A film ripe with delightful mischief, writer/director Leo McGuigan’s The Invention explores a deeply personal yet universally resonant story depicting a young boy’s rite of passage. Drawing inspiration from stories passed down by his father, McGuigan crafts a charming narrative set in 1960s Belfast. At the centre of it all is Frankie, a boy who, perhaps wiser than his years, reappropriates his mother’s knitting needles for a childhood caper. What begins innocently quickly reveals itself to be something far more complex as Frankie is thrust into the murky waters of moral ambiguity, family secrets, and the stark realities that adulthood will one day bring. McGuigan wanted the film to be filled with a sense of nostalgia while never shying away from the harsh truths and remaining grounded in realism. Through Frankie’s unflinching gaze, we see a world where uncorrupted youth collides with the inescapable weight of a secret. A collision that leaves behind a bittersweet ache, lingering in the air like the last note of a song. In Frankie, McGuigan conjures the spirit of his own father, cunning, perceptive, always a few steps ahead of everyone else – even if they didn’t realise it. We’re excited to share The Invention on DN today after speaking with McGuigan about setting the film just before the Troubles which felt like an end of innocence, the visuals he got from using vintage glass lenses from the 70s and the delight in the proliferation of stories, new voices and narratives emerging from Ireland in recent times.
Your story feels incredibly intimate and, quite unexpectedly, I found it resonating with me as well. Could you talk a bit about how it first took shape and what stirred it into being?
It’s a film with quite an interesting development period because the kernels of the story were told to me by my dad for years. The story’s based on him, and the tale about the stick with the knitting needle is completely true. He insisted that his contraption would make great fodder for a film. I always laughed it off, but I was sitting with Margaret McGoldrick, my producing partner at What’s Next Films, trying to discuss a follow-up project to a slasher feature film we’d just completed and we weren’t really getting anywhere until I pitched the idea of the ‘cigarette-heist-with-a-knitting-needle’ short film. Of course, Margaret, in her infinite wisdom, saw the potential of it right away and told me I would be an idiot not to pursue it! So, I went away and started thinking very carefully about how to lend some dramatic weight to the tale of this little boy who orchestrates a heist on a corner shop with a knitting needle, and once we landed on the reasons why he might need to steal the cigarettes and the broader stakes for his family, it ended up coming together really quickly and joyfully.
It was also crucial to make sure that I was creating a lead character very much in the mould of how I see my dad, this very caring, extremely clever, beyond his years and who’s quite a few steps ahead of everyone in the room, even if the other people in the room are adults, as in the case of this film. That’s very much how I feel about my dad, and so it was really fun to imagine him when he was nine years old being essentially the exact same way.
Once you had all of those essential kernels of inspiration, what did your development period and turnaround time look like?
To this day, it’s probably the fastest that any project I’ve worked on has ever come together. We got very, very lucky! The script was written around July, and Northern Ireland Screen very kindly agreed to finance the film the following month, so we were in pre-production by around October and shooting in November. We shot the film over four days total, two weekends, to make sure that we could best accommodate the requirements of filming with the young actors. I knew time would be tight, as it always is on short films, so it was the first time I designed a film from start to finish with little thumbnail storyboards, and that was hugely beneficial for the shooting days. Having the time before filming to make creative decisions directorially on the page and then being confident on the day that they were going to work was a real blessing!
It was the first time, as a director, that I hadn’t edited my own work, and I really can’t see myself going back.
We cut the movie up until the new year with Brian Philip Davis, who’s not only the loveliest person and a very dear friend but also an incredible editor who kindly lent me his talents for this film (he’s most recently edited Oddity, probably the best horror movie of last year). It was the first time, as a director, that I hadn’t edited my own work, and I really can’t see myself going back. Brian was an incredible ear throughout the process, helping to make the story as clean as possible. We had a dream sequence involving Frankie’s fantasy of how the heist might go down, which Brian cut beautifully, but we ended up removing it to keep the story cleaner. We wrapped up filming in early December. I think we picture-locked the movie around January, and then our mix and grade were all finished up by the end of February. Credit to Margaret, my co-producer, who’s just completely unrivalled in her gifts at putting a movie together and bringing a story to life!
How did you balance the film’s nostalgic air whilst keeping everything grounded in realism?
