An interview with Darren Thornton, noted down by Daniel Bickermann.

How did you become a filmmaker?

I studied media studies in college, but film wasn't really a big part of the course. I was never really that academic and so most of what I learned was through trial and error. I worked in theatre (and still do) and that has shaped my work as a filmmaker quite a bit because my experience working with actors is always a huge help when working in film.

And since your short film represents Ireland in our European Short Film Exhibition – do you feel that your background is typical for your generation of Irish filmmakers?

Not necessarily. Most Irish filmmakers come from a technical background. A lot have been to film school and have worked in commercials, then shorts and then features. I went about it a different way; I worked in theatre and learned about working with actors, also most of what I know about storytelling came from this experience, then I did a TV series when I was quite young and inexperienced and the process of making the series was really like film school for me, trial and error. This was when I first began to learn about the camera and visual storytelling and so on.

Could you describe the short film culture in Ireland for us?

It's quite healthy at the moment. There seems to be a lot of short films being made and some features. I think we have a lot of very talented technicians and crew, and a lot of directors with vision. The challenge for Irish film makers, I believe, is to nurture screenwriters and their work in a better way. We have a rich history as storytellers and yet the quality of the storytelling in Irish cinema sometimes doesn't always reflect this. It's getting better, we're finding a voice – screenwriters like Mark O Halloran who wrote ADAM & PAUL and GARAGE are paving the way, and hopefully more new distinct voices will emerge.

FRANKIE is one of those films that has a very specialized subject matter. How did you first encounter the phenomenon of teenage pregnancy?

We run an outreach project called “sharp focus“ with teenagers, where they work with established screenwriters and directors on making short films about their community and their identity within their community... a lot of what's in Frankie would have been culled from the workshops that we would have carried out on these projects. Also I worked for some years as a drama teacher in a Youthreach centre in Ireland, which is a training centre for early school leavers..so I met a lot of teenage boys who would have shared Frankie's characteristics down through the years.

Underage actors are always very tricky and have to be led very carefully. Your star Ryan Andrews does an amazing job. How did you find him and what did you do to prepare him for the part?

We spent a lot of time casting – three months – and then I did a lot of workshop rehearsal with him and brought in actors to play other people in his life, actors who would not be in the film, but just for the benefit of filling in his life for him in as much detail as possible.

The day in Frankie's life you capture doesn't seem to have a single ray of sunlight. Did you chose overcast times to shoot or was that color correction or was that just the weather you got?

No, there's sunshine at the park when he's sitting with his other Dad, and that was a happy accident: it was the only time in the film that it would have been appropriate for there to have been sunshine. We did a lot of desaturating the colours in post, the idea was always that he lived in a grey world and that there was a more colourful world that existed but he was always trapped on the outside of that looking in. So the ante-natal class – the baby shop – the park  are all a little brighter, but he can't get into these places.

There is no music until the half point of the film, where Frankie talks about his father taking off after he was born. It is a very short moment of sentiment. Did that happen in the editing room or was that planned like that from the beginning?

It was planned that way from the beginning. Although I was never crazy about that particular cue and I wrestled for a long time with whether to use it or not. I always knew that the rest of the film would have no music just a soundscape that reinforced how isolated he was.

Tell us something about the reception of this film, especially where in your country it has been shown and what the reactions were.

The reaction was slow at first. At the first film festival it played at it got no acknowledgment, then at the next one it was a big hit and after that the momentum began to build. It really wasn't until it became a hit overseas that it started to get a lot of attention at home. Also shorts exist in an usual vacuum, not a lot of people get to see them unfortunately, unless they do the festival circuit, so it took a while before people at home became interested.

Links

• FRANKIE (IRL 2007. Darren Thornton)
• A Child Is a Child Is a Child – Daniel Bickermann about FRANKIE
• Green Screen – Daniel Bickermann about the Irish film market