to the main theme, all building to the fairy tale that everybody knows. The opening element of the dreamer gave us the freedom to move from story to story." The script reached its third draft by July 1983. Carter's proposed ending for the film would have featured Rosaleen diving into the floor of her bedroom and being swallowed up as by water. In the DVD commentary for the film, Jordan claimed that the limited technology of the time prevented the production of such a sequence, whereas later CGI effects would in fact make it quite simple. However, in 1929 Jean Cocteau, using film technology that was more than half a century older, included a scene in his film The Blood of a Poet in which a character "passes through a mirror" (in actuality, a pool of water). The original screenplay of The Company of Wolves (as presented in The Curious Room) also featured an additional story being told by the huntsman, a very different final tale by Rosaleen (reminiscent of Carter's "Peter and the Wolf" from her collection Black Venus) and a scene set in a church with an animal congregation. The budget was provided by ITC Distributors. Principal photography The Company of Wolves was filmed in Shepperton Studios in England. The film's cast was primarily made up of British actors. Sarah Patterson made her screen debut, despite being much younger than the kind of actress the casting director had been looking for, and likely too young to understand some of the film's more adult concepts. Her youth also meant having to make special arrangements with her school in order for her to be away for nine weeks while shooting took place. Northern Irish actor Stephen Rea had already worked with director Neil Jordan in Angel and would later work with him again in The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto, amongst others. Jordan worked for several weeks in pre-production with artist filmmakers Nichola Bruce and Michael Coulson to create hundreds of detailed storyboard drawings. Also involved with production was production designer Anton Furst and his draftsman Nigel Phelps, who would later go on to work on Tim Burton's Batman. The film's visuals were of particular importance, as Jordan explains:The visual design was an integral part of the script. It was written and imagined with a heightened sense of reality in mind. In the DVD commentary,