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The Fandom Portals Podcast
"Welcome to Fandom Portals—the show that explores how your favourite fandoms can help you learn and grow!" 🎙️✨
Each episode, we explore TV, movies, comics, and games to reveal how these worlds and the characters in them help us learn about resilience, courage, friendship, and more.
The Fandom Portals Podcast is hosted by Aaron Davies and Adam Brasher, two friends who are obsessed with fandoms, storytelling, and building a community where passion and positivity come first. From Marvel to Middle-earth, Star Wars to indie comics, we dive deep into the stories you love — and how they help us learn and grow. ✨
The Fandom Portals Podcast
Gabriel (2007) - Part One: The Low-Budget Fantasy Film That Defied Expectations
Episode Summary:
In this episode of The Fandom Portals Podcast, Aaron and Brash take a deep dive into Gabriel (2007), an Australian indie film that took a bold step into the fantasy action genre with a budget of just $200,000 AUD. They explore the film’s gritty aesthetic, digital effects, and ambitious storytelling.
Aaron and Brash also go head-to-head in the Fandom Fact Face-Off, where they quiz each other on Gabriel’s behind-the-scenes secrets, including how the film was nearly canceled just days before filming.
Topics:
Why Gabriel Feels Different from Typical Australian Films
Community Reactions: Reddit & Threads Weigh in on Gabriel
Dwayne Stevenson’s Unexpected Background Before Acting
he Surprising Role Dwayne Stevenson Was Originally Cast In
How Uriel’s Actor Prepared for His Role in an Unconventional Way
The Shot Glass Scene – A Happy Accident or Intentional Symbolism?
Why the Film Used Real Abandoned Buildings for Filming
The Financial Struggles & How the Crew Worked Without Pay
The $200,000 Budget & How the Film Still Made $1.4 Million
How Gabriel Used Digital Effects to Cover Budget Limitations
Garden Hoses for Rain? The Extreme Measures Taken for the Climactic Fight
Andy Whitfield’s Hypothermia Scare During Filming
The CGI Bullet Time Controversy – Impressive or Distracting?
The Role of Sydney’s Industrial Locations in Gabriel
Final Thoughts & What’s Coming in Part Two
Key Takeaways:
- Gabriel was shot on a micro-budget of $200,000 AUD, making it one of the most ambitious low-budget Australian films ever.
- Dwayne Stevenson was originally cast as Gabriel, but his commanding presence led him to take the villainous role of Samael.
- The production relied on abandoned buildings, digital color grading, and last-minute insurance deals to stay afloat.
- Andy Whitfield suffered hypothermia during the film’s rain-soaked final battle, which was created using garden hoses.
- The film’s visual style was heavily inspired by The Crow and Underworld, blending gothic and neo-noir aesthetics.
📢 Apple Podcast tags: Gabriel 2007, Australian cinema, indie films, low-budget filmmaking, Andy Whitfield, fantasy action, gothic movies, movie trivia, cult classics, digital effects, film history, action adventure, CGI in film, geek culture, Fandom Portals Podcast, Geek Freaks Network
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Hello everybody and welcome to the Fandom Portals podcast, the podcast where we explore the fandoms that help us learn and grow. This week, adam Brasher and I looked at the movie Gabriel, which is an Australian movie made in 2007. We look really deeply into how this movie came about with such a small budget of only 200,000 Australian dollars. We look at all the behind the scenes information and we also challenge each other with some more fandom fact based off trivia questions, so you'll get to know everything that we do about the movie of Gabriel. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we have also just launched our very own website. If you want to go check that out, we would greatly appreciate it. You can find it at wwwfandomportalspodcastcom. It'll also be in the show notes below. Go have a little squizzy. Go have a little look. It's kind of nice. Over there. You can find all our amazing episodes. We've got some blog posts for you as well, and you can also sign up to our mailing list, where you will never miss an update and you will be the first to know about any future giveaways that we do. So if you're interested in that, wwwfandomportalspodcastcom. We hope you enjoy this episode on Gabriel.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Fandom Portals Podcast, the podcast that explores how fandoms can help you learn and grow. I am here, as always, with my co-host, mr Adam Brasher. How are you today, brash? I'm tired. How are you? I'm going very well, very well indeed. We're here to talk about a movie that is an Australian movie and it's not like your usual Australian movies. This one is called Gabriel. It was made in 2007, directed by Shane Abus, and it was written by Matt Whelan Todd and Shane Abus himself as well, starring Andy Whitfield, and we're going to be talking about this one today as one of our March titles.
Speaker 1:But before we get into that, as always, we're going to jump into our gratitudes and growths, where each week, we begin by sharing a personal gratitude for the week or an area that we feel like we require growth in rash. I might go first. Yeah, um, a couple weeks ago, I did my gratitudes, where I was really grateful for for rainy days, and I'd like to take that back because ever since I said that, it has literally not stopped raining in our town and I'm not listeners, I'm talking like we have had flooding level events in our town Weeks and weeks and weeks. Yeah, weeks and weeks and weeks of it. So you know, love the rain in sparse amounts, but this amount not so much.
Speaker 1:But my gratitude, let's say I'm going to be grateful for herbal tea, because driving to and from work this week has been quite a stressful event and whenever I come home I have a nice herbal tea to relax me, which is good Drinking on some passion fruit tea right now which is like and you know the funny thing about these herbal teas, they always smell better than they taste but still relaxing. Grateful for herbal teas and relaxing after a hard day of driving through semi-flood waters to get home to my amazing and loving family. What about you, brash? What are you grateful?
