'With improvisation, I've found as a filmmaker that you must embrace spontaneity and flexibility...'
Filmmaker Colin Hickey's latest film Perennial Light will premiere at this year's Dublin International Film Festival - he explores his unique creative process behind his tale of tragedy and redemption.
My previous films were experimental non-narrative features. I used a method of improvising through the use of both cinematography and editing to develop the stories with essentially no scripts.
I take a guerrilla-style approach where the roles of writer, director and cinematographer essentially work as one unit; each one immersed in the other. It’s convenient that, to date, I’ve been all three!
My main influence has been the great Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, whose films are developed using improvisation between his actors.
Regarding my approach, I start by looking for people and places that make an impression on me. Once on location, I let the environment and performers influence me, finding angles and natural lighting that help shape the narrative's direction.
It's both exhilarating and time-consuming as you are bypassing the scriptwriting stage, but it also means filming can continue not just for weeks or months but, in some cases, years.
With improvisation, I've found as a filmmaker that you must embrace spontaneity and flexibility. Capturing these unrehearsed moments, particularly with young and oftentimes novice actors, demands a balance between patience, instinct, and creativity – you are always anticipating the actor's next move or where the light might hit in a certain area. You are trying to figure out how to tie each performer to their surrounding environment in order to capture an image that reflects both the narrative and the character.
Once I've a series of images, I take the footage through the editing process where scenes are created. This is repeated over and over again until a narrative emerges.
For my latest feature film, Perennial Light, I was fortunate to be funded by the Arts Council. With this film, I’ve defined my original concept while still taking an improvisational approach. The film follows the journey of a man from birth to adulthood as he deals with the enduring trauma of his childhood friend's tragic death. Plagued by dark existential thoughts that take hold at her passing, the man embarks on a quest for healing and redemption.
in the South and Where the Merrows Roam.
When working on a project like this collaborators are key, and I worked very closely on the score with Juliet Martin at Silverstream Music and particularly my friend Paolo Chianta, whose unique and lo-fi style of animation added a whole new dimension to the story, enhancing the portrayal of the characters' inner lives. His ballpoint-drawn animation not only add a different visual layer but also enhances the overall tone, making it a more immersive experience and I suppose in many ways, bringing heart to the story.
Communication is also an important factor, and it was key to working with the young and older actors who fully engaged with my approach. They were fantastic to work with and I think we all enjoyed the process.
I'm now showing at the DIFF – a brilliant opportunity to showcase my work on the big screen. I do feel it's a film that needs to be seen in the cinema and I'm hoping it achieves what I set out to do, which is to bring something fresh and innovative to an Irish audience.
Perennial Light will screen at the Irish Film Institute as part of DIFF on the 25th February - find out more here.
