A new two-part sitcom ‘The Roaring Twenties’ kicks off on RTE Two on Monday, January 7th at 10.50 pm. IFTN talks to one half of young directing duo behind the Dublin based series, Steven Stubbs.
‘The Roaring Twenties’ follows the trials and tribulations of four twenty-something flatmates as they deal with everyday life in contemporary Dublin. The series features Kevin, an unemployed 'artiste'; Mary, his long suffering journalist girlfriend, and their two friends Eamú, a business student and Ray, a mysterious lay about.
The two-parter stars a cast of up and coming Irish actors including Diarmaid Murtagh (Ros na Run), Jason Healy (Damage, The Tudors), Darryl Kinsella (Tri Sceal) and Amy Kirwin. The series is produced by Brian Willis (Short Order, Meeting Che Guevara) and Adrian Devane, whose production manager credits include films ‘32A’, and Mel Gibson’s ‘Apocolypto’.
Created and directed by newcomers Steven Stubbs and Ray Sullivan, the Ballyfermot Film Production graduates were commissioned to make the series in early 2007 after RTE viewed a pilot episode they had put together.
Stubbs previously penned short film ‘It Happened One Night’, produced by John Wallace, which was commissioned by RTE and Filmbase and broadcast on RTE in 2006.
The Roaring Twenties |
How did you come up with the idea for ‘The Roaring Twenties’?
Myself and Ray went to college together in Ballyfermot and towards the end of that course I was living alone in a bed sit in Rathmines, very similar to what it’s like in the show. I had a girlfriend who was a journalist at the time, and I just got an idea from that.
It’s kind of autobiographical in the way American series ‘Seinfeld’ is. I thought nothing like that had really been done by RTE before and there was a glaring gap in the market.
Do you think there’s a lack of shows on RTE for people in their early twenties?
Of course. RTE has made stuff for people in their early twenties before but it hasn’t always worked…some of those shows have come and gone and people don’t even remember them anymore. There are shows like ‘The Naked Camera’ and ‘I Dare Ya’, but basically that’s candid camera stuff, it’s not really fiction based comedy written by a script writer and performed. The audience for our show would be 18-35 year olds.
Can you describe the process you went through to get the programme commissioned?
We finished the pilot in February of this year, and sent the final DVD to RTE. The entertainment department got their hands on it in June and called us in for a chat. They said they liked the pilot a lot and basically gave us some money to develop and write episode 1 and 2, and write up the character analyses and that.
How did the producers Adrian Devane and Brian Willis get on board?
We went back to RTE in September with our development package and they said we needed to have two episodes made by January, which was going to be tough, so I wanted to get a proper professional line producer on board. I just went through Filmscan, and Adrian Devane was the first name on the list, I IMDBd him and saw he had worked with Mel Gibson in Ardmore studios. He watched the pilot and liked it and he agreed to get involved.
We also had to get a company involved, because RTE won’t give individuals money - they have to give money to a production company - so Adrian got Igloo Productions on board in early October.
How did you feel when you found out RTE were going to commission ‘The Roaring Twenties’?
We were very happy to get commissioned - it’s very unusual for two completely unknown people to get that amount of funding.
I was surprised that it happened so quickly, because sometimes things are in development for years, but I think because we had made the pilot to a semi-professional standard, because they had a finished product to look at and weren’t trying to imagine what it would look like, that helped.
The only problem was trying to get it done in three months, we were a bit worried that we weren’t going to get the two episodes done in time from scratch, but we just about managed it!
You co-directed the series with Ray, how did you find working together?
Well we are friends so we work well together, we don’t scream and shout at each other! We both have the same comedy DVD collection and sense of humour. I write the scripts myself, we don’t co-write it. I write the scripts, he reads them, and tells me what’s funny and what’s not. We do co-direct it but he would take charge of the framing and most of the technical stuff and I would just work with the actors a lot. Because he’s the editor as well he knows what kind of framing and what kind of takes he wants.
What was the filming schedule like?
We shot over 278 slates in 9 and half days, almost like a feature film. We worked non-stop, there’s no messing around, we just keep shooting stuff non-stop. We wanted to generate the pacing that an American show has and you need lots of locations lots of characters. To generate that kind of speed you have to shoot loads of stuff and we only had twelve days but we just about got there without everyone going on strike!
Are you hoping RTE will commission more episodes?
For those four characters I have hundreds of ideas, and synopses done for lots of episodes, but we will have to wait until RTE makes a decision.
We specifically tried to do something new, though sometimes if you do something new people don’t get it if they see it for the first time. It’s quite a complicated plot in some ways, it has to be watched from start to finish. If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t? Well it was a good experiment!
- ‘The Roaring Twenties’ airs on RTE Two on Monday 7th January and Monday 14th January at 10.50 pm.
- For more info go to www.theroaringtwenties.net
