Ghosts in the Woods
The lovely Mr. Andrew Croskery is soon to move to London (North or South, I’m not sure) and, to close accounts here, he wanted to put together his directorial debut. It was to be (and, by Jove! It is!) a heart-rending tale of sepia-tinged sentiment, scored by no less a composer than Mr. Chopin, and telling the story of lovers torn apart by death and self-interest amongst the beauty and beauties of our own Belfast.
Of these beauties, debutante, Ms. Geraldine Boyle, deserves special notice as the Wife. The handsome auteur, Mr. Croskery, plays the role of Male Lead with surprising tenderness and, in textural counterpoint to the beauty of cast and locale, I, myself, took the role of Mephistopheles, giving the most sullen-eyed performance since Herr Schreck. Ms. Boyle’s mother’s wedding dress plays itself.
Filming was conducted at a leisurely pace on Sunday May 17th 2010, starting at the Balmoral cemetery, where we met Mr. McMorrow, our charming director of photography. The cemetery itself was locked, according to the logic that the swish middle-classes are too busy brunching on Sunday morning to drop a flower or knee by a loved one’s grave. We decamped, instead, to the less picturesque Milltown cemetery, where, under the auspices of the Starry Plough of the Socialist Republicans and the Blessed Virgin up a tree, we captured Mr. Croskery’s touching opening shot. Were we granted the extravagance of widescreen, you would see to the left, to the right, and all the way around, monuments to balaclava-ed men, Polish soldiers, and the hulking, incongruent orange of Sainsbury’s Falls Road branch.
Everything else was filmed, between showers, by the Lagan towpath – along the rusted pipe, follow the river, cross the bridge, through the woods, and over the stile. Ingenuity of shot allowed a single, secluded area to double for locations across space and time; for everything else, there were other places. The seclusion of our main set was much prized by others too, but clever editing cuts them out of shot. Note Ms. Boyle’s brisk, but lissom exit, beating a family of bicyclists’ approaching careen into the camera; she doesn’t break character. And not all of Mr. Croskery’s dramatic bounds were scripted. And, though filming never stopped for rain, production slowed for twenty minutes as a dog chased a duck and her ducklings energetically through the water, neither party willing to cede to exhaustion.
Unlike duck or dog, we gave in by early afternoon, but, by then, all we needed was in the can. Although, the can was too deceptively small and plastically-moulded for my liking.
It is all out of the can now and has been uploaded already to The Tales Of The… For your convenience, I may embed it here, if I can, but you must promise to visit the parent website out of politeness.
Well, no, that’s not exactly how I wanted it.