Speaker 2:for I'm grateful for my work colleagues. My work has quadrupled since this rain and not all of them have like well, not all of them have softened the amount of work I'm doing, but they make it fun. So, yeah, so I'm grateful for the contractors that I work with and I've met for my job and most of them are all really good and we've had to go out and look at jobs together and discuss on how we're going to fix all the leaking stuff because of the rain and all the flutter stuff because of the rain and all the moldy stuff because of the rain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mold's a big one.
Speaker 2:So I'm grateful for those people, because at least you have fun doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know it's really awkward when you're sitting in the car with somebody. That isn't very nice, yeah. So it's good that you can actually have the time to have that sort of chat with some friendly colleagues. And you know what Some friendly colleagues and you know what Sometimes my work friends have turned into really good friend friends and that's like something that can come from it too. So that's really good to hear. Brash, I'm happy for you, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no grateful for.
Speaker 1:Ace this week because he's been naughty. Ace has been naughty. He's still our third unofficial co-host. He had a birthday. Let's, let's. Oh look, he has been naughty, but you can't not talk about his birthday.
Speaker 2:I've still been just spoiling the shit out of him, which I probably shouldn't do, but I do, but yeah. So yeah, it was his birthday on Friday, just go on.
Speaker 1:Well, he's an only child. You're allowed to spoil him.
Speaker 2:I'm sure he won't turn out too poorly adjusted, he is being very spoiled right now, me trying to figure out how to make sure his dinner is all lavished Very good.
Speaker 1:Only the best for our third co-host here on the Fan Portals podcast, and we do wish young Ace a very happy first birthday, a first year around the sun. Happy birthday to him from me and from you and from our community. All right, let's jump into it. We're going to do our first takes segment. Our first take segment is where we discuss how we first encountered the media, what our initial impressions of the movie were and what our feelings were on the media after having watched it. We might also share some of our community's thoughts on this movie and if you want to contribute to those thoughts in future, you can look at our social pages, which is Instagram Threads and Reddit, and you might find yourself being read out and shouted out on our show. Um, so brash. I'll ask you first. We're talking about gabriel, which was made in 2007, and gabriel is about an archangel and he comes to purgatory, a place where darkness and the fallen rule, and gabriel attempts to save the souls of the city's inhabitants. How did you hear about this movie? What were your initial thoughts?
Speaker 2:One of my best friends, who I've known for 25 years. He actually first introduced this to me because he was I guess still is was very into the angels, demons and whatnot. He's even got a big ass angel tattooed on his back to represent his younger brother. And what to represent his younger brother and what was for his younger brother, I believe. Yeah, so he first introduced it to me that was when it first came out in 2007.
Speaker 1:So you would have been around high school age, right 17,. Yep, yep, yep, all right. So for me, I first watched this movie when we had to put it onto the podcast, which is pretty much very similar to a lot of movies, because from this podcast, I've found that I have watched the same movies a lot. Yeah, and that's one of the best things about this podcast is there's opened my eyes to a different kind of movie and a different sort of horizon of movies, and it's increasing my palate.
Speaker 1:So I was actually very surprised to find that this was an Australian production to start with, because, looking at the title cover and also the trailer, it doesn't really look like your typical Australian movies. And that was probably one of my initial thoughts is that it doesn't really look like your typical Australian movies, which kind of you know, nowadays, in the 2020s, looks like Mad Max, fury Road and Fury Rosa Furiosa, but in the past it looks like a lot of family-based comedies or movies like Babe, various different musicals on occasion, or sometimes war movies that were set in Australia, and also sometimes some cultural movies that are trying to betray a message. So that's what I'm used to from Australian cinema, so this struck me as very different. When did you learn it was an Australian film, brash.
Speaker 2:Actually much later on, so I didn't actually learn it was an Australian film. Brash Actually much later on, so I didn't actually realise it was an Australian film, probably until I actually the DVD I showed you when I bought. That is when I found out, and I think I got that when I was 25? Because I watched it every now and then Because back in those days we didn't have any streaming sites to watch stuff on. So every now and then the only time I could watch it was when I either hired it from a thing until I eventually bought it and then I had it on DVD. But it piqued my interest because of well, back when I watched it in 2007,. So you're watching it now in 2025.
Speaker 1:I watched it back in 2007, where nothing was over the top like excellence yeah, no big boxster action flicks, or they were just sort of starting to come out with that sort of stuff that's when Iron man sort of around the time, iron man came out.
Speaker 2:So that's probably when Iron man came out. So I was like, damn, they can do some good shit. But even so, because even watching I was like oh yeah, this seems kind of low budget, but I did like the story of it and like always it's the same as Dragonheart I reckon this would be a really good show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A really good TV show.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Sort of like how they made Shadowhunters a TV show.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah yeah, it's a really good concept for a TV show as well, in terms of, you know, heaven battling hell, or light versus dark, all of the archangels and the fallen in this movie. That's probably some of the most engaging parts of it. You did mention the budget before as well, being a little bit low. This movie was made on what they now suggest is about $200,000 Australian dollars, so if you're an American listener and you're listening to that, that's pretty much half Like our Australian dollar is worth about half of what your US dollar is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say I'm thinking a lot of Americans realise that like we pay like double pretty much anything Like if we buy anything that looked like American, we have to pay pretty much double for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so yeah, it cost Australian dollars wise $200,000, and the director, shane Abus, actually sort of struggled to come up with the money to make this movie. He actually had to continue working you know, second, third and fifth and fourth jobs to sort of get it done. And you know this film was actually pretty profitable, brash, do you know how much it made worldwide in US dollars? Sorry, what do you reckon the worldwide gross was in US dollars? In US dollars?
