Meet our filmmakers who are making short work a BIG success...
BROOKLYN, Room, Michael Fassbender, Saoirse Ronan... it’s safe to assume that Irish film is very much Having A Moment. Yet for one corner of the homegrown industry, the celebrations and plaudits have been coming for almost a decade.
The whole country rejoiced as short filmmaker Benjamin Cleary bid a hearty ‘sláinte’ to a starpacked auditorium at last weekend’s Oscar ceremony.
Cleary may be bringing home a little slice of Hollywood heaven to his native Rathmines, but he’s by no means the first Irish short filmmaker to strike gold at the Oscars.
In fact, for almost a decade, our small island of filmmaking talent has been punching well above its weight on in the short film category, clocking in an incredible 11 nominations in the last decade alone.
Cleary follows in the footsteps of two other short Irish films who beat out stiff competition to take home the coveted prize.
In 2006, playwright Martin McDonagh’s unforgettable and bloody Six Shooter took home the Best Live Action Short. McDonagh had long been an esteemed playwright at that point, but the win paved the way for him to enter the big leagues with his feature films In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths.
More recently, The Shore proved an Oscar winner for Northern Irish father and daughter duo Terry and Oorlath George. Terry had already enjoyed success with credits on Hotel Rwanda and In The Name Of The Father, but the Oscar win put the pair firmly on the filmmaking map.
Other short filmmakers who have nearly tasted Oscar glory with nominations haven’t fared too badly either: New Boy director Steph Green went on to make the warmly-received Run & Jump, while Brown Bag Films’ ongoing fortunes is the animation success story heard around the world.
Pretty soon the question looms large: just why is it that Irish short films have fared so spectacularly well on the world stage?
There’s no denying the wealth of storytelling talent out there, but according to Louise Ryan of the Irish Film Board, short films are where most of our best and brightest cut their teeth.
With the Irish Film Board investing an estimated average of €400-450K in short film production every year across a wide number of schemes, it’s certainly easier for a filmmaker to get a short film completed than a feature. Other funders in Ireland include Filmbase and RTÉ, as well as a host of third-level courses.
‘Short film is a really great training ground for directors and producers,’ says Louise.
Aoife Kelleher, who went on to direct the critically-acclaimed documentary One Million Dubliners, got her first break as a director on the short film Home, funded by the Irish Film Board. Home premiered at the Cork Film Festival in 2012, and promptly put Kelleher on the map as a talent to watch. ‘It was the first project I submitted to the Film Board so I was incredibly lucky to be commissioned first time around,’ she admits. ‘It was great to develop a relationship with the Film Board, and when it came to getting One Million Dubliners made, it was important that I’d worked with them before and they knew me. They were more comfortable taking a big chance on a first-time director. I’d really recommend going the short film route to anyone else who wants to develop a career as a director or producer.’
But, according to Louise, visibility on a wider platform is key to grabbing the attention of Oscar voters.
‘We’re the largest investor in short films in the state, but we also put a detailed and thorough promotion plan behind the shorts we fund, whereby they tend to fly at the Oscar qualifying film festivals around the world,’ she explains. The more festival buzz around a project, in other words, the more likely it is that the wider filmmaking community will sit up and take notice.
‘Festivals like Tribeca, the Galway Film Fleadh, Short Film Encounters and the Cork Film Festival are hugely important,’ Louise reveals. ‘It’s a huge mark of respect to win a short film award at any of them.
‘The advice we give to filmmakers is to apply for the festivals and do a year’s promotion on your film, just to get your name out. More exposure means more word of mouth.
‘And, when the filmmakers travel to the festivals, we make sure that they use the opportunity to network and try and get their next film made. It’s up to them, really, to have scripts ready to give to an agent if they’re in LA. Very simply, if the storytelling talent isn’t there, it won’t pick up any awards.’
Louise explains that when it comes to securing Film Board funding, it’s all about the script.
‘The decision (to fund) is based on the strength of the script and the vision for the script,’ she says. ‘The schemes are aimed at new and established filmmakers, but that i s the most i mportant criteria.’
The lucky streak of Ireland’s short film stars looks set to run and run: Geist (written and directed by Sean Mullen, Ben Harper and Alex Sherwood) and How was Your Day (directed by Damien O’Donnell) have been chosen for this year’s South By Southwest Festival, while A Coat Made Dark (directed by Jack O’Shea) showed plenty of promise at the Sundance Film Festival.
At last year’s prestigious Clermont Ferrand festival, Julian Regnard’s Somewhere Down The Line also won best animation. In the next couple of months, the After ’16 short films — a diverse collection of work to celebrate the centenary of 1916 — will travel the world and will hopefully wow audiences across the globe.