Festival Focus - Marie Clare Cushinan and Ryan O’Neill - The Changeling
One of the very first films we selected this year was Marie Clare Cushinan and Ryan O’Neill's The Changeling, it was an astounding short film that all the judges really enjoyed, but the back story touched us in a whole different way and while recent years have given us all "a backstory" in order to truly understand what happened, it's best to let the filmmakers tell their story in their own words.
We began writing the script for Changeling in 2018 and had almost everything in place to shoot the film in March 2020, then the pandemic hit.
We had two great actors attached and had very positive rehearsals with them. After months of uncertainty and a haemorrhaging bank balance we decided it was do or die. At the risk of losing our set-build we decided the safest way to go ahead would be to don the costumes ourselves and shoot what we can and 9 months later we shot our final scene.
Changeling was fully self funded with a few favours thrown in completed with a crew of two - a true passion project. It couldn't have been made with the help of our County Tyrone friends and family.
“Are you a witch, or are you a fairy/Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?”
This rhyme is about Bridget Cleary, an Irish woman who was killed by her husband in 1895. Her husband, Michael Cleary, (said he did it because he) believed she was abducted by fairies and replaced by a changeling. He claims to have killed the changeling, not his wife.
We first heard about this harrowing true story on an Irish Folklore podcast and it set us on our path towards making an Irish Folk Horror Film.
As filmmakers and writers we are drawn to the human element of stories like this, The psychology of it. So We asked ourselves “what would it take to for someone to get to the point where they fully believe in this?” Because as we learned this isn’t a fairy tale. This happened and people died.
We were interested in looking at the “Changeling” mythology from a different perspective and grounding it in reality by seeing it through the lens of postpartum psychosis as well as examining the role of Trauma in Belief.
The changeling mythology is very much in the zeitgeist in cinema at the minute with Films like Jordan Peele’s “Us” and the Lee Cronin’s “A Hole in the Ground”.
Through our dual narrative we explore two different belief systems which coexisted in Ireland during one of it’s darkest periods in Irish history.
Aesthetically we wear our influences on our sleeves. We made a series of informed decisions about the look of Changeling early in the production process. Opting for a 1.33 aspect ratio shot on a original Black Magic pocket cinema camera to emulate a filmic feel reminiscent of Russian cinema of the late 20th century. Films such as Elem Klimov’s Come and See directly influenced our choices in portraying the films personal journeys through one of the darkest episodes of Irish history.
This aspect ratio also helped in creating a feeling of claustrophobia. We re-iterated this feeling with the use of costume and set design to make the characters almost blend in to the their surroundings, with Margarets grey tones set against the stone walls of the house and Tomas in his earthy browns matching the landscape.
We set out to capture a feeling of unease that hopefully grips the viewer for the films duration ending with a melancholy which resonates after the credits roll.
Check out these incredible Indie Filmmakers IMDB profiles to give them some love:
Marie Clare Cushinan
Ryan O'Neill
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