"We had less money for the budget than Hollywood films had for catering," director Shane Abbess says.
"We were selling things like surfboards and guitars. The sacrifice was huge. Our director of photography sold his house because he couldn't repay the mortgage. He moved his wife and three-week-old kid to Melbourne. We had people working day jobs, then working eight or nine hours a night. I was working [during the day] in a call centre."
Yet they all believed strongly in their project, an act of faith rather apt for a story about angels. Australia doesn't have much of a reputation for making supernatural action films - even if Australian director Alex Proyas made that masterpiece of the genre, The Crow - so Abbess was taking even more of a gamble with his debut feature film.
Their faith paid off. Sony was so impressed by what Abbess and his team had achieved it gave them additional money for special effects and bought the worldwide distribution rights for the film.
"Sony in America couldn't believe we made this film in Australia because it looks so international," Abbess says.
Gabriel is set in Purgatory, a dark, smoky-looking realm for souls stuck between heaven and hell. Fighting over Purgatory and its ruin of a city are two groups: seven archangels and seven fallen angels. Gabriel, the archangel of the title, is sent to Purgatory to reclaim the realm for heaven.
He faces two challenges: first, defeating the forces of evil, led by the powerful Sammael (Dwaine Stevenson); and second, inhabiting a human body, with all its frailties and emotions.
As Uriel, Gabriel's ally, says: "I hate this place ... I hate myself ... and before I arrived, I didn't even know what that feeling was."
"The [angels] haven't had to control their emotions before, things like love and hate," Abbess says. "If you've neverm had anger before, it's such a strong emotion.
"It's easy for the angels to [judge people] because they've never been human before. Gabriel realises being human is harder than anything."
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