Speaker 2:So if it was more than what it did, so shit, it'd get back $150,000. In the US that'd be more. That's correct.
Speaker 1:yeah, I'm going to say $2 million Just under, it made $1.4 million, which is actually almost six to seven times its budget, which means it's a financial success in that regard. And I think it came out at the right time, because 2007, there was that sort of push toward gothic, neo-noir movies, that sort of. They had a target audience back in 2007. It was basically you and me in high school. If you remember the kind of music that we used to listen to or the kind of music that high schools used to listen to back in 2007,.
Speaker 1:You've got the rise, or the new rise, of the, the punk phase. Uh, a lot of the the metal sort of bands were very sort of famous around that time as well. So it really played into that, that aesthetic and that vibe, and you can see it from the trailer and actually from the movie as well watching it. It very much had its niche and I think that really paid off for it, you know, domestically, but also worldwide, which was good for australian cinema. Oh yeah, I was%. And what are your thoughts on the movie? When you watched it, you obviously sound like you liked it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really enjoyed it, Like, yes, some parts not all of it was great, but I think for the most part I don't really think I can look back on it and say, oh, I hated that. Most of the time I can say, oh, I liked that. Yeah, I'd say if I was half-headed, half liked it. I'd be more in the second half of liking it.
Speaker 1:So, yep, that's three quarters three quarters a tank full. Yeah, I think for me. I obviously saw it at a later time. I watched it in 2025 and there's been some very outstandingly visual movies that have come out between 2007 and 2025, so my expectations were higher than what yours were and as a result of that, I think for me there were some things that were really sort of well done in terms of the budget, and then there were some things that I kind of I couldn't really like. So for me, I'm hot and cold about this one Brash. That was my first thoughts about it. I think we'll probably get into it a little bit later on in our sort of rundown. But there are some things that definitely really sort of hit the mark and I definitely appreciate the fact that this is an Australian film that really tried to break the mold, but there are some things that really didn't kind of work for me as well, so we'll get into that a little bit later as well.
Speaker 1:Let's get into our fandom fact face-off segment, all right. So our fandom fact face-off segment is where the host asks one another a series of trivia questions associated with the focus media. The host with the most collected points from the Fandom Fact Face-Off segment will shout the opposing co-host to an all-expenses paid trip to the movie cinema Brash. I'm yet to win one of these. We've done two of them and you've won both. This week is our third run at our March Fandom Fact Face-Off, so we're both sitting at six all six apiece and we made the gentleman's agreement last week in our Dragonheart episode that we would stop going easy on each other. Yes, yes, we do, yeah, and I think for this one we talked about you know how we like to give each other clues. I think for this one we can give one clue, but then that's it. Okay, that's it, and you know you can talk about it, but once you lock in, you lock in. Yep, are you set with the new rules? Set, all right, lovely, do you want to go first?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:Go for it Okay.
Speaker 2:So my first one is you might know this one, dwayne Stevenson, who plays Samuel or someone else. He before he was, or did Gabriel before he was acting, what?
Speaker 1:do you do so? Before he was an actor. What was his profession? Okay, I am thinking I know that he did a lot of short films with, and he was very good friends with the writer Matt Hoylton-Todd, and they've been in a few shorts together. He's an Australian man, I'm going to say, because of the nature of this segment, I'm going to say he was a male dancer, he was a stripper. Do you want your hint? I'll take the hint, I'll take the hint, I'll take the hint. He was a stripper, do you want your hint?
Speaker 2:I'll take the hint. I'll take the hint.
Speaker 1:I'll take the hint. Good idea, am I that far off?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, quite a bit off. Alright, think Adam Driver. Oh, he was in the army, he was, he was in the Australian army.
Speaker 1:Oh good stuff. Yeah, that was a good clue. By the way. Yeah, thank you. I can definitely get that. He holds himself very well in the interviews and the behind the scenes that I've watched.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, he was in the.
Speaker 1:Australian Royal Army. Oh, there you go. Thank you, Dwayne Stevenson.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Alright, so it's 1-0 with my question coming. My question is also about Dwayne Stevenson's and I'm going to see if you know this one. Alright, so originally, when he was first attached to the project of Gabriel, he was one of the first members cast. Due to his familiarity with the script writer, he was attached to play a different part. He wasn't attached to play Samael. Which part was he attached to play instead?
Speaker 2:I do know this one. He was actually meant to be Gabriel, correct, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So in this one he was attached as Gabriel for the longest time, to the point where when other cast members would come into screen test, he would play Gabriel's lines. However, when it got down to later casting in the role, Dwayne Stevenson actually saw a sort of tape of him doing some lines for Samael and the director, Shane Abus, sort of looked at it and said you know, he's got this gravitas, he's got this strong commanding presence on screen and it's really important for us to have a really strong villainous presence within the movie just to balance the light and dark tones of the film. So they approached Dwayne and he sort of disagreed to start with until he saw himself on film and found that, you know, he does have that sort of space within him to portray Samael, who ends up being the villain of the movie, Gabriel.
Speaker 2:And also being in the army and then having to play someone who's commanding Lesser.
Speaker 1:The forces of the Fallen yeah.
Speaker 2:Fallen as his warrior minions Like I reckon he did a really good job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think as well, the mood he had to portray was intense, it was atmospheric as well and he really did need that sort of brooding presence. And I talked to you about this before we started recording. But he actually kind of went a bit method in his way where he would kind of stay in character and he had to wear those sort of white contact lenses very, very often.
