We filmed for a beautiful film on St. Francis de Sales in March 2018. It came about because a friend of ours is the image of this saint and after a while we asked if he would be willing to portray for us and he said yes! It was very exciting and after a long time coming we managed to capture various scenes of St. Francis de Sales' life on film.
Above shows our friend portraying St. Francis de Sales and below St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal who also features in this film.
Unfortunately, on the same day we filmed for St. Gemma Galgani, Our Lady and the Visionaries of Knock and St. Alban Roe. We managed to quickly produce the first two films and also have two film launches at the barn next to our parish church, both of which were well attended. I fell in love with our film on Our Lady of Knock, having visited Knock when I was about 14 but never fully being able to grasp the full story. Our film shows the whole story as well as the surrounding context in which it happened. Both of these films left us feeling exhausted and we were unable to produce more and there were several other delays pushing St. Francis de Sales for 15 months!
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| Our Lady of Knock DVD |
Earlier this year we decided that we would really put our minds to it and complete this film. What was needed was fresh scenery which plays a vital role in our films so we went out twice to Patching Woods nearby us and got some lovely panoramic shots of woodlands, trees, nature. We went out again to Clapham Woods and filmed some beautiful bluebells, pathways.
Having everything we needed we were able to edit the film together after recording the narration. Finally the film was complete and ready for the music score. I felt a little rusty as I had had quite a break from writing but I dove right in and spent a week writing the score. At the time we were watching UNBREAKABLE with Bruce Willis. I do not listen to music very much at all but we research media and have areas of film that we enjoy. I am very much influenced by film scores which is why Mary's Dowry Productions films have an "Epic" atmosphere as the score I write for them can be cinematic, emotional and moving.
In the film there are a lot of strings leading and piano. The overall mood is intense, emotional and really captures the growth and journey of the character. I was aware that the background mood of this film, moving and emotional influenced my writing of the score for St. Francis de Sales and there are some moving segments, particularly with St. Jane de Chantal's own journey and their last conversation together. I was very pleased with the score at this part of the film.
In my previous post I said that just when I completed the score my computer died, I had not backed up the score after 18 minutes of music so was traumatized for the whole weekend. Fortunately the guy in the shop managed to find all my music and back it up, the hard drive had not failed but I had to re-load everything once again in order to mix down the final score and complete the film - MORE DELAYS!.
Eventually after 2 more weeks of delays the film was complete and we released it on DVD. It is now available worldwide from our online shop and I hope it is shared with many people, it's a very moving and informative film with many important aspects of the spiritual life said by both saints.
Saint Francis de Sales is available at www.marysdowryproductions.org
I'd like to share the opening titles, the instruments I used & also some of the new scenery we captured in the little video of the opening titles:
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