House of Horrors (blog no.21)

Back track a few paces here and let's get some context on this calamity. When I got permission to shoot in this location there was a certain amount of ambiguity resonant on the atmosphere. Permission was got second hand so to speak via an intermediary agent working on behave of the owner. There was a delayed time frame in actually getting the go ahead in the first place, and so I had to hector the agent, by calling on the phone and into his office numerous times. Eventually and in my presence the owner was contacted over the phone and the request articulated to him in a digested form, by this I mean, down playing the matter to be fair as a favour to me in order to assist with furthering my project, and done sincerely as the man trusted me and knows my family, so he was pretty sure the house would be returned as we found it, and this was a given. I did ask the agent there and then if I could speak with the owner on the phone as I had no idea who he was, and wanted to explain what it was we had in mind. As far as he was concerned a film was being shot in the house, FAS were involved and some of the guys renting the premises were also involved, and that was it, but as I had mentioned to the agent and apologized for badgering him, I had a lot of people to deal with and flights to book and it all hinged around this location, hence my urgency. I left there with a green light.

Since then the house was slowly transformed as carefully as possible, this entailed hanging new wall paper over all the original wallpaper and then painting that to the tones we required, also inevitably painting over the walls and doors to generate the desired aesthetic feel, when we would finish shooting those changes would be utterly erased and a newly painted house once again back to it's original condition, or better as the paint work had by now aged considerably. There were other adjustments which I cannot mention simply because knowledge of these would affect the plot for any readers, but once again whatever we worked in the new was a cosmetic adaptation designed specifically to be easily reversed.


And now we were in a stew, the owner had shown up to see what was going on, and I suspect this was due to him being alerted by a neighbour to the fact that a serious commotion was in process about his premises. The morning of the first day I strolled over on seeing one of the neighbours get into his car and had a chat with him about what was going on, the location is situated about 35 yards from his grounds. He was not a happy camper, as he had had problems with certain flack that had spun off from various individuals leaving late night parties at the house, and this man was particularly angry I can tell you, so I had to assure him of our professional intentions, we exchanged numbers and I told him should he have any reason for complaint to call me and I will deal with it immediately. We were going to have a generator running for potentially 16 hours a day in his vicinity, and I was anxious that this be as quiet as possible, it was still not in place by that time as we had only just established the need for a different model. And as the county of Kerry is not a usual haunt for film industry activity, we had to get van's on the road to travel almost 300Km simply to get extra lights from Ardmore Studios in Bray, County Wicklow, and the generator was 150Km away, most essential film related materials that were requested required a significant amount of energy and expenditure to accumulate.

Back to the racing Merc and frantic phone calls as Alan and I headed for the location. I suggested we take an alternative route to speed the process up and by that decision we actually came across the owner in his car. By that time as Alan is a car aficionado, Alan had established who owned the house simply by asking Daithi what car was he driving and what was the registration, there and then he knew the man, and had had dealings with him in the past, and low and behold we crossed paths on the road and so stopped and got out to have a chat. I had spoken with him over the phone while he was on set, I introduced myself, informed him who I was, and told him that I was on my way, but in the mean time he had left and said to Daithi that he would be back at 6 O'clock. He seemed quiet relaxed and approachable sitting his car with the window down as both Alan's exchange simple pleasantries, then Alan mentioned that it was he that was involved with the Film, and so it was simply left that he would be up there soon and we would talk about it. Alan and I jumped into the car and arrived to the front door to a sudden stop, where everyone had gathered dump struck, despondent and utterly confused.

There was a certain element of arriving like the 7th cavalry or deus ex machina about this entrance, as this was a very serious situation, and it had to be surmounted right away. To date nothing has stopped the gallop of this production, while many high fences were thrown in our path, we cleared them all. This was a massive barbed fence, a moot, and a cliff hanger all in one. It was going to take a whole bag of inspired words and actions to get around this problem. And there stood Alan and I being looked too by the entire, crew, cast, extras, and the dogs with anxious eyes, as I simply said "we will get this sorted." and they all cheered and clapped as all everyone wanted to do was get on with making this movie happen. And no one had traveled all this way and put so much time and energy into this for us to be slapped down on the first day of shooting. Daniel was in a state of semi-despair and saying as he has done on numerous occasion "I knew it, it was all to good to be true! I knew something would go wrong." and I would retort, "that's bollocks! this movie is going to get made." and somehow I knew he felt a certain comfort from my big, bold, brash, belligerence, but deep down he seemed to always be prepared for the worst possible disappointment. And I wasn't having any of it.

Now what! we wait, and some people took the time to play swing ball on the lawn and smoke cigarettes and enjoy the sunshine. A representative of the agent arrived on set and I shook his hand and made some preliminary introductions, we walked him to see what the commotion was all about and he was pretty shocked and impressed by what it was we had undertaken, the house had on the surface of things been transformed but as we pointed out all things had been done with serious consideration involved, and steps had been taken with regard to returning the house to it's pre-horror-movie self. He left and returned about 10 minutes later with the owner and the main agent who I had been dealing with from day one, this was it, we had to explain and satisfy our position to a man who had been taken for six by the extent of our vision for his up until then reasonably domestic setting. I shook his hand, and we exchanged a few words then his team, Alan, Daithi and I walked into what was now a Film Set, with an impressive array of equipment, a dolly set up, lights, stands, cables, the beautiful sight of the Red Camera kitted out to the full, and the hallmarks of what seemed an unrecognizable interior as our setting for this pow wow which was about to get heated to the point of combustion. Christ! this is just our very first day of operations, what the hell have we got ourselves in for???