Speaker 1:I suck, he was very unsettling to a lot of the cast members where he actually found people would avoid him around the set and he would stay, stay in his character pretty often to the point where you know um andy whitfield and he actually got into a little bit of a verbal altercation on the rooftop where they uh were filming the rain scene in the the final moments of the film and because of the, the situation and because of the cold and all of that sort of thing, they actually like really sort of got into a bit of a verbal. But they still remained friends and they knew it was a professional atmosphere and it was just the elements that sort of was getting the best of them. But yeah, it was really fun to sort of see that on the interview that he was actually attached to play Gabriel at one point before.
Speaker 2:Andy came along.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an idea I didn't pick up on initially Very good, all right, one, all your question, my question.
Speaker 2:So like Dwayne was very method, Harry Pavlidis was also very method. He played Uriel. What did he do to get ready for his role? Now, Uriel is the angel that was in the drive-in theatre.
Speaker 1:He was out in the drive-in theatre. Yeah, he's the one that was in the caravan for a really long time that Gabriel sensed when he first came down to Purgatory and he went to find straight away. So I do know this one. Harry Pavlidis actually played Uriel and he was sort of going through a personal crisis at the time and he thought to fully embody Uriel. And he was sort of going through a personal crisis at the time and he thought to fully embody Uriel's state of isolation and suffering. He would go and spend weeks alone in a caravan of his own in a national park. He did, yeah, and he would practice his lines by candlelight, he rationed his food. He fully immersed himself in that mindset of this tormented archangel persona. He said his dedication paid off because he was actually one of the actors that was praised by the Sydney Morning Herald when this sort of came out. He did a very good job, yeah, and they said that he was a scene stealer.
Speaker 1:So look out for Uriel if you guys are going to watch this one. He actually played it really really well and I actually agree he's probably one of my favorite characters in the movie just because of the way he delivered some of his lines. That was the reason I know so much about that, because that was actually part of one of my questions that I was going to do. Oh yeah, so I'm going to adjust this one, because there's a second part to this that I really wanted to talk about as well. So your question relating to Harry Pavlidis as well, who does play Uriel, there's a specific moment in the film where he picks up a set piece, which was this shot glass, and he very sort of shakily and anxiously sort of drinks out of that shot glass, and you'll notice that shot glass is a little bit sort of damaged. What's special about that scene, or what's special about that shot glass, brash? That's my question to you.
Speaker 2:Ooh, what's special about that shot glass, is it?
Speaker 1:explained in the movie. No, it's nothing. Character that is like, character wise that's significant, or plot wise that's significant, it's just like a. It's something that really sort of added to the aesthetic of the character of uriel um.
Speaker 2:Does he use it in the scene with gabriel? Does he use it with scene with lillith?
Speaker 1:he uses it in the scene with gabriel. Okay, after gabriel leaves and obviously gab Gabriel forces him to show himself, after Gabriel stabs him to heal and he leaves. He then takes that moment of solace and peace where he then goes and pours some alcohol and takes a drink out of this shot glass. And there's something very special about that shot glass that sort of indicates a little bit about his process and the way the film was shot.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, I can't even think I'm going to take a stab, was it? Oh, I don't know if you already said this. Was it like cracked? Yeah, was it cracked? Yep, yep, that wasn't it. That's not the thing.
Speaker 1:No, that is the thing. Oh, it is. Yeah, yeah, the shot glass was completely smashed and shattered. He actually dropped it moments before they said action. And for two reasons the director decided to keep it in, the first being, obviously, they had no budget and no time, so they couldn't go and find a new shot glass. They had a certain amount of runs to do for the day and they needed to just move on and get it done. And the second was because the director, shane abis, thought that it actually fed into uriel's character, where he didn't have very nice things and this shot glass which is incredibly cracked, by the way, and would have been very hard to drink out of- I know, Especially if you just broke it.
Speaker 2:You just picked it up Like whether it's shards of glass or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I thought as well and that's why it stood out to me and why I wanted to talk about it, because that's like of acting style that he was doing there as well, and it does sort of indicate that Gabriel was broken. Yeah, he was a broken man. That's the symbology of it. So, well done, good guess, that's like.
Speaker 2:I was like but I was actually going to say and I almost did but I'm like, oh, I'm like because that's my thing like he's a pretty broken character. I'm like, oh, they, it cracked. But I didn't think it was gonna be that sort of like symbolic. I didn't think it was gonna be that sort of like simple of a thing.
Speaker 2:But um, sometimes it's a simple question yeah, I was actually gonna say that I had a um my initial guess prior to the crack. I was gonna say it had a cross on it, like a faith to a cross on it. And so he's drinking because he just got healed again and had to bring it back because he's been hiding his angel side so long that he took a shot out of a shot glass with a cross on it or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm lucky I didn't say that, or I?
Speaker 1:saw it in the wrong. Well, I actually read that throughout the movie. They tried to use terms like angel and demon and heaven and hell and those theology kind of terms as little as possible yeah, because they didn't want to be limited in the terms of spaces where they could present and show the movie or places where it could be shown and it gives a bit more um imagination and a bit more like um.
Speaker 2:You don't have to be religious or believe in heaven and hell to actually watch this movie. It could just be it can be. You can simply look at it as good versus bad yeah, or light versus dark which is what they they do portray it as that way very often and you could sort of what's the word I'm looking for, where you can have your own perception, perception of the movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it didn't have to be black and white yeah, alright, so it's two all, even though we're being harder on each other. We're just too good.
