Group representing Athlone at Irish film festivals
By Connell McHugh
A group of AIT graduates has begun producing short films in Athlone and entering them into film festivals.
Holy God Films, comprising of Calvin Doyle, Conor English, Chloe Egan, Alison Heavey, Sean Kiely, Ryan Hoey and Eimear Hannon who are all from Athlone and the surrounding midlands area, have spent the last number of months brainstorming, writing and shooting short films which are then posted online on a weekly basis.
Two of their films have featured at a number of Ireland's well known film festivals, including the IndieCork Film Festival and the Kerry Film Festival.
Calvin and Conor spoke to the Westmeath Independent about the group, their films and hopes for the future.
"Me and Calvin went to college together and we were in the same year the whole way through. But we all studied Visual Communications at AIT," Conor said.
"Because there's no other art subjects there, it feels like it's own little art college within a college. You get the freedom to go into different things, and that's how we all stumbled into film. In other colleges you might not get a chance to do any film because it's a graphic design course. There's a bit more freedom in AIT."
The Bird Story is one of the group's films written by Ryan Hoey and Calvin Doyle. It features three actors all sitting on a wall outside the social welfare office in Athlone with one simply telling the others a story she heard about a bird.
"The whole idea of that was during summers growing up in the midlands, you just have nothing to do. We didn't have many places to go so we'd just be sitting around on walls talking. And everyone would be a bit bored so someone tells this story and nobody really reacts to it at all. It was to capture the feeling of summer in Athlone growing up," Doyle explained.
The Curb Queen was the first film the group produced, and stars Jane Egan, the sister of Holy God Films member Chloe. Written by Doyle and shot in Monksland, the film comes in at under two minutes and was played at the Kerry Film Festival last weekend.
Holy God Films have a perfect success rate in being accepted to film festivals and reactions to the films have been positive, with many being pleasantly surprised at the quality of the work.
"They think it'll be super low-budget and that it will look low-budget and the acting will be bad. But when they see the stuff, everybody is pretty interested and they're generally impressed."
The group has ambitions beyond posting films online, and hopes to inspire people to stay in the midlands for the creative arts, rather than leaving for what may appear to be greener fields.
"Really at the moment, what we want to do is become the biggest film and TV production studio outside of Dublin. The only thing we want to do is represent the midlands in terms of TV and film. We're all pretty patriotic to Athlone.
"I grew up in the midlands and the whole time I was growing up I didn't really like living there. I wanted to go to London or Dublin or somewhere like that. But we've gone through all that and now we've come out the other side and we can now see that the midlands is so rich with stories," Calvin said.
"You watch a film, like The Bird Story which played in Cork two weeks ago, and it's alongside all these films from Dublin or Cork. You never see midlands accents in film or TV or see the midlands represented much."
The members of the group are currently funding all costs, and openly admit that they are losing money. Entry costs for film festivals can range from €20 to €100 depending on the festival and entry category, and acceptance is not guaranteed. The actors involved also have to be paid.
"One thing we've always noticed at the festivals is that when the credits roll for other films, there's 200 people on some of them. And then ours rolls and there's only eight credits on the whole film.
"We have to write the scripts and the storyboards, then shoot it, edit it, and do all the sound work. Then when you get to that point you have to put it out there for people to watch. And that's just as much work to get it out to people.
"We're trying to get a studio space at the moment. We're working out of home and storing our equipment in our cars. It's not ideal, but we'd love to have a space.
Holy God Films estimates to have 100 videos produced and online within the next six months, and plans to venture into other areas of filmmaking and media production. A film called 'Seen,' which tackles the topic of social media, is 90% complete, and features highly recognisable central Athlone locations.
Holy God Films posts each Thursday at 8pm and can be found on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.