Old Weapon, New Fight

ROCKBRIDGE BATHS -- If you've seen the Lord of the Rings movies or last year's Kingdom of Heaven, you may recall scenes that featured a trebuchet. It's the bigger and more destructive cousin to the catapult, an ancient artillery device that heaves boulders at opposing fortresses with surprising accuracy.

Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times Emmy award-winning filmmaker Scott Wegener enlisted the help of Virginia Military Institute professors to feature a working trebuchet in his upcoming film Beowulf: Prince of Geats. Proceeds from the movie will benefit the American Cancer Society.

When Cincinnati filmmaker Scott Wegener set out to make a movie based on the 10th-century Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, about a medieval prince bent on ridding the land of evil, his search for a trebuchet brought his film crew to Rockbridge County.

Enter Virginia Military Institute professors Grigg Mullen and Wayne Neel. Mullen, Neel and some of their VMI colleagues and cadets, along with members of the Timberframers Guild of North America, built one of the few trebuchets in the country back in 1997 as part of a lesson on medieval weaponry.

Since then, the school's trebuchet has popped up in an Ice House beer commercial and a television episode of Nova.

It was the Nova show about ancient weapons technology that caught Wegener's attention. The show appears routinely on the History Channel. In the credits, Wegener saw Mullen's name and contacted him about shooting footage of the trebuchet in action.

Mullen said he receives calls every few months about the mighty device.

"The word's out that Mullen has a trebuchet," he said.

Wegener's film isn't a big-budget picture expected to surge to number one at the box office. After losing his mother and uncle to cancer, the four-time Emmy award-winning Wegener decided to make a film and use the promotions and DVD sales to raise $1 million for the American Cancer Society.

Mullen hasn't rolled out the VMI trebuchet since 1998, in part because of the labor involved in setting up the dozens of wooden pieces that make up the 35-foot-tall weapon.

But like others associated with the project, Mullen and some friends agreed to donate their time to the movie and set up the trebuchet over the weekend. On Tuesday, they labored under the hot sun to fire the contraption in a hay field not far from Mullen's timber-frame home just outside Lexington.

Wegener's film crew arrived Monday night, and with the help of a few local actors, the Beowulf set was operational by morning.

A trebuchet works by cranking down the throwing arm using a rope wound around wooden axles. When the rope is pulled free, the arm snaps forward because of a counterweight weighing thousands of pounds.

It repeatedly launched a 90-pound, black painted boulder with VMI initials on it about 150 yards into the hay field with impressive force Tuesday afternoon, making a sound like a screaming elephant as the wooden arm swayed back and forth after releasing its projectile.

Mullen is respectful of the trebuchet's destructive power.

"I kind of make it real clear that we're going to do it safely. And I won't be pushed into something I don't think is safe," he said. "It was built as a weapon 500 years ago, and nobody has repealed the laws of physics."

Wegener wasn't able to make the trip to see the trebuchet, but Eric Scott, an associate producer of the film who stood in as acting director, was happy with the results.

"I'm absolutely thrilled with what we're getting here," he said. "The quality of what they've done is just going to lend so much production value to what we could have even considered doing."

All of the footage shot Tuesday will be computer enhanced to remove the rolling hills of Rockbridge County and insert footage of Norway, to be shot next month.

The film is expected to be completed by March of next year and to be released through National Public Television.

Wegener said by phone that he hopes the project will make a difference with cancer research.

"This was a good opportunity to give this disease a kick in the teeth," he said.

On the Net: www.princeofthegeats.com