The "Homeland" episode was partially filmed in Scotland, and we did that by actually sending a small crew over to Scotland at the end of the previous season while people were in Paris -- which isn't that far away -- and filming a bunch of exterior shots. When you watch the episode, it actually doesn't match that well. The Scottish footage is brown and sort of dead-looking because it was March, and when we moved to Vancouver, it was the height of summer, everything is beautifully lush and green, and there are these little bugs everywhere that were driving the actors crazy. And so when you watch the episode, you can really see the cuts, unfortunately. You can go, 'Scotland, Canada, Scotland, Canada.'

Well, the only thing I did was the, uh, all the title sequences that we went to Scotland for at the end of season three, which was a guerilla shoot, um, it really was, because we got to Scotland with a very small unit. We were supposed to have a helicopter the second day we got there, and we arrived that evening and realized that all the prime lenses had not been included in the package, which kind of gave us a little bit of a problem. So we said, "Okay, fine, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out." So eventually what we had to do -- there was nothing from Scotland that we could get. The nearest place to get it from was London, and there was nobody in London. So I called a friend of mine up, who got on a train -- picked the stuff up, got on a train, and was going to meet us there the following day.

In the meantime, we said, "Oh, we can create some other shots that are stock shots, flats that we don't have to move the camera with. Well, as would happen, on this fateful day, was that we got to the location and it already started getting a little misty. And I thought it was going to be a beautiful day, as it had been the day before. We suddenly realized we had none of the costumes that we needed for all the {bays}, they'd all been left back at the hotel, which was a ferry ride back to the hotel. So we somebody back to go and get it, and in the meantime we set up the first shot, which we were able to get off, and the stuff arrived. By the time the stuff arrived -- the clothes had arrived -- it had started to drizzle very slightly. And we had to do this one shot that was MacLeod on horseback, and it was this entire scenario of trying to get this day finished.

[to camera] Think about that. [smiles] Uh, yeah, we -- it was fun at the end of, uh, I guess that was season three. We had wrapped the finale out there underneath the Eiffel Tower. We, uh -- then they said they were going to go and shoot some second-unit in Scotland and I was able to convince Ken Gord into dragging me along. So we shot some outdoor scenes and things that, you know, [Scottish accent] you just cannae' get [normal voice] anywhere else. So it was great fun for me because the pressue was off. I just had to kind of walk through -- down a couple of paths and say a couple of things and talk with Adrian, and enjoy the [Scottish accent] Scottish hospitality and the real ale. [normal voice] Which I enjoyed quite a lot of.

In "Homeland", everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and a lot of things went wrong that we didn't even know could go wrong. For example, our local driver, Angus, who we ended up nicknaming "Wrong Turn Angus"... The rain, which was nonstop. Do you remember the fur cape that Adrian was wearing during that sequence? Well, when we got it from Angels, which is a rental company in London, the thing weighed about probably five pounds, 'cause it was a big, heavy fur cape. After four days of rain, the thing weighed about, somewhere probably in the three digits, you know. And we had no time to dry it out because we were all going back to Paris, back home. This was the end of the season. We sent it back in a box. A year later I ended up speaking to that fellow who worked at Angels in London, and he said it was the most disgusting return they'd ever had, so that's, you know, something. Tells you a little bit about how that show went.

I wanted to see this very big view of Scotland, and we had the camera in the helicopter, but the problem was that the -- there was a lot of moisture in the air. So the shot was -- what you see in "Homeland" is me riding away and seeing stuff in the background. Well, the idea was that the horse -- I was supposed to ride like this [holds up one hand] and the helicopter was supposed to come this way [brings other hand alongside and banks in front of first hand], and come in front of the horse. And I said to the guy with the horse, I said, you know, "I hope he's good around helicopters." The guy goes, "Aye, yeah, so do I." And I went, 'Oh, this is really reassuring,' you know?

So the only place we could do this particular shot was in a meadow where there were some sheep, because most of the area in Scotland where we were was all bog. You actually had to -- you sank into the ground if you touched it, and horses wouldn't go there. So we had to clear the path, go across a stream, lead the horse there, I get on the horse, and the helicopter was about two hundred feet -- two hundred yards back -- and we had no walkie-talkies. And so when we actually got off the ground, the idea was that the helicopter would flash me. Three flashes meant they were ready, and one long flash meant we were finished and we go back in.

