MAKING OF

Reputation was a catalogue of bad conditions for making a no-budget movie. Twenty-nine speaking parts, extras, a lot of locations, it was a law film and law films need trained, experienced actors.

I was exceptionally fortunate in my first move. I had never met Paul Nugent when I approached him about playing the protagonist Ben Daly. It was demanding part and Paul was ideal, a very experienced actor who could realise both the legal professional and vulnerability needed to play Ben. Paul was enthusiastic, he got the script, not just the story and his part but what it was about. It turned out that he had studied Law at one point! I had preliminary ideas about casting and retained some of them but Paul was able to introduce to me to a lot of excellent and experienced actors – including his incredibly talented wife, Anna – and it made a huge difference.

For a project that worked solely on a profit-share basis, the degree of commitment both cast and crew brought was remarkable. In spite of the difficulties of a very limited budget and a first-time director still working out his approach, the dedication was incredible – people prepared, paid attention to detail, were patient with upsets, delays, reshoots. And both cast and crew were a terrific group of people to work with, everyone mingled and got on. There were some long, exhausting days but it was a lot of fun.

LAST DAY OF SHOOTING: (Left to right) Sophia Lyons, Alan Poulard, Daniel Martin, Paul Nugent, Christopher O’Sullivan, Grace Curry, Anna Nugent, Philip Curry collapsed in chair in front.

LOCATIONS

Trinity College Dublin, where I had worked for many years, agreeing to me filming on campus was another big boost. The university is a treasure trove of interesting locations, old and new. The administrative and security staff of the College were terrific and helped me out of some very tight spots. 

Daniel Costello as Chief Prosecutor. This room is part of a very impressive Victorian-era bank owned by Trinity College. The chandeliers are out of shot. This is upstairs in the bank, obviously a former manager’s office or a room for entertaining the filthy rich.
Esther Woods as private barrister Lydia Kyle being recruited by Tim Casey (rear). This is in the rooftop annex to the Arts Building, filming here was courtesy of both Trinity College and Trinity Research in the Social Sciences (TRISS).

THE SCORE

Close to the final day of shooting actor Bar Reddin suggested I approach a composer friend of his, Phil McClean, about scoring the film. Initially I was cautious. Time and energy were in high demand and, depending on the individual, collaborating with someone on a score could require a lot of both. I listened to some of Phil’s tracks and really liked the atmosphere. Phil is a musician more generally but he has a specific interest in film scoring and that makes a big difference. As it turned out, my reservations were completely misplaced, Phil was a dream to work with, creative, ultra-hardworking, responsive to my barely coherent requests for changes. The final film benefits immensely from its’ unique, tailored score.

A short taste of Phil McClean’s score for Reputation. This is the main opening credit theme (with some stills from the movie on top).

COLOUR

The Covid lockdown put a lot of plans on hold but it did allow me to devote more time to a long term interest in colour correction. There was a pragmatic aspect to this. I knew I had the film coming up. Colour correction is a critical aspect of modern cinema but it is one of those areas where low budget films can fall down. As well as impacting the look of the film, learning about colour correction also means learning about image processing and getting the best quality from your footage. Colour Correction doesn’t require a lot of money but it does require time to learn – I sometimes struggled to feed cast and crew but our post-production pipeline was state of the art! There was also an important artistic aspect to this. In big and small ways, colour correction (or more properly colour grading) can help a story – this is what, as a writer, had interested me in it in the first place.

Anna Nugent as Fay Cassidy. The look here is clean and bright, the home of a middle class legal professional pretending that the injustices of the past have been forgotten.
William Morgan and Ava Voakes getting bad new from the police. For this sober scene and environment the look is more low-key, the saturation down, the texture of the brickwork emphasised through micro-contrast. Colour grading can be used to produce radically different looks from the same underlying footage. In the case of the two shots above I wanted the differences to be subtle, felt but not noticed.
In this scene our terrific child actor Ava Voakes is trying to make sense of the death of her mother, beaten to death in a street attack. The red in the door glass has been gently emphasised, the kind of effect that has to be handled very carefully. In his book on the use of colour in film, Charles Bramesco says ‘Colour is the perfect hiding place for significance, most powerful when left unstated’.

POST-SCRIPT

Reputation was made with serious resource limitations but with a dedicated cast and crew and a belief that the film, though unusual, had something to say. 

‘Your patience, Gentles All…. piece out our imperfections with your thoughts’.