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| The Gates of Paradise Part 3 Other important elements of the production package included a synopsis of the screenplay, a treatment (what the film hoped to achieve and how it hoped to achieve it), a list of possible production problems and their potential solutions, notes on the projected visual style of the film and how it would be achieved, details of production design, costume requirments, call sheets (for cast and crew), casting descriptions, location letters (asking for permission to shoot in the required locations), prop lists, crew lists, equipment lists and location lists. Of course, before much of this could be put together, two very important things had to be sorted out - cast and locations. Fortunately enough, both proved to be easy to sort out. For the role of Urizen, Stephen was put in touch with Annie Murphy, a girl who knew a friend of his from St. Pat's. Annie had limited acting experience but was keen on the project, and after reading the screenplay and discussing the film she agreed to do it. Casting Philip was almost as straight forward, but would ultimately prove to be far more important. Stephen originally contacted Neil about the role, but he was unavailable, so Stephen then approached Andy, who was more than willing to help. Without realising it at the time, Stephen and Andy were about to bring CherryPie Productions back to life. As for locations, everything went pretty much without a hitch. For the nightclub toilet scene, Stephen got permission to use the toilets in the IQ nightclub across the road from DLIADT, while for the castle scenes, he decided to use the ruins of Monkstown Castle just five minutes away from the college by car. He originally wanted to actually see Phillip opening and entering the gate, but the keys were located in Lusk, and to acquire them would have been impossible given the tight shooting schedule. Thus with crew and locations sorted out, and with the five crew members being assigned their specific roles, it was merely a case of waiting fot the shooting date of November 8th. CherryPie Productions was back in business. Production: The shoot of The Gates of Paradise took place from 10am to 1pm on the morning of Wednesday, November 8th, 2000. The crew comprised of Vanessa Durigon as DP and camera operator, Alan Byrne as camera assistant and clapper, Alan Butler as AD and srcipt supervisor, Lee Cronin as sound recordist, and Mark Barry as boom operator. Liam Cronin, the course co-ordinator of the film department, also turned up on set for a little while, but despite this, everything pretty much went fine. All the interior scenes were shot first, with Phillip's opening voiceover being recorded in the club, due to reasonably good acoustics, and all the toilet stuff being recored immediately afterwards. Although practical lighting was used in the toilets, a tungsten red head filtered through a 3/4 blue gel was also used to create the right tonal effect. As for the scene when the man tries to get into the toilets (the man was played by Alan Butler incidently), this was filmed using the same door that Urizen and Phillip come through, and was lit exclusively by the practical disco lighting in the club itself. With the interior stuff wrapped, the team headed down to Monkstown Castle to record all the exteriors. All the geography shot were recorded first, with no sound, and then the scene itself was filmed. Originally, this scene was going to include some frantic editing, but by the time the team reached the castle, there was no way they would be able to record all the coverage they needed, and still finish for 1 o'clock, so Stephen decided to do a long uncut shot instead, although the ECUs all remained as per the screenplay. Then, with all the footage shot, Lee and Mark recorded some atmos for the geography shots, and The Gates of Paradise was a wrap. Three points worth noting about the exterior stuff is that if Urizen looks cold, it is because Annie Murphy is bloody freezing (it was November, and look at what she is wearing for God sake); there is a fairly clear boom mike at the top of the screen at one stage during the long shot; the zoom into the door which keeps Urizen on screen left as she too walks towards it took 8 takes to get right. And with that, The Gates of Paradise was ready to edit. Postproduction: The first element of the film to be tackled in postproduction was the music. While the film didn't have an actualy soundtrack like Admonition, half of it was supposed to be set in a nightclub, so some form of music was going to be necessary. Immediately after shooting, Stephen and Mark got into the sound studio in DLIADT and using some crappy piece of dance music software, they threw together a two minute piece of horrenously bad dance music to play on the track. Next thing to do was transfear the sound rushes from Nagra onto BETA, and the picture from Super-VHS onto BETA (as in the high tech world of DLIADT, they only allowed first year students access to linear BETA editing machines (which were about half as good as the machines which Stephen and Andy had used to edit Admonition. So, with the picture and sound rushes tranferred and synced, and the music also transferred over to BETA, it was time to edit. And this is where the DLIADT people really came into their own. on to gates of paradise page 4 back to products links page back to gates of paradise page 2 back to home |
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| Last updated: 12 June 2003 |