Screenwriter

My second feature film

The Damned is my second feature film and it’s getting a pretty big rollout which I’m very excited about. Films are usually a long haul and this one was about 8 years in the making.

The Damned is an Icelandic, UK, Irish, & Belgian co-production. Early on, the director (Thordur Palsson) and producers (Emilie Jouffroy and Kamilla Kristiane Hodol) reached out to me after I was recommended by one of the executive producers from my first film, Pilgrimage. They had a premise and a rough six-page outline for a story they were pitching.

It was set in a remote Icelandic fishing village during a bad winter; the inhabitants see a shipwreck off-shore but because their supplies are scarce, it becomes a big moral dilemma over whether they rescue them or not.

I rewrote the treatment a few times before writing the first draft, but everything apart from that initial premise ended up getting changed, especially after the first research trip to Iceland.

Talk to Screen Ireland

After the first draft, we started looking at doing it as a co-Irish production and I recommended Conor Barry and John Keville, who I’d worked on with Pilgrimage. 

Screen Ireland came on board a little after that.

Screen Ireland are a hugely valuable resource which you don’t really appreciate until you start talking to people in the industry outside of Ireland.

I might be overstating it somewhat, but think that many producers in Europe or the UK will often look at how to link Ireland into their projects. Either through writers, heads of dept, post production, shooting in Ireland, having an Irish director… if there’s a way to bring Ireland into a production there are a lot of dividends that can be wrought from that.

Be prepared for practical setbacks

While I was prepared for setbacks, I was confident the film was going to happen. The producers and director were young, smart and hungry and they were determined to get this made.

After my experiences on Pilgrimage (which was a six week shoot; four in the west of Ireland, two in Belgium, all exteriors), I was careful to make sure at least half the scenes in The Damned were interiors. This was hugely important because we were shooting on location in the Icelandic Westfjords in February and the weather was incredibly unpredictable, even by Irish standards!

There were fierce snow storms, then it would all melt over the course of a weekend. With the script as it was, we could reschedule to shoot the interiors while waiting for the snow to come back, which – luckily enough – it did.

I had written a sub-plot with a dog that Thordur had flagged a few months before we started shooting. “I’m not 100% sure the dog is gonna’ work on the day,” he said, “But let’s try it!” In the back of my head I immediately filed that thought away as, “If the dog doesn’t work, how can I rewrite it?” Sure enough, two weeks into the shoot it became apparent that the dog wasn’t going to work, but by then I already had a back-up plan on how we would get around it.

On the research trip we made years earlier, we visited these wee fishing huts that were sitting on their own in the fjords. Initially the story was set in a village but after that trip I thought to myself, “I bet we’re going to end up with 8 people in a fishing hut over the winter, rather than a village with 50/60 extras that need to be clothed and fed every day!”

Eventually, that’s exactly what came to pass, and again, I was ready for it (by an odd coincidence, we ended up using those exact same fishing huts for the exterior shots years later). It’s probably not healthy to be constantly preparing for the worst, but always try to have a rough contingency plan in the back of your mind.

Pre-warned is pre-armed, which is why it’s always vitally important that there’s a clear line of communication between writers, producers and directors at all times. I’ve had experiences where that has not been the case and it becomes hugely counter-productive for all concerned.

Set up or join an industry peer Whatsapp group

Screenwriting can be a fairly solitary business, especially when you aren’t living close to Dublin or London. I don’t live in Ireland anymore and at the start of the pandemic I set up a screenwriters Whatsapp group to try and meet more of my peers, if only online. That’s been a huge boost; talking to people who have been through the same thing or similar experiences.

In 2022 we had a window scheduled to shoot The Damned but it fell apart, so we had to put production on hiatus and start again the following year. That was quite a blow at the time because it coincided with the end of the pandemic, when the development money for various projects I was working on all ran out at once!

Having peers at that time (not to mention strong family support) was a great source of comfort. Just keeping in touch with people is very important to remind you that you’re not on your own.

The Irish are quite self-deprecating compared with Americans or people from London and the UK. There’s a lot of people who aren’t shy about trumpeting their accomplishments, even if they don’t have any!

This Whatsapp group was great at getting me motivated again and making me realise what I have achieved and what prospects are coming down the line for me.

I’m in a great position in many ways. I’ve got two feature films down and a couple of projects in development. The film is out in cinemas at the moment so my family and friends can see it now and know that I’m not a complete fraud!

Jamie Hannigan’s new film The Damned is out now.

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