They’re just the perfect metaphor for all our criminal desires and bad behavior:

First of all they are immortal.  They are young and beautiful forever.  The downside of that is that they have to drink the blood of innocent victims in order to maintain their youthful appearance and extraordinary powers.  Know anyone like that?

Second of all they wallow in sadness and self pity.  Whenever they fall in love with a mortal they know that the mortal will grow old and die.  Unless the loved one is turned into a vampire.  In which case the loved one will ALSO be burdened with the weight of immortality. When you force someone to change who they are just so they can stay in a relationship with you, it never turns out well.  (or vice versa) I can speak from experience on that one.

Third, vampires have to eternally search for the meaning of their existence and that involves lots of adventures which doesn’t leave time for a boring job or other boring commitments.

They’re a lot like some rock stars I have known.  And all this is just talking about the good vampires.  Most vampires are hopelessly evil or demented or selfish or just plain mean.

The rules that govern vampires vary slightly from one mythology to another and The Dark Path Chronicles has it’s own set of vampire rules.  The vampires in The Chronicles can endure limited amounts of daylight, but it weakens them and ultimately will kill them, like a wasting disease.  Our vampires also have the ability to sustain injuries and heal themselves.  (The exceptions being a wooden stake to the heart, decapitation or total immolation by fire.)

One of my favorite moments in The DPC is at the end of Webisode 4 after Enid and Luke have made bloody vampire love.  Luke’s back is covered with blood from the deep lacerations that Enid has inflicted on him in the throes of passion.  He is handcuffed to a spider web of chains and as he hangs there, the wounds begin to heal.  The rivulets of blood flow backwards up his torso and into the wounds which seal themselves.  This was one of the most complex prosthetics that Vincent Guastini, our Makeup/FX supervisor designed for us.  He made a mold of the actor’s back and created a lifelike prosthetic  with sealable slash wounds and tubes of blood leading to the wounds.  The whole thing had to be carefully applied to the actor’s back so that the seams were invisible.  Vincent estimated that this would take 2 hours.  As frequently happens, when it was time to shoot this scene, we were at least an hour behind AND we had to be wrapped  so that our location – a real bar - could open for business.  The producers suggested that I might have to give up the shot.  I went to Vincent with a plea.  “Can you do the application in one hour?”  He looked at me with dismay and thought for a moment.  “Okay,”he said, “if we can put the actor in place and I can apply the prosthetic right on the set, I think I can do it.”  I asked Joseph Gatt (who plays the part of Luke) if he would do that.  He said yes.  It would involve him hanging naked from the metal web for at least an hour.  None of us realized what a grueling ordeal this would be for him.  (Standing motionless against the spiderweb, with his hands above his head, Joseph gradually began to lose the circulation in his arms.)    BUT, not knowing this would happen, we brought Joseph to the set and Vincent went to work while Imre Juhasz, the cinematographer used the time to light.

Next, the producers and I went to the owners of the bar and asked if we could continue shooting in the adjacent room after they opened the main bar for business.  We were shooting in a rather famous gay bar in Hollywood.  The owner looked over at Joseph, whose gorgeous body was chained naked to the wall.  “No problem.” 

THEN we had to ask for volunteers to man the pumps.  Each wound was fed by a separate tube and an adjacent pump.  The clock was ticking as it always does at the end of the day and it was clear from Joseph’s discomfort that we needed to get the shot quickly.  Vincent and eight or ten volunteers from the crew ducked down behind the wall under a piece of black velvet.  We rolled camera and the camera started to dolly out.  The volunteers pumped the blood.  (The shot is reversed)  It worked.  OMIGOD.  Cut.

So we got the shot and Joseph forgave me when the feeling came back into his arms and it was clear that gangrene had not set in and after I apologized profusely to him for the primitive working conditions.  Very few actors, humans, or vampires could have pulled off that scene, so bravo to Joseph.  His dialogue and action scenes are equally impressive, but that moment of healing is a defining one for his character.