When first encountering the cast and crew of Fintan Connolly’s film, TROUBLE WITH SEX, they are nestled in a clearing in a verdant forest, busily turning a hunting lodge into a film set. It is high summer in the Wicklow Mountains, the sun is beating down and the occasional ghostly percussion drifts over the mountain high above the lodge from the Glen of Imall in the next valley, where the Irish Army are ‘conducting exercises’. Wild deer watch from the distance, bemused and wary. Who are these people preparing for the next ‘take’, working to get it in the ‘can’, shouting ‘sound rolling’, ‘camera rolling’, ‘action’, ‘cut’?

 

The febrile activity one expects from the making of a film continues in and around the lodge - the setting up of lights and hammering together of scaffolding, rehearsals on the ‘dolly’ for a moving camera shot, actors practising their lines. There is a strange silence to this endeavour, with everyone ignoring everyone else as they go about their business.  Like clockwork, as if everybody knows what to do. Hive mentality. An ordered and tacit chaos.  The smell of home cooking lingers.  Connolly and producer Fiona Bergin are huddled in a whispered discussion away from the madding crowd.

 

‘The key is picking the right people for the job.  As a director you have a picture of each scene in your mind, the trick being to translate that picture on to celluloid. You work with those you think can best achieve that end.  You try to get a team spirit going, everyone working towards the same goal.  Sometimes it goes well and sometimes it seems like a high wire balancing act with no safety net’ says Connolly

 

FLICK, Connolly and Bergin’s first feature, was shot in eighteen days on a shoestring budget with the barest minimum of crews. Skeleton filmmaking. The quintessential low budget project.  It got completion money from the Irish Film Board and was premiered at the Cork Film Festival, followed by the Galway Film Fleadh, the AFI Fest, Los Angeles, the Forum of European Cinema in Strasbourg, London, Seattle, Edinburgh and Paris Film Festivals.  It was released theatrically by Clarence Pictures and on video by Xtravision.  It reached number five in the rental charts, has been screened twice by RTE and is available on DVD.

 

‘After FLICK, I wanted to do something different.  TROUBLE WITH SEX began its journey late one evening in Ibiza.  I was on holidays, surrounded by couples.  So I set out to write a story about two people falling in love.  Specifically the early stages’ says Fintan Connolly

 

Connolly was developing the new film, when the Irish Film Board announced their low budget initiative. With that in mind, he worked with writer Catriona McGowan and producer Bergin on the screenplay and submitted it to the Board for production funding.  Six weeks later they got the green light on TROUBLE WITH SEX. 

 

 

The fact that less than a year after putting pen to paper Connolly wrapped his second film after a twenty eight-day shoot speaks volumes.

 

‘Once the Board approved the project for funding, we were on our way.  As FLICK was a guerrilla style exercise in filmmaking, TROUBLE WITH SEX was a step up in terms of funding and scale.  But it was still going to be tight.  There were a number of productions going on like KING ARTHUR.  We decided we could shoot with a compact crew and because so many people were on the ‘big gigs’, we kind of flew in under the radar’ says Connolly

 

Shooting commenced in summer 2003, using the readily available and photographically versatile city of Dublin as a backdrop.  For Connolly, the quest to find the best people available was as important as getting the script right, especially when considering the modest budget.  He brought together a talented team of actors for the key roles, then placed up and coming professionals, with burgeoning reputations, in the key positions behind the lens as well as a sprinkling of veterans.

 

‘The shoot starts. The crazy momentum of filmmaking with all its varying possibilities - performances, costumes, schedules, meal breaks, locations, parking, the endless minutiae of production. It’s extraordinary how you can exist in this cauldron on a few hours sleep, a thousand cigarettes, hundreds of cups of undrinkable coffee and love it, but that is the crucible of production and all the more fantastic for it.  We started shooting early August and next thing I knew it was the middle of September and we were having a wrap party and it was all over - the drama, the dramatics, the tears, the laughing, the smoking, the shouting, the whole shooting match.  In a word - excellent’ says Bergin

 

‘Knowing Dublin as I do and with such a mobile crew, it was possible to get a good bit out of the days we were out and about on the streets and in and out of clubs and bars. One of the many invaluable lessons I learned making FLICK was the importance of choosing appropriate locations that suit your story and the look you want to achieve’ adds Connolly

 

‘While it takes a considerable amount of leg-work and much bartering, coupled with considerable huffing and puffing to force down location fees, it was well worth it in the end.  The apartment and cottage were near perfect and what small resources we had could be put into creating the look Fintan wanted for the pub’ says Bergin

 

‘The actors are, as always, one of the best things about making films - they complain the least, they eat the least, they are invariably the first there and at the end of it all, it’s their performances that survive.  I was blessed with Aidan Gillen and Renee Weldon.  Everyone knows what Aidan can do and Renee just jumps off the screen. When the two lead parts click like that, it sets the whole production off, gives everyone a boost’ adds Connolly.