Dramatizations for The Heresies

The third EWTN series that we got to produce dramatizations for is The Heresies. This compelling series documents the various heresies that have threatened the orthodox teachings of the Catholic Church through the centuries. In the first season we covered Gnosticism, Arianism, Nestorianism, Albigensianism, Jansenism and Postmodernism.

In general, we had a challenge in approaching the more abstract and philosophical content - how to best illustrate and convey the core beliefs of each movement. A lot of scenes bear a symbolic meaning - that is why we came up with a "hero shot" - an introductory shot of each episode's main character standing in a spotlight, surrounded by fire. The character normally holds an item that best defines them or their work: books, chains, a rosary, etc..
We needed a suitable location that we could use for every episode's hero shot and ended up in an attic of a five-hundred-year-old church. It was extremely apparent that the only creatures that saw the place in a long long time were pigeons. Yes, hundreds of them, thousands of their feathers and kilos of their droppings. The thing we weren’t sure about, though, was how solid the ground of the attic was. Even the experts at the National Institute for Cultural Heritage couldn’t give us a 100% garantee that the ground will hold our equipment, team members and actors. At the end, all was well, the church still stands and the pigeons still have their home.

Towards the end of the season, the stories to be told became more and more complex. The biggest challenge of the series was to film the French Revolution, more specifically, the guillotine executions of the clergy. Our set design team had to actually built the guillotine in the atrium of the minorite monastery in Ptuj! It was very difficult to find proper costumes for the French Revolutionary Army, as well. The next thing in line was to figure out how we would achieve that the atrium would appear crowded with townspeople. The answer is proper angles: we shot the French revolution square scene with only 20 actors!

The Heresies pushed our limits in location scouting, set design and costume design. Stay tuned to see what the next season holds!