One of the joys of writing for Directors Notes is watching short films made by exciting filmmakers that feature up-and-coming actors and watching them blossom into fully-fledged industry staples. That certainly can be said of directing duo Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney, and the star of their Irish drama Drifting, Paul Mescal. Drifting is a short that first played festivals back in 2020 – claiming a place in our Aesthetica Best of Fest selection that year – and is now finally arriving online for audiences everywhere to watch. Since then, Higgins and McGivney have gone on to make their debut feature Lakelands, which received critical acclaim across the UK and Ireland, and Mescal has starred in a slew of praised work like Aftersun and Normal People, in addition to leading Ridley Scott’s anticipated sequel to Gladiator later this year. Alongside today’s DN premiere of Drifting, you can read our in-depth interview with Higgins and McGivney where the pair discuss the journey they’ve been on in the wake of making the short, the decision to tell a local story in order to bolster their production value, and how the experience gifted them the tools to make Lakelands.
What inspired you to explore the notion of a challenged lifelong friendship?
Robert Higgins: The film was very much inspired by growing up in our hometown of Granard, Longford in the midlands of Ireland. Myself and Paddy had been eager to make something personal and specific to where we came from. Emigration has always been a major factor in our lives growing up, many of our friends have ended up moving and living abroad, so we wanted to write something about the emotional impact and disruption to longtime friendships the issue was causing.
Patrick McGivney: We’re from a very small town and we felt it was a unique world with its own rituals and routines. We were eager to make something about where we came from as we felt that the midlands haven’t been depicted too often. The film was reverse engineered in a sense as we had a look at what was available to us in our locality and very much created a story within that framework, using our hometown as a film set. We felt that this would really allow us to boost production value on a limited budget.
The film was reverse engineered in a sense as we had a look at what was available to us in our locality and very much created a story within that framework.
How much did that locality the connections that came with that influence this project?
RH: We put it together with some other local lads, Chris Higgins, Tomás Devaney, Jason Gaynor, who were producers on the film and we shot it around our hometown of Granard. The whole town was hugely supportive and pulled together to make it a reality, filling out the local pub and togging out for the football scenes.
PM: Ciaran Murray was our editor, James Latimer looked after the sound and Leandro Arouca did the colour grade. We had electronic producer Daithí create the score for the film and Element Post Production looked after the post production process.
It seemed like you were looking to present a realism and authenticity, did that impact what camera you used and your approach to cinematography?
RH: The film was shot on ARRI Alexa by our longtime Director of Photography Simon Crowe. The film was made with a really small crew, but we were always looking for that hyper-realistic, almost documentary feel so that allowed us to capture that and move quickly, as we had a lot to pick up over the three shoot days.
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How long were you making the film for? And I have to ask about Paul Mescal, with the film doing festivals around the time of Normal People, had he shot that prior to your short?
PM: The full thing moved pretty quickly. It was about three months after we wrote the script that we were shooting. We went out to the actors in late summer and once we knew they were interested we moved quickly as they had busy schedules that were only getting busier. The film was a three day shoot. We had a two day window with Paul Mescal as he had just finished Normal People and was about to start shooting another series so we had to move quickly. After that we were straight into post and had it just finished up around March of 2020, when everything shut down with Covid. We had discussions about potentially waiting it out but decided to push ahead and explore the remote film festival circuit. It had its premiere at Galway Film Fleadh and went on to play festivals such as Dublin International Film Festival, Newport Beach Film Festival and Aesthetica Film Festival.
How would you describe your working relationship as directors? Do you take on different responsibilities throughout production?
RH: It’s always been second nature to us. We grew up together and figured out all of the nuts and bolts just messing around with cameras in the fields around where we grew up so it’s always been collaborative across the full production and all we’ve known in a way. We’ve developed a shorthand together and we feel it speeds us up. In our work thus far, we have also produced it, so it’s always been useful to have an extra person to share and juggle the workload.
We found the film a great way of honing in on what our style would be and teasing out what themes we’d look to explore in our feature work.
How did you discover actors Paul Mescal and Dafhyd Flynn, and what attracted you to them for this short?
PM: Paul had just shot Normal People when we approached him and he was doing lots of great work in Irish theatre at the time and there was a real buzz about him so we reached out and were delighted he could come onboard and we could make it work between his projects. We had seen Dafhyd in Frank Berry’s Michael Inside, which is an amazing film about a young man caught up in the Irish penal system. We reached out to him and he was up for it. It was very exciting that we had two of Ireland’s most interesting young actors in the lead roles.
You’ve since made the feature Lakelands, how did the experience of making Drifting inform your work on that film?
RH: The film was very much set in the same world as our feature film debut Lakelands, which came out last year and was set in a similar world as Drifting. We found the film a great way of honing in on what our style would be and teasing out what themes we’d look to explore in our feature work.
In addition to honing your style and identifying themes that you could expand on, how did the short aid you practically as filmmakers when it came to making a feature?
RH: It ended up being pretty much a perfect trial run for Lakelands as we used many of the locations and found a number of actors on this project who would also have roles in the feature. It gave us an opportunity to try things out so that when it came to our feature we were very locked in on what the style would be. I think it also gave us confidence that the world and type of characters had cinematic potential. Getting positive feedback on Drifting definitely gave us a little boost of confidence to forge ahead with Lakelands.
What’s the next phase of your filmmaking looking like?
PM: We’ll always be attracted to telling Irish stories and have a couple of projects in development with Screen Ireland here. We’re interested in telling the stories of small towns such as our own, which might get overlooked sometimes and would love to tell stories from Irish history as well. Ireland has an incredibly rich history and not much has been depicted cinematically so we think there’s some great stories to be told there.
We’re also very much interested in telling stories set in the UK and US and have been working on scripts set in both countries over the past year. We were fortunate enough to secure representation in both countries following Lakelands and hopefully we can bring both projects to fruition in the coming years.