Speaker 2:We do our research here at the Fandom. I don't think I should have got the last one, because I did ask a few other questions on it. I'm giving it to you.
Speaker 1:I'm giving it to you, last one for you, and then my one is after that.
Speaker 2:So this one might be a bit harder. This is probably my hardest question, because you have to. This isn't so much about the movie, but also, um, the fact that it's an australian always made it a strut as an australian film. So there's a lot of australian actors, so a lot of them have actually worked, not so much together, but worked on the same projects before.
Speaker 1:So my question is out of the 12 uh, fallen and archangels, how many were on the tv show home and oh, for those that don't know, home and Away is a soap that has run for years and years and years Like it's probably gone for as long as I've been alive and it is based in Summer Bay and they have a rotating cast of characters where every single soap trope you can think of has happened. On that show. There's natural disasters every year. Somebody's pregnant, somebody gets like there's a wedding, there's someone dies, yeah, and they play the worst TV ads for it as well. It's very trashy, but we love it. We love it here in Australia, yeah, and also a lot of our Australian actors that our international listeners probably know are lily padded from either Home and Away or Neighbours. I know that Chris Hemsworth was on Chris Hemsworth.
Speaker 2:He was in Home and Away. He was on Home and.
Speaker 1:Away, boy, but I'm digressing because I don't know the answer to this question. Can you tell? So for this one, I'm going to guess there's 12 fallen and archangels.
Speaker 2:Nozman, this is your clue. I say this saying oh yeah, how many people have been in Home and Away? There actually isn't that many. Oh, I'll say two, then Four, four, which four? So Michael who plays Asmodeus, erica who plays Lilith, jack who plays Raphael, harry who plays Uriel, and that was the four, because I didn't, because, in case you sort of did look this up, there's actually a fifth, brendan, but he was in the movie. Ah, they had a special Hunter Away movie. He wasn't actually in the show, he was in the special movie. Brendan who played Balan.
Speaker 1:He played Balan yes, yeah, very nice. Okay, so five of the 12 actually appeared in the Amazing Great.
Speaker 2:I'll let you have it if you can guess who was actually a main on Hunter Away. Most of these are just a few episodes, or one episode, or three episodes, four episodes. There's one who actually did like 87 episodes.
Speaker 1:Was it Erica Haynes who played Lilith? She came on later. I did read something similar and I remember that she sort of came on after she starred in Gabriel.
Speaker 2:Actually no, sorry, it was 123 episodes. The person also broke their leg before the movie.
Speaker 1:I know Asmodeus broke his leg before the movie. The guy that played Asmodeus so that must be Michael Piccirilli Was Michael Piccirilli. I'm not going to take that one because I had too many clues. Okay, so the film of Gabriel and you have one question to go. The film of Gabriel had a extremely tight budget, as we spoke about before. There was actually something that happened three days out from filming that almost prevented it from being filmed all together. Can you tell me what that was? Oh no, would you like a clue? Yes, please. Okay, so australian movies are usually financed and they can get some government sort of funding, uh, but usually they get government funding for films that they obviously think is going to be backed by international buyers. However, any film that shoots in Australia or anywhere requires this to go ahead, and they lost it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I still don't know. I'm going to guess some sort of is it like the film license?
Speaker 1:Not the film license? No, oh, then I have no idea. So the licensing is something that happens when they actually have to have permission to shoot. The film license? No, oh, right, then I have no idea. So the licensing is something that happens when they actually have to have permission to shoot where they want to shoot. But this is actually, uh, the film's insurance.
Speaker 2:So, oh, I think I do remember reading something about this there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the the film insurance was unexpectedly revoked and there's only, apparently according to, uh, some of the people that were on the interviews, uh, there's only apparently two major insurance companies in australia for film projects.
Speaker 1:One of them had already declined to work with Gabriel and the other one agreed, however, three days before. Due to the risky nature of the film and the action sequences, and especially the ending sequence involving Gabriel free falling off of a building, they decided that they would revoke their insurance. However, they did some scrambling. They had to push shooting back by two days, so instead of shooting on the Monday, they ended up shooting on the Wednesday and they found an insurer. However, it was for three times the cost, so their small budget became even smaller in terms of what they could actually do with the money. So, because of the small budget, they had some extras and crew members that left halfway through in principal photography, which made things hard, and the director, shane Abus, said that the ones that stayed were really driven by the passion and the belief of the film. They wanted Australian cinema to thrive and they also thought it could be a launchpad for their careers as well.
Speaker 2:I think probably for a few. It probably was too. Yeah, yeah, Andy's one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, andy Whitfield for one, and you know this isn't a question, but it's an interesting fact. Do you know how he got so many people on the crew to work? Besides the fact that you know obviously they were driven by passion and belief financially, do you know how he got them to actually work on the film? Don't ask. No, they actually they Donuts. No, they actually they agreed to work on a deferred payment.
Speaker 2:A deferred payment. Yeah, which was really good of those people, too, doing the work. But I'm grateful because I liked the movie. Yep, yep, but I had a little tidbit too, that I was going to like a little. Yes, did you know? Because you were watching. Do you watch it on Prime?
Speaker 1:No, I watch it on Apple.
Speaker 2:Did you know that there was actually there's actually a after-birth scene.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, I did. Where he shows up to Jade Jade and he's got brown eyes. He loses his tattoo because he becomes a mortal, because he gets rid of his wings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about that a little bit later for the MVTs, because I think that's a very interesting kind of ending. That's some of the questions I had for you too. Yeah, good tidbit. Good, this is called foreshadowing people when we talk about something before that's going to happen later. It's a movie technique, but you know what I did forget to do? I forgot to read on the movie.
