the fact that we were able to get such an ambitious project off the ground in such a short period of time was a testament to everyone involved. Within that two-and-a-half week period, Laurel and I had to record our vocal tracks for the song, send them to Nick in New York to create the final mix, and shoot and edit the video in its entirety. You know, on top of the fact that most of us involved have full-time day jobs! We were working on “Fury of Solace” up to and including the final day for entries, October 11^th.

There’s plenty more Fury coming. Read on for details and art from the upcoming comic.

What’s the next step for Fury of Solace? Will there be more videos? If so, do you already have a storyline and/or song in mind?

My plan is to continue “Fury of Solace” as an online multimedia experience, told partly in short, live-action videos and partly in 8-page online comics. The idea is to take advantage of the strengths of both mediums: the videos will feature new, original music, but big, superhero action-set pieces will be relegated to the comics page. “Fury of Solace” episode 2 will be a comic illustrated by Evaun Wallington. Episode 2 introduces Max Mason, president and CEO of pharmaceutical giant Mason International, and foil to our anti-hero. Mason’s past and present dealings with our heroes becomes the central conflict of the first story arc. The first 8-page comic is well on its way to completion, and will probably go live on www.furyofsolace.com within the next month or so.

The next song will be featured in episode 3, and is still in the early stages of development, but the current plan is for the song to be about Emmett’s inner-conflict regarding his feelings for Laurel: does he really love her, or is he just pulling her puppet strings to ensure that she lives up to her pre-ordained destiny?

What challenges and opportunities did you find in writing/producing for the web? What lessons did you learn?

The biggest challenge for me was teaching myself to write in so short a form. I’ve primarily written screenplays, which are plus or minus 120 pages, and I’ve found that sometimes in longer form it’s difficult to see the forest for the trees. But crafting this and the subsequent episodes of “Fury of Solace” has taught me some important lessons about scene construction that I’ll be able to apply to all of my work. When working in installments of 3-5 minute videos and 8-page comics, a lot of the time the episodes amount to little more than a single scene. But because they each serve as an individual unit of entertainment, I’m taking pains to make sure that each episode tells a complete story with a beginning, a middle and an end, while at the same time being chapters in a larger narrative. The format actually makes for a denser narrative experience than would a story of equal length told in fewer, lengthier installments.

“Lot in Life” is a great song. It immediately made me think of the “My Eyes” duet from “Dr. Horrible.” Were you inspired by that song at all and why?

“My Eyes” was my favorite song from “Dr. Horrible,” and it absolutely inspired “Lot in Life.” I loved the way Dr. Horrible and Penny’s parts were crafted to be able to be sung simultaneously, and that inspired me to make “Lot in Life” a duet.

I thought the song was very polished and well-produced. What was the song writing and recording process like?

The first thing I did was write a draft of the lyrics. I had never written a song before, and since I anticipated a short turnaround time for these videos, I recruited Nick to write the music. But he also helped tremendously with the structure of the song. Nick recorded a version of “Lot in Life” with himself singing a temp vocal track, which I burned to CD and listened to over and over again on my drive to and from work every day, tinkering with the lyrics and the melody. When word came down that we had to submit the video by October 11^th, Laurel and I went to Jeff’s apartment to record our vocal tracks. While we weren’t exactly in a professional, sound-proofed studio, Jeff, in addition to his skills as an editor and a DP, is also an accomplished audio engineer, and proved that sometimes that’s all you need, because I couldn’t have been happier with the way the vocal tracks turned out. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing Nick’s set-up in New York, but he did a bang-up job on the final mix. (For more of Nick’s music, check out his band REC at www.cdbaby.com/rec.)

Do you plan to make the song available for download?

The official Fury of Solace website, www.furyofsolace.com, launched just this week, all current and future “Fury of Solace” videos, comics and songs will be featured there. For the moment, fans can only listen to “Lot in Life” on the site, but an mp3 will eventually be made available for download.

The Fury of Solace website is far from the only place you can find the project online: Fury of Solace also has a MySpace page (www.myspace.com/furyofsolace) and a Twitter account (www.twitter.com/furyofsolace). The Orphan has a blog (http://orphan-blue.livejournal.com/), a MySpace page (www.myspace.com/blue_orphan) and a twitter account (www.twitter.com/the_orphan) of her own.

Was there anything that was originally in the script that got cut or that you just couldn’t do for financial/time/etc. reasons?

No, “Fury of Solace” was actually one of those rare projects where everything turned out as well or better than I originally envisioned. But there is much more to the story, things I knew we wouldn’t be able to cram into this first three-minute video, but that I always hoped I’d have the opportunity to explore in future installments. And “Fury of Solace’s” growing fan base made me realize that I wasn’t the only person who wanted to see the story continue, so we’re moving forward with the project full steam ahead.

How did you come up with the costume for Fury of Solace? And why the blue hair for The Orphan?

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to afford to get elaborate, custom-made superhero costumes for this project, so that certainly informed the character design for both of our leads. But I think the simplified costumes help ground the story a bit more in reality (or as grounded in reality as an online superhero musical can be!).

When I decided that I was going to create a villain for myself to play, I solicited character name ideas from all of my friends. There was only one caveat: my last name is Furey, and I wanted “Fury” to be a part of the name. Evaun pitched Fury of Solace, obviously in reference to the latest James Bond film, “Quantum of Solace,” and that’s the name that stuck. And even though Fury of Solace and 007 share little else in common, I decided they would have the same taste in attire. I also patterned the look off of the Crazy 88 from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” but with a red domino mask instead of a black one. It was Evaun who suggested his gloves be red, which was a genius stroke that really tied the whole outfit together.

The Orphan’s blue hair was kind of a callback to my senior film in film school, “Origin of Species,” which also featured a female lead with blue hair. Evaun came up with the Orphan’s outfit, and I loved the way it contrasted with that of Fury of Solace, but I felt we needed one more touch to sell that she was a superhero. And while blue hair does not necessarily imply that one is a costumed crime-fighter, I thought that in this context it just might do the trick.

What was your writing/producing background before this video?

I’ve been making films since high school, and I have undergraduate degrees in Film and Screenwriting from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA (my home town). I also dabble in journalism. I’m a staff writer at www.comicbookresources.com. I co-write, produce and star in a web series called “Bumps in the Night,” a sitcom about bumbling, amateur ghost hunters, set to debut on www.strike.tv on February 16^th. And stay tuned to www.furyofsolace.com for the continuing adventures of Fury of Solace. Bad things are coming…

Fury of Solace, any final words for Bad Horse?

Bad Horse has made his choices, and it appears that he and his evil brethren will be worthier adversaries than I had originally anticipated. I am a firm believer that the ends justify one’s means, but I cannot abide the evil-for-evil’s-sake agenda that the League advances. I had hoped to infiltrate the ELE’s inner circle and eliminate these threats to my city quietly, one at a time. But now it seems I’m left with little choice but to make unto them a vengeful noise: the last sound any of them will ever hear. I’m putting Bad Horse et al. on notice. The Evil League of Evil’s days are numbered…

Fury of Solace

Doing evil so you don’t have to

Somewhere in Los Angeles

Was that not enough evil for you? Check out Staying In’s interview with Tur-Mohel’s Ryan Lewis and Jeremy Dubin.