Next year, the TV series 'Titanic, Blood and Steel' will thrust us back into the remarkable story of the doomed ship and its passengers. ROSITA BOLANDwatched the cast and crew in action in Dublin
'WE HAVE more people working on the series about Titanicthan they had building the ship," relates producer Paul Myler briskly. He's speaking about a 12-hour television series, Titanic, Blood and Steel, which focuses on the construction of the famous ship, and will air next year; the centenary of its sinking. In production for 18 weeks, this is the last week of filming.
We’re in the old Loreto Abbey and Convent in Rathfarnham, which is one of several Dublin locations the production company have been using. Others include Henrietta Street, Earlsfort Terrace, Clancy Barracks and the Botanic Gardens. In the manner of the fictions of film, Belfast, where the entire series is set, does not feature at all in the locations, although Serbia does. The series is a co-production between Epos Films in Ireland and the De Angelis Group in Italy.
The former Loreto school’s theatre is a beautiful period gem, which is currently doubling as a Belfast meeting hall. It is also bone-chillingly icy, as the property is now unoccupied. There is some kind of substantial gas-fired portable heater, but since it emits a sound akin to a rocket launching, it has to be turned off every time the cameras start rolling. Thus, many of the extras I see, dressed in period costume, are wearing heavy, warm jackets between takes. They remove them most reluctantly.
Next year, we can expect to be bombarded with Titanic-related events, as the world focuses once again on the sinking of the most famous passenger liner in history. The narrative of Blood and Steellooks at the period preceding the launch, by examining the social and political context of those years, and follows the lives of some future passengers. The series ends where the ship's unlucky journey began: when it sailed out of Belfast.
"People remain fascinated by the Titanic, because in a strange way, it keeps happening," is Myler's theory. "Not only has it not left the consciousness of people, but it was about the ambitions of man. And we keep trying to do those kinds of things – look at Challenger. That was an ambition and a disaster too."
The series cost €22 million to make, and has employed more than 3,500 extras. Many of the exterior shots involving the construction of the ship were taken in Serbia. “It’s still a world of factories out there,” explains director Ciaran Donnelly. “Some of the factory interiors look quite Dickensian. There are a lot of ex-armament places.”
The crew built sections of the ship and part of the gantry cranes on a scale about one-tenth smaller than the actual ship. Even so, when I’m shown some images on an iPhone, the contrast in scale between the section of the ship and actors is pretty impressive. Some of the lead parts in the series were taken by Chris Noth, Neve Campbell and Derek Jacobi. On the day I visit the set, Liam Cunningham is there playing Jim Larkin and Joely Richardson is playing Countess Markievicz. Richardson is giving a speech that the Countess gave to male and female workers.
Richardson is on a tight schedule and is departing the country in a couple of hours so there is no opportunity to speak to her. Dressed severely in black, she looks lean, intense and authentically aristocratic. She is introduced by Cunningham as “a woman who has thrown away the shackles of her class”.
In the manner of film, nothing happens quickly. I hear Cunningham’s line perhaps a dozen times, and Richardson’s speech at least 10. Sometimes the extras clap loudly; for other takes, they clap silently. The scene is shot from the front, the side, and from behind. At one point, I watch the monitors with Donnelly in a side room. It coincides with break time at the adjacent school. The noise of what sounds like hundreds of excited screaming children explodes into the hall like flocks of woodpeckers.
If you happen to see Blood and Steelnext year, watch out for the scene with Jim Larkin and Countess Markievicz in Belfast. Listen carefully and you may hear the sound of Rathfarnham children at play.
“We’re trying our best with the school next door, but we don’t have any control over it,” Donnelly says with resignation.
Thousands of extras have been used during the 18-week shoot. Those present in the Loreto Abbey on this morning look so eerily authentic, they appear to have materialised straight from 1911. The men have beards, mutton chops, moustaches and there’s hardly a head to be seen without a hat. The women have hair in elaborate buns, pinned up under boaters. In a room off set, it’s a mild shock to see these 1911 wraiths reading Wilbur Smith, texting from mobiles and listening to iPods.
As for the clothes, when it comes to period costume, extras dress from the inside out. “We’re wearing corsets underneath,” confides Pauline Ann Murray. “It gives you a whole different posture, but it is so uncomfortable.”
Then they’re called to come back to the set, drop phones and iPods and scurry off, stepping back into 1911 and an era before the ship that was described as unsinkable sank two and a half miles to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