Speaker 2:So on Reddit. I'd actually be really, I'm actually really interested in seeing what they think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we put it on Reddit and we always ask what people thought of the movie Gabriel. We put up a movie poster as well and we had some people writing in. So on Reddit we had Mike Corneo who said that they've never seen it, but they're glad that the angel Gabriel got it due, because usually Michael's the hero and usually it's supernatural exactly, yeah, so Gabriel is I actually kind of I really like the name Gabriel for one but he's also seems to me to be like the unsung sort of youngest yeah, because him Michael Lucifer, and he's the always the one, that sort of yeah, the youngest child, yeah, the innocent one, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pushed around by their older brothers.
Speaker 1:Yep, we had Adam Effective on Reddit, who also said that it was a great idea, however terrible, terrible, terrible execution, they said. Of course it didn't have a really big budget, though, so there is that to note. So, very, very true with the budget uh, constraints there. And then going over to our threads all right, so on our threads we have cyber sentinel comic that says it was okay. They said that they thought that they might have to watch it again. And then we had the dreamer. The storyteller said I remember thinking it was a really cool concept, but but I barely remember it from 2007. So that's kind of like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd agree with that, Like me, because when I watched it in 2007, and then I didn't watch it again for a while after that and then I was sort of like I sort of, because I sort of enjoyed it and I enjoyed the concept, I sort of remembered most of it. But even watching it again recently for this, there was some parts where I'm like, oh, I forgot that even happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I actually really resonated with the dream of the storyteller's comment as well, because I actually think as a concept, this is actually really good. I think you know, as we talked about before, the uh, light and the dark, the heaven and the hell, the arcs and the that whole concept of that battle over purgatory, that's a really big draw for me. I really like that.
Speaker 2:And I have my own thoughts about the movie that we'll talk about later, but about that concept about good and evil and everything, Very good, all right.
Speaker 1:So with that we're going to move on to our Set Secrets segment. All right, so the Set Secrets segment is where hosts take a look behind the scenes of the movie to give you all the information on what went right, what went wrong, what was interesting and how the movie was made. So our question for the set secrets segment, brash, is how was this movie made on such a minuscule budget? So this is where we're going to go into all the techniques that the director, shane Abus, used in order to actually produce the movie that was his passion project for such a long time. You know the budget was about $200,000 Australian dollars.
Speaker 1:They have said that it's a really example of resourcefulness, of low budget filmmaking. They blended cinematography with minimalist production design and digital technology to kind of create this high concept action film. You know they overcame a lot of financial struggles and stress. They didn't have the industry's support until the sort of very end of the movie as well. So they didn't get any sort of industry funding at all as well. And you know this is during the time when there was some technical limitations too, because the amount of sort of digital camera uses that they could have weren't as advanced as they are right now, so to say.
Speaker 2:Well, for most of the buildings and stuff that they used were all just abandoned and run down abandoned places, so they didn't have to actually hire these places. They just went to abandoned houses and buildings and shit and just shot the film in there. So that's how they got like all the lofts and everything like that and like where Jade sort of spends most of the movie, and a few of the other places. And I believe it was shot in Sydney around the Harbour.
Speaker 1:Bridge. Yeah, yeah, so Sydney was definitely the place where they shot this in the industrial district and, as you said, you know they used a lot of industrial locations that were already existing. Shane Abus actually joked that when they were brainstorming about this, he said we really wanted to film it in places where we could like jump a fence, shoot the film, shoot the scene and then jump back out without being known because it would be free.
Speaker 1:But he kind of did sort of take that approach where there was abandoned buildings and they'd just go up with the props department and sort of dress it up as best that they could cut off various sections as well. But also in their framing techniques with the camera. He also mentioned that, you know, for some shots, you know, about 20 centimeters to the left of where the camera cuts off, there is like an open field. Yeah, you know, to the right over there where somebody's arm is, you know, just to the left of that one you can see like a whole bunch of farmland. So he's like.
Speaker 1:You know, we really had to use those set designs and the framing shots really, really carefully in order to not expose the fact that we were, you know, using a cheaply designed or an industrial kind of set.
Speaker 1:And to me, you know, that was it was successful to the point where I think it's really well done in terms and creative in the way that they did it. But for me it kind of felt a little bit claustrophobic and sort of limiting because they had to use specific angles and usually when you're talking about camera angles in a movie, you can look at it and think to yourself are they using that long shot to establish setting or they're using this close-up to establish, you know, a really sort of tense environment and they want us to focus on these particular things. But for this movie you couldn't really do that, because they had to. The reason behind it all it was like oh, why did the director choose to do that shot? And the reason behind every single one was oh, they, they had to they had to they, they couldn't do it any other way.
Speaker 2:Exactly right. Which it feels like same with the drive-in theater part Yep, where you see like-.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, with everything the Uriel yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all the. If you look, when it did pan out to the outside of that area, it was just dark, yep, just dark, because they couldn't show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was basically like a convie van or a caravan that was sitting in an empty parking lot and behind it was literally just nighttime. So obviously in the film you can see the swirling sort of mist, that sky and that stormy, tumultuous, dystopian, and then in the distance you also saw the flickering of the city beyond, which was obviously the digital effects over the practical effects as well. That is also one of the ways that they kind of cut costs in this as well, because the practical effects of the backgrounds made the universe seem a little bit more expansive than it would have been otherwise, like that shot when it goes through the city at the very start, when he's falling, and you can just.
