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Company History Part 5 After the Admonition premier, CherryPie Productions experienced a long period of inactivity. Martin completed his job working for USI, Ailish was made permanent in her new library job, Neil completed second year, Andy continued work with a new band and Stephen got his B.A. As the summer months rolled on, the majority of the company had no professional contact at all, with the exception of Stephen and Andy, who met to discuss Andy's short screenplay, The Last Man. Andy wanted Stephen to direct the piece at some stage in the future, a job which Stephen accepted, but due to lack of funds and crew, the project was put on the long finger. A New Home At the end of his time in Pat's, Stephen had decided that instead of doing the English Master's that many people seemed keen on him doing, he would instead apply to the film course in DLIADT. In early August 2000, he was offered a place and he accepted. With Ailish no longer in Pat's, with Andy not in college at all, with Neil dedicated to getting his finals and with contact between Martin and the other members almost non existent due to his travels, Stephen was effectively running the company alone and, erego, when he moved to Dun Laoghaire, the compnay moved with him, and set up residence in the new college, subsequently to become hell on earth for Stephen personally, if not the company in general. Before that however, it wasn't long before a new project was on the horizon. As part of his course, Stephen had to script, produce, direct and edit a short film using college equipment and other students as crew members. As such, Stephen set about creating The Gates of Paradise, an extremely ambitious 5 minute film which had to be shot in only three hours, using two locations, a cast of three and a crew of six (including Stephen). For his actors Stephen turned first to Neil to play the lead role, but Neil, busy working with Martin on a play outside of the CherryPie arena, declined the offer, and so Stephen approched Andy about the project. For the lead female role, Stephen looked to someone new. A friend of his had put him in touch with a young woman called Annie Murphy, who, although she had only done stage acting before, was very interested in the project. Stephen let her read the screenplay, discussed the character with her and offered her the role. She accepted, and the film was ready to roll. The Gates of Paradise was shot on November 8 and proved to be a great learning experience for Stephen, as he had never directed a crew of that size before. From an acting point of view, Andy also found it valuable to see how a professional crew operated, and to see first hand some of the more troublesome but, paradoxically, enjoyable elements of film making - setting up lights and gels, getting the boom mike in the right position, getting light readings, using filters, dealing with a bunch of retarded eijits who have an IQ of 10 between them (that would be 4/5 of the 5 man crew - Mark Barry is not included in this appraisal), and so on. Stephen immediately began to edit the film but, due to time on the equipment being at a premium, and the fact that the powers that be in the college were beyond incompetent, he was able only to complete the picture edits and the preliminary sound mix. The piece was critiqued by the film department in the college and was, for the most part, lauded. Specific mentions where made of the excellent casting and performances (by a casting agent no less), and the vague but enticing opening first half of the film, although the second half was criticised somewhat for letting the narrative wander. Almost as soon as The Gates of Paradise was completed, Stephen was given another assignment - the dreaded personal vision project, to be made over the Christmas holidays with no crew, no lighting set ups, no external sound gear, and no guidance. For several weeks he worked on ideas, jettisoning such projects as Creeper and Personal Apocalypse, before finally settling on The Verisimilitude of all Literary Endeavours. Inspired by comments from the department that his works, including The Gates of Paradise and two screenplays which the department had rejected financing (The Dream and The Death of the Intellect), were too literay based, Stephen decided to make a film was wasn't just about literture, but would actually be impossible to understand without a very strong literary background. The first clash between CherryPie Productions and the hated demon spawns of DLIADT was about to begin. Go to page 6 Back to page 4 Back to home |
