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| Last updated: 4 June 2003 |
Admonition Part 2 Production: On Sunday 14 March 1999, Martin, Neil, Ailish and Stephen met in St. Pat's college to construct the white room on the college's stage. After several hours work it was completed to everybodies satisfaction. The following week, two meetings of cast and crew ensued to ensure eveything was ready to roll and, on Friday 19 March, in the White Room set, at 8:00pm, Admonition began principle photography. This proved to be an extremely important night. Debbie Molloy was introduced to the team by Ailish and took on a huge work load (later she would become a producer, later still a co-editior, although in the end she did not receive a credit, except for a walk-on roll in the film itself). Also, Stephen and Ailish had several large rows, which cleared the air for the rest of the shoot, and, furthermore, everybody realised how long and boring the filmmaking process actually was. The team shot until 4:30 in the morning, completing all of White Man's interior scenes, but they recorded about 20 minutes of footage, illustrating the arduousness of the process. The controlled interior conditions, complete with the stage lighting gear was a perfect environment in which to begin the shoot, as it allowed people to settle into their respective roles, become accustomed with the processes and generally get to grips with things without being in a hectic exterior or an unnecessarily time pressured atmosphere. The next day of shooting was Tuesday 23 March. In the afternoon, one shot of the park scenes was filmed (the one where the kid waves to Dark Man) in St. Anns in Dollymount, while later on that night, the team travelled to Colaiste Mhuire in the city centre to shoot the threesome. Not actually having official permission to film in the school, the team had gained acces through Andy Bertaut, who worked as a cleaner in the building at the time. A difficult scene to shoot for all concerned, Ailish did most of the directing and, mainly due to the fact that it was freezing and that the two actresses had very little clothes on, the team got in and out as quickly as possible. The next day, Wednesday, saw a huge amount of material shot. Not only were all of the pub shots done in the Cat and Cage, but one of the three opening shots was completed in High Park - the very shot that had started the ball rolling several months previously, the opening dialouge scene. On Thursday, all of the scenes that needed to be shot in Pat's were completed, such as the library scene and the bookshop scene, while Friday saw the remaining two opening shots being filmed (which hadn't been completed due to the running out of light on Tuesday). There was also a hasty shooting of one shot in the white room (Grey Man removing of the white shirt from the bed). The room had actually been dismantled by that stage, and Karol was unavailable, so the team simply got one of their sheets, propped it up against the wall, flung some white sheets over a table and drew a snake on Neil's arm to allow him to double as Karol. If you pay attention, you'll see two white room scenes where the light is different from all the rest, this is one. On Saturday, after Neil turned up two hours late for the shoot, it started to rain, and the team had to keep stopping and starting the bus stop scenes to try to maintain some form of continuity of light. (Funny story - if you look at the last bus stop scene and try to ignore Karol as 'The Man Who Cannot Fold A Pram', check out the woman at the back of the shot, who did so well to try to ignore all these students who were so obviously filming illegally at her bus stop). After several hours the shoot was complete, including the original ending of the film (the Grey Man pram scene), and the team moved onto Stephen's house where the white bathroom, the hallucination living room and the dream seduction were all filmed. Sunday 28 was the last day of principle photography and it proved to be by far the most eventful day of the shoot, plus the day when the teams good luck ran out completely. First of all, the clocks had gone forward the night before and half the crew forgot about it, so most of them were an hour late. Neil was, of course, over three hours late. By the time he arrived, one scene was already supposed to have been completed, the flashback couple, and the actor in the scene (Finbar Meehan, who had worked on Oedipus: A Context and had been cast last minute) had told us he would have to leave immediately after shooting. Thus he had gone before we had even left for the location. With Ailish unavailble due to a bad flu, and with Martin not in attendence until later in the day, Stephen and Debbie were the only two crew members around. After trying an older uncle to replace Finbar, Stephen called Andy, who was about twenty years too young for the part, but who was the onlt person who could be secured with such short notice (this later proved to be a blessing in disguise). After several hours of travelling (Stephen, Debbie and Andy had gotten the bus and somehow managed to get lost), the team eventually arrived at St. Ann's Park to complete the film. One of the scenes being shot was the scene with the kids (the flashback scene), who were to be provided by Neil's aunt who lived just down the road. Of course upon arriving on location, Neil was there, but no kids. They had the flu and so the kid scene was dropped completely. To add to the problems there was a fierce wind blowing that day, which would make the waving scene shot earlier difficult to match up with the scene with which it was to be cut, but that was beyond the teams control. So they began shooting. And what a shoot. The first scene, the flashback couple went off without a hitch (despite having no children), but the next scene was not quite so easy. The scene was the one were Dark Man stands at the wall of the park and then walks off. With Stephen on camera standing to Neils left and then panning around to the left to follow the walk, it should have been a simple shot, but not with Andy around. He was unaware that Stephen was panning left and so ended up standing directly in shot, just inside the park wall. Of course, he assumed that by charging behind a tree nobody would notice him, making for one of the funniest outtakes of the entire shoot. go on to Admonition page 3 back to Admonition page back to products links page back to home |
