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Career

 

Ophelia

This is the first full length production film by Covert Media

Negotiations commenced late in 2015 with CAA securing the funding and headlining Daisy Ridley
Stillking Films was appointed early in 2016 to produce the film, after which the production team was signed and other actors agreed to the production in the following three months

Filming was originally scheduled for the second half of 2017, but was moved to April 2017 to July 2017 when Stillking Films was appointed
Principal photography was scheduled for 15 May 2017 to 09 July 2017

This allowed Covert Media to make a sales presentation on 17 May 2017 at the Cannes Film Festival to find a distributor, using promotional material from the last week of rehearsals and the first day of filming

 

15 May 2017
 

Daisy with Vendy Vosotkova (Costume) on 15 May 2017

 

Filming on set on 25 May 2017


13 June 2017

Covert Media appointed Ascot Elite Film Entertainment as the sole distributor at the end of June 2017

Interview with Claire McCarthy, Director, and Dave Warren, Production Designer
25 July 2017 Variety Magazine

 

The recently wrapped film “Ophelia,” a reimagining of “Hamlet” told from the perspective of one of its most ambivalent and least understood characters, gives its title character “more dimension and gravitas than she was afforded in Shakespeare’s original story,” says director Claire McCarthy.

 

The feature — the first to be completed by indie production, finance and sales outfit Covert Media — brings Ophelia, Hamlet’s love interest whose internal conflicts drive her to madness, to the forefront of the story. The movie was filmed in the Czech Republic at historical locations and in re-created medieval interiors at Barrandov Studios in Prague. Daisy Ridley plays Ophelia as a secret confidante and favorite of Naomi Watts’ Queen Gertrude. George MacKay (“Captain Fantastic”) plays Hamlet.

 

But it’s the devious Claudius (Clive Owen) who turns the Danish court from a place of beauty and grace — at least in the eyes of Ophelia — into a web of lies soon to be strewn with bodies. Producer Daniel Bobker developed the film based on Lisa Klein’s book exploring Ophelia’s possible offstage life.

 

Production designer Dave Warren, who created the imposing Great Hall, where Claudius’ crime is slowly unmasked by Hamlet, says the decision to create the space at Barrandov was one driven by a tight shooting schedule and Czech crews with phenomenal art and decor skills.

 

The production considered using the real-life Krivoklat Castle, he says, but the crew found that a grand hall just as big could be built on a soundstage in part of Barrandov’s popular Novy Haly building.

 

A chapel at Krivoklat was used for the wedding scene, and additional structures in the town of Kutna Hora were considered. But shooting in castles that are protected monuments greatly limits camera moves and lighting. “Half our schedule we were on soundstages,” says Warren. The decision was also made to add the queen’s antechamber, bath and tower bedroom to the Barrandov set.

 

As for the Great Hall, it changes with Claudius’ machinations and growing paranoia, the drapery becoming more somber in tone and the shadows lengthening as Ophelia’s initial enchantment with court life evolves into a sense of menace. “Some of the reference here is from a lovely palazzo in Florence,” Warren says, showing off the faux stonework and rich tapestries that surround Gertrude’s chambers.