Locating Devil's Gate

There are plenty of good reasons for a movie to want to locate in the Shetland Islands, particularly the light, which must rank as the clearest in Britain. Every camera operator who has landed here has been surprised by how much stop-down is needed. Yet they are still in the United Kingdom, not some tropic isle with overhead sun and cloudless skies.

At these latitudes (about the same as Anchorage, Alaska) there is no atmospheric pollution, so Shetland light is exceptionally clear and bright. The sun’s arc is fairly low, especially in winter. Everything it touches seems to be uplit as well as downlit, giving an unusual not-of-this-world look to everyday features. In mid summer, useable daylight stretches to almost the full 24 hours, with a short period of  “simmer dim” starting just before midnight as the sun dips out of sight. That ends just a couple of hours later when it pops back up to herald the new day.

Then there’s the sea. We are completely surrounded by it, two ocean’s worth.

There’s the North Sea on our East Coast and to the West the vast reaches of the Northern Atlantic. Next stop Newfoundland…

The sea and all its moods provides a wonderful backdrop for movies and all of those moods are found in Shetland, usually, just round the next headland. For rugged coasts we have few equals, rocky headlands, huge sea cliffs almost a thousand feet high, foaming jagged outstacks, hidden skerries with the sea breaking white over them and quiet, deserted bays and beaches with the sea quietly washing the sand at the ebb. But the sea is also a working environment for island folk, so Shetland has harbours and boat havens, ferries, piers, lighthouses and fishing boats to put inside the film frame.

Then there’s Shetland weather. The islands lie across the migration track of every anticyclone steaming across the Atlantic, so we get “changeable” weather. Rain one minute, sun the next. Four seasons in the one day, that is the local weather summary and it is not a bad forecast.

There are long summer days of blue skies slashed with rafts of white cloud of course – and then there’s winter.  Just to remind us how far north we are, the winds blow a little chilly. They keep us pleasantly cool in summer, but in winter, wrap up well. The wind chill is penetrating. The rain can be horizontal.

All that changeable weather does wonderful things to Shetland skies. The dawns and the sunsets will rank among the most spectacular you have ever seen. The clouds can pile up in huge billowing masses like stacks of enormous cream cakes. They can stratify and take on a streaky bacon appearance, or they can disappear and just leave miles and miles of blue, tinting the greens greener, enriching every colour around.

Finally, these islands are virtually unspoiled. People here live close to the sea and the land. Their livelihood depends on it. They look after it, safeguard it and use it well. Shetland farms, called crofts, are man-and-wife operated units. Changes come slowly in places like this. The Shetland crofter may have a mobile phone and the latest 4WD pickup truck, but he still chops winter turnips by hand to feed his sheep and in the summer he will round them up off the hills to handclip their wool.

The big bonus for film companies is, not only do they get all this variegated landscape and traditions when they locate in Shetland, but they get it all within the same few square miles, with virtually no travelling between scenes……..

So, for the movie maker who wants beautiful unspoiled landscapes, stunning seascapes and spectacular skyscapes, don’t think twice about it. Head North to Shetland!

It was not fine weather that director Stuart St Paul was looking for when he turned to Shetland, it was reality. He wanted the place that was to become Devil’s Gate to be hard, abrasive landscape, a place where it was hard to earn a living, where people live “on the edge”. Where survival is a tough experience, every day. In Shetland, in January, he got a place that looked like that. Uncompromising. Rugged. Harsh. That is what he found. The first day the crew rolled off the ferry from Aberdeen, the wind had shifted round a few points and was breathing crisp Arctic air over the islands. Filming on the Skeld pier gave new meaning to the word “cut”. The icy wind cut through the finest thermals chilling deep down, right to the bone. The first morning’s experience in such an exposed position made the afternoon, filming in the chill rooms of a fish factory, exceptionally warm!

The main location had to be a bit special. Stuart St Paul wanted an isolated farm that was clearly run down, but status-wise, had once been very important. It had to be ours for a month, with another month to prep it and a week’s clean-up afterwards. Most of Shetland’s crofts were too small for the film’s purpose and most of the fewer in number farms Shetland has are hard-worked places, but they don’t show the sort of neglect-through-time this film called for.

The script suggested the farm should be on a prominent site, well away from any neighbours, no other habitation in sight and Stuart wanted it to look out over water. It needed to be run down with the sort of decay and neglect that arises when an old farmer can no longer manage the effort needed to keep it together. It had to symbolise the isolation and decay of his own life, yet it still had to have forceful character, despite the decay, just like the character Jake himself.

We found the farm we needed at Aithsness. It stood high up on a valley side beneath some craggy hills, totally dominating the valley that was its grazing area and looking out over water.

The single-track road that threaded through the valley had to climb up the hill towards the farm from either direction, wonderful for approach or departure shots and it was almost wind and watertight (just!) – never having been lived in for forty years.

Inside, the farm had suffered the penetrating effect of forty Shetland winter weathers and looked it. Ceilings were coming down and in one part of the building the upper floor was coming down to meet the lower one. This did not trouble our production designer. She had found her Devils Gate farm and set out to dress it down to look neglected. Was she mad? It looked a wreck already.

That was Sarah’s point really. She said it had to look like it was someone’s home. Not someone’s wreck.

So, huge builders jacks came in to put the upper floor back to its rightful place, the roof that leaked at one end was sheeted over to make it watertight and all the tiles the wind had stripped off into the garden were tidied away. Broken windows were reglazed and a balcony was erected right along the front of the old house. Finally, two gravestones were constructed to make a family burial plot in the corner of the garden and then the garden with its half-century of decay and neglect was tidied and plants imported to shoot a January summer garden scene.

Inside, the farm, which had a spring-fed water supply, got hot and cold running water for the first time in its long life, together with a shower for the shower scene. Jake’s kitchen and bedroom were created as well as the bedroom that needed to be left dressed just as Rachel had left it five years earlier. The people of Shetland turned out trumps as collectors of the bits and pieces needed to furnish Jake’s farm. Outhouses and byres were turned out and attics all over the islands raided to find the treasures that were needed on set. And found they were, everything from 1940’s vintage motorcycles to sperm whale jawbones. Shetland is a real treasure house for such things.

Special Effects allow the farm to burn on screen...

...while the building itself remained undamaged

The Aithsness byre was pressed into service for the shearing shed at Jake’s farm. This was probably the original crofthouse at the site of Aithsness Farm and was certainly one of the oldest buildings in the district. The rough timber work that supported the roof was an interesting structure and lent an atmosphere to interior shots that would take place here. With three foot thick stone walls it was also a handy place for crew to gather for hot soup and rolls on windy January nights The walls made sure the wind was not going to ripple the soup.

Inside the Byre

A film crew shoots on its stomach, so a good food supplier had to be found. Our film cuisine was created by Osla’s Café, one of Shetland’s favourite bistro bars, who consistently came in on time and on budget with the hot nourishing meals our filmmakers needed. Good varied menus, making best use of local products and catering for everyone, from those of vegetarian persuasion, to the downright starving. Locally, there are no mobile film catering vans and dining buses of the kind that usually follow film shoots around, but Shetland does have its public hall network, with a modern hall in each community that has full catering and dining facilites for functions like weddings and dances, To that list of uses we have added feeding film crews and everyone agreed; the food was marvellous.

You can learn much more about these treasures and the alterations to Aithsness Farm by visiting the Devils Gate website at www.devilsgate.info