Filming Doctors of the Church in 2022
For the second season of the Doctors of the Church, we captured the life stories of Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen, John of the Cross, John of Avila and Bernard of Clairvaux.
For every episode of the Doctors of the Church series, there are a lot of similar scenes. For example, all the great people that own the honorary title were prolific writers, which means there is at least one writing scene to shoot per episode. They were all very dedicated to prayer and contemplation, so there is at least one scene of praying and one where the character is walking in nature or in a monastery. Monastery? Most of them were members of different religious orders so the locations are very similar, as well. And of course, at the end they all died, the majority in bed. That leaves us with a difficult challenge to shoot the same or at least a very similar scene in a similar location a bit differently every time.
Still, shooting the Doctors of the Church episodes is not boring! Every now and then we get a very dynamic and complex story to shoot. In one set, we had to capture John of the Cross' escape from the confinement his order put him in. He escaped by tying a set of robes together and climbing out of a window of a monastery. When shooting, our robes were not actually carrying the weight of the actor. He was instead tied to a set of climbing ropes and carefully lowered down a 6 meter wall of a castle in Sevnica.
Another interesting scene was when an angel pierced Teresa of Avila's heart with a burning tip of an arrow. We had one arrow with a special inflammable tip and a second "folding" arrow, that would give an illusion of penetrating the skin when pressed against it.
For Teresa we also had to shoot a scene where her carriage crashed while travelling. That included finding a proper carriage and a horse. It was definitely a challenge to film a crashing scene without actually harming the carriage, the horse or the actors, but we managed.
Shooting the last Teresa scene actually concluded the second season of the series. Now we can rest and see what stories the next year and the third season bring!
