Making history - the Cathedral scenes

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:39:39 > Production

I've been editing the scenes we shot in the Cathedral and visually they look great.  There's something about the space that I think helped everyone on the day.  Chris and AJ might turn around and say that I'm talking a load of rubbish (actually, they'd probably use stronger language than that), you'd have to ask them, but there is an energy in the scenes that makes them play very nicely.

I think the fact that the Cathedral was open to the public helped.  This was a conscious decision because Susan MacLeod, the Operations Manager there, said they would close it for us if we wanted.  We decided against this because throughout the whole film we always wanted it to feel as real as possible.  Reality was a word used constantly on set and in all filming preparation. 

Susan was fantastic at making the location work for us.  It took about two months of correspondence and meetings before we were granted permission to be the first feature film ever to be allowed to film in the Cathedral.  It would have been very tempting to make the scenes in there look very grand, but Dave and I were committed to keeping the style of the film consistent and relevant to what was happening between the actors in the scene.  So, even though we're in that fantastic building, the look is still raw and intense.  Hopefully we've done it justice, time will tell.

A huge thanks to Susan, the staff and volunteers at the Cathedral and to The Dean Of Worcester, The Very Reverend Peter Atkinson, for not throwing me out of his office as I began to explain the story and for ultimately giving us the green-light.

- Si