Speaker 2:I didn't really notice it in my first watch in 2007, but I noticed it when I watched it.
Speaker 1:How animated it was, yeah, yeah yeah, and you know what I think, if we're going to compare it to the Crow, where they kind of used miniatures, I feel like in the Crow it kind of worked because the miniatures obviously gave that sort of aesthetic for the city on fire. Here it was probably just too digital for me to really kind of yeah, and when he comes out of the sky it's really bright.
Speaker 2:I reckon if he had gone through bright clouds and all of a sudden the clouds are darker, darker, darker, and then he came out into a darker landscape, but when he comes out, there's that light behind him that shines on the sea and makes the city bright and you can really notice that it's digital, whereas if he came down and it was already really dark, I reckon they could have got away with the buildings because everything looked so dark it would have been hard to discern that it was really digitally made, like.
Speaker 1:Obviously we were talking about the city, but we can also talk about the digital effects that are throughout the movie as well in terms of like the explosions and wire work and things like that was too expensive for any kind of combat or any like bullet work. So you'll notice that they try and attempt to do this thing, that the that the cinema filmmakers call bullet time, and it was made famous in in the matrix, where basically all time slows down and the bullets are moving and we can see in the matrix Neo sort of does this, this dodging sort of technique, which they attempt to do here in Gabriel as well.
Speaker 2:I kind of like it, you did, you liked it, you did, you liked it. I did because for like budget and for like having like no money to do anything, the fact that they could even sort of because it sort of reminded me like don't tell, like no, by no means is it like good, but but I like, I like the attempt and it gives it that little bit extra, because it reminds me of, like um, your old movies with your speedsters, like smallville and stuff like that, when they're, when you see them doing their like really quick moves and moves, you're like, oh, like it's bad, but I love it.
Speaker 1:See to me, with that, with the, especially with the fight scenes, when they use the intense slow motion and the zooming of the characters, I know what they were trying to do. They were trying to show that these guys are ethereal and they're battling in a really powerful way, but for me it really just made the choreography of the fight incoherent, so I couldn't really tell what was happening. And you know, there would be a flash of fast slow motion and then two characters would be pointing guns at each other and then like only just miss each other with a shot and then, you know, the guns would then be sort of just pushed towards the side. But then, you know, they decided to do the CGI bullet time and they actually had two bullets collide. And that was when I looked at that and I was like come on. But but interestingly enough, when they were actually doing that, they were thinking of trying to do those bullet scenes where they were shooting bullets, scenes where they were shooting bullets, especially down the hallway where he's fighting, gabriel's fighting as modius. They tried to do that where they detached the bullets to strings and fishing wire and they said it literally just did not work. They couldn't do it so they had to do it in post with cgi.
Speaker 1:One one, one scene that I thought actually did look good as a digital effect and props to the digital effect artist that did it was when the uh soup kitchen exploded, yeah, so that was actually a digital effect that they sort of combined with a practical set and then they digitally remade the set and obviously there was a, there was a real life sort of flash, but then the parts of the set that sort of came off, they, they animated, and that that actually looked okay.
Speaker 1:That wasn't too bad. So I think, like kind of hit and miss, and I know why they had to use digital effects, because you know, the practical effects was just way too hard to use but way too expensive to use. But we were talking as well about one of the probably the silliest choices that they made in terms of cheapening up their effects department and that was in terms of the rain on the very ending scene for the climax of the movie, where we've obviously got Samuel who, spoiler alert, is giving you a moment to turn off is revealed to be Michael, who Gabriel actually loves, a mentor of his, and he realizes that.
Speaker 1:You know, gabriel, that Samuel slash Michael has been turned as a result of his time in purgatory, so they end up having this battle and there is a massive amount of rain, like these characters are fucking drenched, like they've probably got more rain on that roof than we have in our town right now. It was a very interesting way that they did that effect. Brash, can you tell me how that they did that? Garden hoses, garden hoses they went to Bunnings warehouse, which is a hardware store here in Australia, and they actually picked up some hoses, used regular town water which wasn't heated, which is usually what happens on a film set and they just shot it into the sky. And actually on some of the behind the scenes videos that I watched, you actually see two people sitting on the roof waving the garden hoses, so the rain had a little bit of an effect. Instead of just shooting it straight up, they literally crouched up there waving garden hoses and I thought that's just so high school, isn't it, but you know it the rain effect actually looked okay on film.
Speaker 2:It did. It looked okay on film, but there was some pretty serious consequences to that as well. Yeah, for any, there was a few little incidents on set, but, uh, one of the biggest ones was actually andy getting hypothermia from being in that ridiculous rain for so long. Because he was, he seemed to always be out of weather, so so all the rain sort of effects eventually caught up with him and he got hypothermia.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they ended up having to go to a local hospital, not to put Andy into the hospital, andy Whitfield into the hospital, but they actually went to get like space blankets and they had to obviously wear those space blankets. And for subsequent takes after his hypothermia incident they bought them both wetsuits that they were able to wear so they wouldn't get as cold, but the space blankets. Apparently, in an interview afterwards Andy Whitfield said he still hears the crackling of the tinfoil space blanket around him and it gives him flashbacks of his time when he had hypothermia there. So we were talking earlier in our earlier segments about how duane stevenson and he sort of didn't really get along in this moment because duane stevenson was very method, but this is the scene we're talking about.