That’s such a great question – thank you so much for picking up on that balance! We knew the production design would be central for evoking the period, and Sarah McKnight, our designer, just did an incredible job; she was so attentive to that. Kat Farries, our costume designer, was also wonderful at taking pictures from the period and paying attention to the colours of the tee shirts, the colour of the jeans, and the styles of the hair. We used mise-en-scène to evoke the period and with the cinematography – sharp lenses, hard and natural light, real locations – we sprinkled in the realism. I also think, fundamentally, coming from Northern Ireland, there’s a bit of an edge to our stories and our storytelling. The history of the place is so tangible, no matter when you were born or when you grew up. A big part of the reason we set the movie in 1968 was to reinforce the nostalgia vs. realism. The Troubles, as they would come to be known, really kicked off later in ’68 and into ’69, so the time period the movie covers is kind of the end of the innocence in a few ways.
We used mise-en-scène to evoke the period and with the cinematography – sharp lenses, hard and natural light, real locations – we sprinkled in the realism.
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I love how The Invention opens and closes with Frankie listening to his record player, his Granny muttering warnings about ‘devil music’ as he grew up in such a conservative setting. How do you feel sound design contributes to building both tension and moments of levity in the film?
Thanks so much. We really loved the idea of bookending the film with Frankie by himself, just watching his little mind work. It’s amazing how much a joke can be made or broken by a sound. The scene around the table, the fake-out with his mother turning on the light switch – we must have tried three or four different sounds of just that single switch click. It’s so hard to explain, but without the right sound, the punchline to the scene didn’t work. Chloe, our fantastic sound mixer at Yellowmoon, came up with the great motif of the shop doors opening and closing – it’s a great way in to the scenes when Frankie’s tormenting the poor cashier at the corner shop, but she used it so effectively in the fruit shop as well to signify the impending danger of Charlie the gangster. That paid off massively in the final slow-motion moment between Frankie and Charlie, as Charlie exits the shop for the last time.
We tried it initially with the sound completely drowning out, just allowing James Everett’s gorgeous score to guide that bit, and it was extremely effective, but adding the diegetic sound, the faint little ding of the door, with an echo on it and playing low, was the perfect cap to that final look between them. I do think, for a moment, it allows you to step out of the movie and take on the role of an older Frankie, looking back on this like it’s a memory. It’s one of my favourite moments, and I have to credit Matt McGuigan, my cousin and our B-cam operator, for those 120 fps close-ups. We were really up against it time-wise, and he and Alasdair McBroom, our DOP, arranged for the actors to step off while we were lighting something else and do those shots. They were completely stolen, but I’d be lost without them, and they knew how much I wanted them. I’m very lucky.
How did the casting process influence the film and were there any unique challenges working with child actors?
In another example of this experience being blessed, I wrote the part for Luke Walford. He had done two short films with Margaret as a producer, Aislinn Clarke’s Childer and Marty Stalker’s Safe Haven, so he was very much on my radar. I remember telling Christine Morrow, our short film executive at Northern Ireland Screen, who was incredibly supportive of this project from day one, that we wanted him for Frankie, and we both just smiled about how it was a complete no-brainer. He was perfect. With Luke Kelly and Maitiú McGibbon, who played Frankie’s friends, it was an audition process, but just like Walford, they were two extremely instinctive, smart, funny young actors. Kelly, playing Eamon, was the one with the common sense who just said things as they were; Maitiú as Paul was the worrier of the group, the old-before-his-time one, and Frankie was, of course, the quiet ringleader. I think, again, that was all I really outlined for them, and they ran with it.
I remember us discussing how kids see through people much more quickly than adults do.
This was an odd one for a short in the sense that it’s an ensemble; really, you have three stories going on. The family, the corner shop heist, and the gangsters. I knew the scenes with Charlie and the family were going to carry the emotional weight of the story and the moral ambiguity, so for the scenes with Frankie and his friends, really it was about giving the movie a lot of pep and fun. It was fun during a rehearsal day with them to get their energy levels up – we’d run scenes where I made them all say their lines over one another, then I’d make them say their lines while hitting the table with their fists and chanting, just very odd, silly stuff that kids might do. Hopefully, it helped, but really, they all came fully formed. The whole cast did. Frankie McCafferty, who played Charlie, has a laundry list of credits that speak to his brilliance, and he got every beat of that scene from the word go. I remember us discussing how kids see through people much more quickly than adults do, and Charlie – this guy who can hold his own with the cruellest, most dangerous adults on the street – is uncomfortable at how honest this kid’s read of him is.