So I'm on the horse, the helicopter comes up, I watch it, it flashes three times, and I'm off. And I'm hearing the helicopter coming and I'm holding onto the horse thinking, 'Please don't freak on me. Please don't freak on me.' So the helicopter goes past, and it's a beautiful shot. And I was like, 'Oh, great!' So they said, "Just do it again." I said, "Okay, fine. We'll do it again." Second time they came across, I'd eased up a little bit. This time the horse just went pfffffttt, like this, and just freaked off to the left. And I had a hard time holding him. And I pulled him back in, reined him in, but by that point I crossed the river much deeper, so I got wet from here downwards [indicates his legs (off camera)]. So I'm thinking, 'Okay, fine. I hope they got the shot.' We did it one more time. I was like "Great." Got back to base camp, and they said -- I said, "So did you get the shot?" And they said, "Well, I think we got water in our lens. You're going to have to do it again."

By this point it was beginning to rain quite hard, and I didn't want to get soaking wet before we'd really started the rest of the day, so I put an umbrella up, and the umbrella had a broken part at the top -- and I'm riding this horse, in period costume, long hair, holding an umbrella, in the highlands of Scotland. And I'm walking along and I see the wind go brrrt like this [flutters his hand] and I thought, 'You know what, I don't like the way this horse is reacting to this.' So I went to pull the umbrella down and suddenly a piece of wind took it, and it went brrrt and the horse bolted, and I didn't have him and I slid off the back of him and slid down this hill that was now muddy, on my back, and came to a rest at the bottom, watching the horse go back to its stalls about three hundred yards back where the trailers were. I trod back to the thing, muddy -- caked in mud from behind, and I go, "Did you get the shot?" and they said, "We're not sure. I think there's mud in the camera -- there's water in the camera." And I'm like, [sigh of disgust]. That was the first day of shooting, of my directorial debut, and the second day didn't go too much better, either. But that's a longer story, so we'll leave that alone.

I thought this one had the possibility. It turned -- I think it turned out to be a really good episode. Going into it, I thought it had the possibility of being our best episode. And it turned out to be good. The flashback, I thought, was fabulous. And I thought the woman who played Debra, and that scene where she's bathing by the water -- that could have been one of the sexiest scenes we've ever done on the show. I thought Adrian did quite a good job on the episode, which, you know, being the star of the show, he caught a little break -- he went sixty or seventy thousand dollars over budget, but that was okay because he was the star -- and the episode worked.

I thought Adrian was one of the best directors. He did ask for more, but every director asks for more, so we're used to that. We probably gave him a little more. He was well organized, he did his homework, he was totally professional. He didn't, you know, throw away the opportunity -- he took it and he did a great job. He was talented in every respect.

What was funny, when we came back -- now, Scotland in March can be pretty cold. [laughs] And so we -- and we were dressed for it when we did the shot. I mean, I was wearing a sweater, a sports jacket, a leather coat, and then an overcoat over that, a hat and a scarf and all this stuff all wrapped up. And then we came back and we had to shoot the closeups from some of these scenes here in Vancouver, up in the Greater Vancouver Regional District at Mt. Seymour there, and, uh, in the dead of summer, and dressed in all -- we had to match all this stuff. And you can see the scene where -- and the bugs were absolutely unbelievable. We had to, in between takes, we had to wear like the beekeeper's hats to keep the bugs off our -- And you can even see, in the closeups, bugs in your nose, 'cause they were just absolutely everywhere. It was like a weight-loss clinic, wearing all these clothes, and it was ninety-five degrees outside, so... These are the fun things in film-making.

"Homeland", yeah. There were actually four swordfights in that episode. One was the Scottish village one, but the main three were done with Viking weapons, and there are a lot of misconceptions about the way Vikings fought, because we're always looking back at the old movies of the 50s and the 60s. I thought it was a good opportunity to try and show Viking weapons used as they were supposed to be used. So I had, for instance, one scene where Carsten Norgaard's character of Kanwulf is wearing the shield on his back while he is using the axe with both hands, and then taking parries by turning his back into the blow, which was done on occasions.