Speaker 1:When they were, they were kind of at each other's throats a bit because they really really just wanted to get it right and get out of that rain. Um, they said it was almost like a trauma response whenever they would just sit between takes and just collect themselves. They'd look towards each other and know, hey, there's someone else in the same exact situation that I am, so I'm okay. And then the director would say, all right, are you ready to go? And then all their anxieties would just fuel. So it was a very high stakes and high octane sort of environment during that scene in particular.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it would have been particularly hard for Andy because Andy, especially at the start of that was and at the end was that had to be like oh, I love you, brother. At the same time like fucking get it right, because I want this fucking Exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it. Oh man, it would have been so hard and you know props to him and we might talk about his acting a little bit later. But yeah, I think just for the digital effects and effects overall they had to very much cut costs in a lot of regards to the point post-production enhancements of shadow and blood and, uh, the the blue scale across almost everything, kind of gave it like a comic book-esque uh, look, which is very similar to movies like underworld, which is the the vibe that they were they were going for there. I know in the crow they have the same thing happen, but it's obviously red, uh, so the the blue that goes through through gives it that kind of ethereal space. So the digital effects were, were good, but some of them you can really just tell a digital effects in there yeah, very, very much not so good.
Speaker 1:The, the, the fight choreographer choreography as well was something that they did. Usually. What happens is they they hire a fight director in movies and they take the utmost care to choreograph these fights so they look good and nobody gets hurt, and they're practiced down to an art form. So, you know, it's almost like a dance, like step by step.
Speaker 2:They can take these, these steps, and they can, uh, pull off the moves that they need to you think, you can almost think, like um hayden and ewan in star wars, that like their and their practice and their fighting was just absolutely flawless, phenomenal, yeah, and you can see them swinging their lightsabers and it's like they're in each other's brains because they've practiced it that much In this movie.
Speaker 1:However, some of the fight scenes which has been characterized by the director as stylized pub brawling, sometimes they only had about an hour or so to get that fighting correct before they then had to go and do the actual scene. So the fight between Gabriel and Asmodeus was actually a 98-move fight sequence and they only had an hour to prepare for it before filming. And they said the reason they were successful in doing it successful in quote marks was because they had Kyle Rowling, who was a fight director for lots of different movies. He's been a stunt double in the movie called Wanted. He was actually Count Dooku's stunt double in Star Wars 2 and 3. He was actually the fight director on this movie and he kind of coached them through it minutes before and his professionalism and his knowledge of the actual art form of fighting was how they were able to get through it. And that hallway scene, they obviously used various different cuts to kind of separate it out as well. But you know, but the timing that they would have had to actually prepare and practice they didn't have.
Speaker 1:So one of the biggest things that cost money on film sets is feeding everybody, right? So sometimes on a movie film, the catering budget alone can be $200,000. And that amount sounds very familiar because this movie was literally made on $200,000 total. Can you guess the very famous Australian company that came to save the day for the production of Gabriel Australian, australian, aussies supporting Aussies, brash Baker's Delight oh, really Baker's Delight? Yeah, baker's Delight offered the production and the crew to use their end ofof-day bread which they usually throw out.
Speaker 2:I was going to say 4 and 20. Oh yeah, pies, that would have been great. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they actually came to the rescue and you know, for a lot of the days that they were filming, they would offer taco night, they would have sausage on bread day for lunch and then there was people that were taking dual roles. So the producer was also the caterer and the runner, and some of the actors that weren't on set at the time were also doing various jobs on set design and production design. So everybody the director, shane Abers, said that everybody was doing a job that they weren't trained or signed up to do and he was really, really thankful that everybody kind of came together to finish off the vision of the film. Another thing that they used is they used literally all of the cast and crew, whether they were actors or not, as extras in the movie. So at some point, if they were the producer or even the director, they have a spot in the movie. So at some point, if they were the producer or even the director, they have a spot in the movie. And the one where they all show up at the same time is in the Ark nightclub scene where you see the band playing. And they hired out the Ark nightclub. They went in before hours and they have to look like this nightclub is absolutely packed out and they only had about 40 people. So what they did is they got every single person that was involved in the film dressed up and gothed up to the point where and they use that really tight camera framing to make it look like this packed out nightclub and that was the scene where where Lilith ends up, uh, being killed by Gabriel, in that scene where they're all raving. So everybody that you see in that that scene there, no extras, it's all just film. Yeah, the cost of of the film crew, yeah, all right. So gabriel was actually like pretty six. It succeeded on a tiny budget because of those reasons you know. It used digitally shot material to save time instead of film stocks. I used those abandoned locations, used various different practical lighting and color grading and things like that. Fight scenes were done really raw, uh, and yeah, they used a lot of vfx shots where they, where they could, and it just kind of proves, you know, that the passion and creativity and smart filmmaking, you can really get your vision done.
Speaker 1:Alright, let's go on to our sign off for part one of our Gabriel episode. Alright, everybody, thank you so much for listening to part one of our episode on Gabriel. Part two will be available for you in the list below this one. In that part, we are also going to be talking about the characters of Gabriel and Samuel slash Michael. We're going to be doing our real deal segment and we're going to be doing our most valuable takeaways, where we get into a really deep dive analysis of the movie of Gabriel, this amazing Australian film that really broke the barriers.
Speaker 1:We've got some new things happening here at the Fandom Portals podcast. Obviously, if you want to join us for our social medias, you can take part in our portal is pics and you can have your thoughts on the movies we do read out on our podcast. You can do that on threads and you can do that on Instagram, and you can also email us if you have more of a longer question and you that at our email address, which is fandomportals at gmail dot com. Alright, everybody, we'll see you in part two. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys.