It sounds like you had a very thoughtful approach to working with your young actors. Could you share more about how you helped guide Walford through playing such a layered character and perhaps share how your own experiences as a child actor shaped your direction, bringing a depth to the performance you were able to draw from him?
Working with Walford was just a top-to-bottom joy. He’s a very, very smart kid, and so is his older brother. He read the script and sent us a message back through his mum that “he knew exactly how to play the character” which I thought was just so charming, and he wasn’t wrong. I remember us talking a lot about the idea that he was playing a character who was extraordinarily smart, and noble, and protective, but didn’t know it yet. He doesn’t question saving his dad; he just does it and thankfully has the smarts to see it through. I think, in many ways, it’s the most complicated character I’ve written because there is so much going on with Frankie beneath the surface, but he carries himself with such simplicity. And he never needed to be told that; he got it from minute one. I was never, ever thinking on that molecular level when I was acting at his age – he’s miles ahead of me on that one!
I was lucky to be able to draw on my own experience of acting at that age, and it made the process much more fun. Being a child actor was such a wonderful experience for me and going back to the idea of kids being more perceptive than adults, I was always very aware of how much the adults would bring me into the process as a collaborator and not just treat me like a piece of furniture that needed to be moved for the shots or something like that. So, it was especially important for me to let the three kids know how much I wanted them to be a part of the process. Since it was a movie with quite a few tones, I did send him a little boot camp of movies about kids in different situations, from thrillers to comedies to coming-of-age dramas: The Window from 1949 with this wonderful Bobby Driscoll performance, Billy Gray’s work in On Moonlight Bay as the little brother, and then staples like The Goonies, Super 8 and things like that. I know he studied them and really put a lot of work in, but he also brought so much natural talent to that role. Again, I felt so blessed.
There are so many gorgeous movies about childhood that evoke memory with the likes of Cooke lenses, lots of diffusion, and things that create warmth and mysticism but Zeiss is a sharper look at the world.
Tell us about your choice of equipment to achieve the right visual texture and tone of the film.
We chose Zeiss Super Speeds mainly for their sharpness and aperture; we had some dimly lit scenes and night exteriors, so it was important to make sure we could go wide open if we needed to. I also loved that they were Mark 1s from the 70s; our movie was set in the sixties, so having vintage glass really satisfied my inner nerd, and I think Alasdair utilised them beautifully. I was cognisant of not making the movie look too dreamy or nostalgic; there are so many gorgeous movies about childhood that evoke memory with the likes of Cooke lenses, lots of diffusion, and things that create warmth and mysticism but Zeiss is a sharper look at the world, a slightly colder tint to my eye; it felt a little more appropriate for this story, where Frankie’s getting in over his head with quite a dangerous situation that he’s too young to understand. It made things feel a little bit grittier; it’s a different kind of nostalgia, and it was a fun challenge.
I felt your film unfold like an emotional crescendo, each moment more superimposed than the last! What is the underlying message you sought to convey, and what, in the end, do you wish the audience to carry with them after the credits roll?
I really appreciate that – thank you so much. I think it’s two-fold for me; I loved the challenge of telling three different stories in twenty minutes and having them all come together in the end – a caper story about a group of friends, a drama about a family in trouble, and a coming-of-age tale about a boy being brave. I also made the movie for my dad, and for that reason, I wanted it to very much be a character portrait. I really do hope that people come away having been so entertained by this little boy and how clever and good-hearted and unassuming he is. He’s changed the world in his own quiet way, and that final scene – breaking the stick and listening to the record – is a new beginning.
I think if you’re Irish, there is a degree of storytelling in your blood, and there are generations of plays, books, and films to back that up.
In years brimming with exceptional talent and ground-breaking films emerging from Ireland, how do you perceive the current wave of Irish cinema and the impact it’s making on the global stage?
It’s a pretty incredible time. I think we’re all just beaming from ear to ear every time we see a success story like An Irish Goodbye or these exceptional talents like Lola Petticrew, Anthony Boyle, Paul Mescal, Nicola Coughlan, and so many others lighting up the world stage. I think if you’re Irish, there is a degree of storytelling in your blood, and there are generations of plays, books, and films to back that up. With Northern Ireland in particular, I think there’s an interesting conversation to be had about how art thrives in a post-war society. I’ve read a lot about post-World War 2 European cinema; I can’t wait to read the history of post-Troubles cinema here. But I’m not a scholar; I’ll leave that up to much smarter people to discuss. In the meantime, I’ll just benefit from all the wonderful stories we’re being allowed to tell and witness.
