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| Last updated: 10 June 2003 |
| The Gates of Paradise Part 1 Filmed in its entirety over a three hour period on the morning of Wednesday November 8th, 2000, The Gates of Paradise was an important turning point in the fortunes of CherryPie Productions for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it ended a long period of inactivity for the company, and was the first project made under the CherryPie banner since the Cartel video over a year previously; secondly, it reunited Stephen and Andy in a creative context that would lead directly to The Verisimilitude of All Literary Endeavours and ultimately to the salvation of Cassandra; and thirdly, it was a return to the thematics and literary origins of Admonition. Filmed as part of the DLIADT film and video production course, The Gates of Paradise marked the first time that Stephen had to direct a semi-professional crew made up of people outside the remit of CherryPie Productions. Shot without a budget, and using the college's Super-VHS camera and Nagra tape recorder, the film has an even stronger literary basis than Admonition, and although its narrative and symoblic systems are not quite as complex as CherryPie's debut film, The Gates of Paradise certainly shares many characteristcs with its predecessor. Idea Genesis: The earliest origins of the project which eventually became The Gates of Paradise can actually be found in the first year curriculum of the film and video course in the hated spawnpool of DLIADT. As a part of that course, all first year students had to write, produce, direct and edit their own short film, using the five people from their respective group as their crew, and with the only restrictions being that it had to be shot on Super-VHS within a three hour time limit. With all of this in mind, each student was given a specific remit for their film, with Stephen's being merely that the film had to be about a choice and use only two actors. This was all laid out in Septmber, immediately upon commencment of the course, with the various shoots to take place over a three week period after the Halloween mid-term in early November. As such, during September and October, Stephen got to work on an idea for his film. The immediate concept for the film began with merely an opening voiceover; no content, no theme, just a voice speaking, with no picture accompaniment. During the editing of Admoniton, the issue had been raised as to whether the film could begin on a black screen, with Dark Man's opening dialogue being used as a voiceover. This idea was rejected, but the idea stuck with Stephen, and, although he didn't actually have dialogue yet, he knew he wanted his latest film to begin this way. Upon realising how important this opening voiceover would have to be in setting up the themes of the film, there was only one course of action for Stephen. One of his favourite films is Terry Malick's The Thin Red Line, and Stephen has been profoundly influnencd by the use of voiceover in that film. Upon viewing Malick's masterpiece, Stephen hit on two particular voiceovers which he felt he could use; one was Ben Chaplin's character's musings on love, and how nothing can put out the fire of love; the other was Jim Caviezel's character's thoughts about all men being merely different sides of the same basic principal. Stephen took these concepts, combined them, altered them, and came up with the opening voiceover as it appears in the film; a voiceover which deals with the idea that love is merely a more potent form of lust, and that both lead to death (which is merely another form of life, and vice versa). From there, things developed fast. If love was merely lust, and if both led to death, then obviously a key player in this was going to be Satan, who introduced lust to man, and who was merely another side of God. This in turn led to an advancement on Nietzsche's theory that God is dead. In a world driven by lust, what role did God play? The answer is none. However, in such a world, Satan would be a key figure, he would, in fact, become God. However, if lust was present from the very first man, that could mean that God never really existed in the phenomenological world at all, hence we were Satan's to begin with; not only does God not exist any more, he never existed. From there, it was necessary to come up with something to visually and narratively represent all of these thematics in a film. It was at this stage that Stephen hit upon the concept of Urizen Leland and the Gates of Paradise. on to The Gates of Paradise page 2 back to home back to products links page |
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