Author: Redazione IFF

Julien Regnard is the director of Somewhere Down the Line, one of the animated short films in competition at Irish Film Festa 2015. The short is produced under the Irish Film Board’s Frameworks scheme, exclusively dedicated to animation, and in collaboration with Cartoon Saloon (Nora Twomey, co-director of The Secret of Kells, is involved as executive producer).

Somewhere Down the Line shows a man’s life, loves and losses through the exchanges he has with the passengers in his car.

How did you develop this story about the passing of time?

I moved places a lot during the past few years, from Montpellier to Paris to Brussels and then to Ireland, and it made me realized how difficult it was to keep contact with the people I had met, how short and fragile were the human relationships compared to the infinity of time and space. So the film is a metaphor of this idea, a man driving on the road, getting older and older and leaving the people he meets behind him along the way.

How did your work on the characters animation and their integration with the backgrounds?

For the characters animation, it was pretty simple because they are drawn in 2D, we used a software called TvPaint and then did simple compositing. The tricky part was the car and the animated background. We had to paint all the views of the car in Photoshop and then project them onto the 3D model. Same for the rolling backgrounds, we painted several views of the landscape and then projected them on a 3D map. It took us a while to figure it out but in the end it was working fine.

The music plays a big part in Somewhere Down the Line: how did you work with the composers?

The music was composed by 3epkano which is a band specialized in doing impro live on silent films so I was very interested in working with them. We met a first time and they believed in the film straight away, we had very little money and time but they only cared about the artistic value of the project. I think they did an amazing job in the end and brought so much to the atmosphere of the film.

 
Paul Murphy is the director and screenwriter of The Weather Report, one of the short films in competition at Irish Film Festa 2015.

1944. Ted (Edward MacLiam, Run & Jump) and her wife Maureen (Marie Ruane) are the Blacksod Lighthouse keepers, in County Mayo. One day they receive a misterious phone call which questions one of their routine weather reports. What’s happening?

The Weather Report won the GFC/RTÉ Short Film Award and was later selected at many international festivals, including the Galway Film Fleadh, the IndieCork Film Festival, the Boston and the Chicago Irish Film Festivals.

Why did you choose to tell the story of Ted and Maureen Sweeney?

I love the idea of ‘ordinary’ people going about their lives and inadvertently finding themselves at the centre of events far beyond their own lives.
Interesting things often happen at the edge of a country, in this case it is also the edge of Europe.

How did you cast Edward MacLiam and Marie Ruane?

Casting Maureen was easy, really. As soon as I saw Marie Ruane in the short film Foxes, I knew she was perfect for the part and I was delighted when she agreed. Casting Ted was difficult. There is such a great choice of Irish male actors to play this kind of part. When I decided to ask Ed, I was delighted when he came on board. Both were fantastic to work with.

Did you actually shoot at the Blacksod Lighthouse?

We did shoot at Blacksod Lighthouse. It was important for me to shoot at that Lighthouse. It is the only Lighthouse in Britain and Ireland that has a square top. It is in such an isolated place, even for the west of Ireland, that there is very little obstruction to filming and basing your story in the 1940’s.

 
Ruth Meehan is the director and scriptwriter of The Measure of a Man, one of the short films in competition at Irish Film Festa 2015.

Jay Brady (Andrew Simpson, who played Cate Blanchett’s teenage-lover in Notes on a Scandal) is a young man who struggles to come to terms with the death of his father as he gets fitted for his first suit made by a tailor (Ronan Wilmot).

Ruth spoke about the cathartic meaning of the film, inspired by a true story.

How was the script developed?

I developed the script with my brother Kenneth after our friend Gary Henderson shared a story with us. Gary had recently lost his father and told us of getting a suit made by his father’s tailor. It had been a cathartic experience which had made him feel closer to his father.

This little film was a real gift, the rare kind that takes you by the hand and shows you where to go. It is and was very personal, cathartic and healing for us all and remains one of my dearest and most cherished experiences during a very dark period of time.

How did you cast Andrew Simpson and Ronan Wilmot?

At the time I was working with producer Tony Deegan on another project and he had just finished working with Andrew Simpson and told us how brilliant he was. Andrew had just been cast in a big BBC show, The Life and Adventures of Nick Nickleby, but the story resonated with him. He had also recently lost a close friend and we were really lucky that he made the time to be in the film.

Ronan Wilmot was another suggestion by a friend. He had the perfect sensibility for our tailor and was terrific.

Where was the The Measure of a Man shot?

Louis and Adrian Copeland are the foremost tailors in Dublin, and we were incredibly fortunate that they opened their doors to us. Their alterations room had been recently refurbished, but they introduced us to Denis Darcy, who was just about to retire, and whose studio was a designer’s dream. Denis had a very tight deadline on the day that we were filming with him, so he kept working around us. Sometimes the close-ups of hands trimming fabric are his, although even we can’t tell which ones anymore!

 
Special thanks to the producer Tamsin Lyons