| It is a warm and sunny day. Everything seems perfect. The school is buzzing with talk of a romance that has blossomed between two popular pupils – Bray and Trudy. Bray is a year older than Trudy but they are in love and both couldn`t be happier at the way things are goingŠBut there are some things that look like changing Bray and Trudy`s happiness – the “virus” is spreading and Bray`s parents are not well. And Bray`s younger brother, Martin, has a crush on Trudy – and is jealous of Trudy and Bray`s loveŠ
Look into the past – what do you see? Let`s go back to October 1999. Tribe Series 2 had started production the previous month and all the main cast were filming scenes in Series 2 involving some new characters – Danni, Alice, Ellie – and some new “bad” characters – the Guardian, and his Tribe called The Chosen. Fans who have seen beyond episode 8 of Tribe Series 1 will know what the destiny of Zoot is and what happens to him. But in October 1999, Daniel James (ZOOT) was back at the Cloud 9 production centre and was reading scripts and learning lines.
“It was a weird and challenging experience” says Daniel James, “because first of all when we did the flashback scenes it had been a while since I had played Zoot. But the opportunity to play the transformation from Martin to Zoot was fantastic”. Dwayne Cameron (BRAY), Meryl Cassie (EBONY) and Antonia Prebble (TRUDY) were still portraying their regular characters in the series – did it feel weird, fun, challenging to all of a sudden play their characters in a different way? … “The experience was all of the above” says Dwayne Cameron. “Basically, you go in focused on your character, the situation they are in and the surrounding people/characters in the scene. The only real difference in this future is the priorities like food and shelter, et cetera – not TV, phone calls and shopping”. Did you have to act differently to take account of the playing the same character but younger and in different circumstances?
And for Bray? “I played him a lot more innocent and untouched” says Dwayne Cameron. “I played him wise still, but more like the average teenager of today. He was worldly – but more like a lot of teenagers, in a little bubble”. |
This is all Pre-Tribe – the storyline that took place “before the virus”. There are many backstory elements in Tribe Series 2 that look at how Bray, Ebony, Zoot, Trudy, Ryan and Lex all lived before society changed into the world of the Tribes.In this article, we have spoken with Dwayne Cameron (BRAY) and Daniel James (ZOOT) about filming their backstory scenes in Tribe Series 2.
This is because Daniel was going to film his character Zoot (who was called Martin before the virus) – and more than that, show how “Martin” became “Zoot”, and how the Locos and their philosophy of “Power and Chaos!` was born.
“Well, it wasn`t so much the fact that the character was younger but Martin is virtually a completely different person to Zoot” says Daniel James, “so yes I did have to act differently because Martin is much more innocent and definitely less streetwise than Zoot is”.