Colleen Ochab: lighting director for countless theatre productions, original president of the film club SPLICE, and, sadly, a senior in her final semester at Carthage College. But, she’s not going to leave without a bang. As a communication major, Colleen had to complete her senior thesis in the fall, but instead of writing a paper, she created a documentary about her workplace and coworkers at Medieval Times Dinner Theater.
HC: Can you just tell me a little bit about your documentary?
CO: It’s an hour-long film that I made about Medieval Times dinner and tournament Chicago, and I’ve worked at that company for about three years now. So, I really wanted to capture the feeling of what it’s like to work there because it’s not like a McDonalds where you come in for your shift and you only know the people that are on your shift… instead, you come in and you all do the show, so it’s all 120 of us and we work at the same time every single day and you really get to know each other and it becomes a family.
And [I wanted to] essentially just show off those things that people don’t get to see a lot, so sound and lighting, the food servers and what their job is, the stable team, the falconers… a lot of the things that people don’t see in the show. They just see the actors and the joust and the horsemanship, but they don’t get to see what goes on behind the scenes.
HC: And this project was for your senior thesis, right?
CO: It was for my senior thesis in communication. Usually, you have to write a paper, but they were kind enough to let me do a film, and the school said 20 minutes and the company wanted an hour so… I think that’s kind of a funny thing. I’m glad the company did that. I interviewed 18 people – knights, squires, kings, a princess at the time because we weren’t on this new show with the queen… food servers, sound and lighting technicians, stable people, falconers – like I got to really just talk with my coworkers and form better relationships with them and I got to stand in the stables and film. And I was like, “Okay… this might be where I’m meant to be.” So, it kind of helped me figure out where I’m going to be at the castle if I stay.
HC: What was your inspiration for doing this? Was it just working there or specifically other employees wanting their story to be told?
CO: I’ve wanted to work at Medieval Times since I was, like, four. So, just to kind of show the workplace that I have wanted to work at so long and I get to be apart of and it’s beyond my imagination of what it was going to be like and I wanted to show that off. I interviewed a woman who’s worked there for 25 years and so I knew she had great stories and had seen times change there too… So I wanted to capture those moments throughout time and how everyone’s story builds on each other.
HC: Why Medieval Times?
CO: I wanted to be a knight. I was always, as a kid, obsessed with fantasy, medieval fantasies, things like that. Those are the books I’d read and the movies I’d watch. And we’d drive past the castle in Schaumburg, and I was like, “Mom, I want to work there. I want to be a knight of the realm.” And she was like, “Okay. Good luck.” She tried to support me, but she was right. There are no women in those roles, but I got to work there in some capacity and it makes me happy to be apart of the show and put on my accent and talk to people like we’re in the Middle Ages … It’s just the whole experience; it’s a lot of fun.
HC: Are you behind the scenes? What do you do at Medieval Times?
CO: I am a sound and lighting technician. I run a spotlight; that’s what I originally got hired to do, but then I learned the light board, the soundboard, so [I’m] doing the actual bigger parts of the show – running the microphones, things like that. And recently I got hired as a sound and lighting coach as well, so I train all the new people who come in. It’s hard to get people [into character]; it’s something you have to drill into people. I also work the museum of torture where I sell tickets to the “dungeon” and I like that too because I can talk about the horses and I’ve always liked horses. I kind of get involved everywhere. I’m also a marketing, kind of, associate. I run some marketing events on my own where I take a knight and go to C2E2 and sell tickets.
Photo courtesy of Colleen Ochab
HC: Are you working on any new projects right now?
CO: I was filming the lake as a daily thing as kind of a farewell to living in Kenosha since I’m gonna be leaving. I tried, but then school got rough, so I stopped. But we’re going to try to keep doing it as the weather gets nicer. I’m not really sure. I’ve got a drone in my back pocket, so I think maybe more drone work.
HC: What are your plans for after graduation?
CO: Maybe after graduation I’ll transfer to stables or… I got auditioned as Queen. So, we don’t know where the road’s going to go.
HC: Would you want to stay at Medieval Times or do more documentary and film work?
CO: I think both. Medieval Times is a very stable paycheck for me, so I think I’d want to keep that as much as possible, and it’s nights and weekends, so that leaves all day for me to do my own film work. I can do my own creative video creation but have a stable job with an insurance plan… we’re actually opening a new castle in Phoenix in early 2019, so I’m in the mix with potentially moving out there. We don’t know about those jobs yet, but I think that’d be exciting to help a new castle get started and be apart of creating that new environment that I was talking about in the documentary in Chicago.
HC: What was it like trying to get permission to do this? What was that conversation like?
CO: The thesis thing was very important because I don’t think, otherwise, Medieval Times would let me do it. It was a little bit difficult. I started in March 2017, so the spring of my junior year, just talking to them. It was academic so I think they were a little kinder to me about doing it because I was graduating, but it did have to go through the General Manager of my company, so I had to have a meeting with him and then he sent it on to the head of marketing at Corporate Castle in Dallas.
She had to approve it all and pass it back through. It was a lot of administrator approval every step of the way. If I was going to interview a knight I had to ask the head knight and get approval throughout the ranks every single time. That’s the only thing with the corporation; everything has to be approved from the top down. I didn’t find out until June that they were okay with it. I filmed June, July, August… every day throughout my work schedule, and I was working 40 hours a week at the time. So I was there about 60 hours a week.
HC: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
CO: It’s going to a film festival in November! The company approved me to send it in… it’s called Equis Film Festival, so it’s equestrian only. Videos, music videos, documentaries, full feature films all about horses in some capacity. It’s going there. The woman who runs the festival… her horse was trained through our Master of Horses’ barn. So, it’s going to be in the festival, and it might be featured quite heavily too.
HC: Does the documentary focus on horses a lot?
CO: It’s kind of impossible to focus on Medieval Times without focusing on the horses. They are the stars of the show, and if we didn’t have them the show would look stupid. When I interview the knights and have B roll of them, they’re normally on horseback like practicing their sword fight or things like that, and I interviewed the stable team, so there’s a good amount. It’s not horse-focused, but because the company is, I think it worked out.
Colleen may not know where the road is going to, but it certainly seems to be going toward success.
Rep image courtesy of Colleen Ochab