In the fight in the woods, when the character of MacLeod kills Kanwulf, not knowing that he is an Immortal, there was one part where, when Kanwulf is backing him up, he takes a swing that misses and takes the top off a small tree stump. We had pre-cut a tree stump, and as Adrian was backing up, he backed up over top of this thing, so it passed in between the legs of the kilt, and Kanwulf takes a swing at this thing, and he took the top six inches off this stump, and it was then that I realized that it wasn't the stump that we had cut through. So this aluminum axe head had actually taken the top six inches off a stump about this big around [forms a circle with his thumbs and index fingers].

"Homeland" was a very interesting, fun show to do. It was Adrian Paul the star of Highlander's first directorial debut on the show. So consequently, he and I got to dialogue quite a bit about what he perceived the music should do, which was pretty rare, because in most series and episodic television, the composer and the director don't really talk that much. He and I got to talk extensively, and he had some particular views which helped me in defining the style of that particular show.

It was also an interesting show because it was the first time -- and only time -- in 'Highlander' that you will hear a uilleann pipe, which is a true Celtic sound. Because of the nature of the show and because of the fact that the character is going back to his birthplace, reminiscing about his first and only love, in whatever century it was -- I don't remember -- the sound of the uilleann pipe, and the actual Celtic sound of the uilleann pipe and flutes was essential to not only to the dramatic aspect of it, to the time period aspect of it. The challenge was, in fact, taking those Celtic instruments and molding them into a dramatic score.

Not only were they working in an ethnic, Celtic way, but they were working in a dramatic, emotional way as a film score.

The other interesting thing about this episode was it was the first time that the song "Bonny Portmore" was introduced and in relation to 'Highlander', "Bonny Portmore" is -- I guess you might call it a signature or a hit or if there is a theme, not reoccurring, that may be it. It's a very popular song with the fans. I myself get hundreds of emails, literally, about the particular piece, where can it be found, who sang on it, um, how it was used, why it was chosen. I don't quite remember why we chose it. I just know that I think it came from Bill Panzer, and I was given some lyrics and I think a piece of sheet music that was found in a UCLA -- a University of California -- archive, and I then had to recreate it. I had to cast a singer. I had to find a particular singer that could sing with a sort of angelic Celtic voice and tie all these things together, so that this particular piece, "Bonny Portmore", not only told the story of the show in its lyrics, but gave off an interesting romantic yet dramatic aspect to the movie.

The Quickening on "Homeland" -- I mean, you're limited when you're planning a Quickening. You've got to use what's there, and what's there is the location, for starters, and then you can -- you build on the location. So if you're in a place like, you know, a vase factory, obviously, you know, you can have a thousand vases exploding, and that's what you're going to get, and there's a lot to work with. In this case, story-wise, the Quickening had to be in the middle of a forest, and in the middle of a forest, you really have nothing to work with except trees. And I think the script called for -- I'm not sure. At this point they probably just had 'Quickening' because they would never sort of get into particulars -- they knew that we basically would, you know, work it out. But I guess the first idea -- first ideas were 'Well, obviously we'll have trees, you know, crashing down', and I don't know if you've ever tried to plant a tree and crash it down on a TV budget, but it ain't gonna happen, as David Abramowitz would say.

So I think what we did was just decide to go for some kind of simplicity, which can also be beautiful. And there was nothing to explode, really. So I think the moon -- I don't remember who's idea it was, but it was something that was spent to embellish what was really not one of the most spectacular Quickenings, simply because of the location. I don't think the moon was as bad as everybody else thinks. I'm trying to remember the actual shot -- it was just like a big -- a very, very big, very, like a really big -- moon, and sort of that looked like it was... probably too big. Was it -- was it colored? I don't remember. Just a big white moon. But it did become sort of a byword afterwords. If people wanted to bling something on post, they would say, "Remember the moon?" Yeah.

The only thing that disappointed me is in the -- was the casting of Kanwulf, the bad guy in the episode. He didn't 'pop' with a kind of luminescent presence. He was kinda 'there'. So I thought all the rest of the episode was great. I thought -- and we shot part of it in Scotland, which was incredible. We had cranes and helicopters and all of these things. It was a big episode. The flashback was incredible. We got to see Duncan with his family -- with his mother, with his father. We learned who he was and why he was who he was, and with this beautiful woman. It's not that I was -- I still consider it a wonderful episode, but it's kind of like -- going in, I thought we were going to win the lottery. We did win the lottery, there were just a hundred and fifty other people who won at the same time, so what you got out of it was a lot less than what you thought. But it was still nice to win.