Twelve years ago (gulp), myself and my husband Sean Smith began making the film that is now known as Heathen.
It's a 16-minute-long horror film about a house with a dark history, a man with links to its past and a documentary crew doggedly pursuing the sinister story. When a young family living in the house start to experience strange phenomena - birds inexplicably falling around its perimeter, strange noises and shadows and unexplained injuries to their young child - the crew track down this enigmatic man and convince him to return to his hometown to help them.
Truthfully, it’s a little embarrassing to admit that it’s taken twelve years to finish it. We joked that it was the Chinese Democracy of films. It became The Film. Then it became Oh-God-Don’t-Mention-The-Film. A combination of factors - life, finances, full-time jobs, other stuff - stalled the process, but after a somewhat painful and extremely protracted labour, it has finally been born.
I’m far from an expert in this field, and there are many people far more qualified to offer advice on making films (certainly in a shorter timeframe) - but I’ve certainly learned a lot along the way. Here are some of my biggest takeaways from making an independent film.
KNOW YOUR FUNDING OPTIONS
There are lots of options for funding, so make sure you know about them. Screen Ireland does brilliant, important work in helping filmmakers bring their stories to life, but it doesn’t start and end with that organisation. There are arts awards, various film commissions and your local Arts Office can do a lot for you. The Cavan Arts Office was invaluable to us - not only in providing essential funding to actually make Heathen, but also in providing connections and helping us source local crew, locations, etc. Build a relationship with your local Arts Office; previously, Sean and I had worked together on a short Irish-language horror film called The Gloaming, which was shot in one day, made on a shoestring budget of €250 and even went on to win a couple of awards.
MAKE SURE YOUR SCRIPT IS WATERTIGHT
This is one thing that I really wish we’d spent more time on. In the end, Heathen (which was originally called The Revenant and changed for obvious reasons - damn you, DiCaprio) was intended as a longer film, with a running time closer to an hour. We were under pressure to finish writing because we needed to start/finish shooting by a certain date; the script was probably a little too flabby, and in all honesty, we paid for it further down the line. If you’re thinking of making a film in three years’ time, start writing it now. Revise it, revise it and revise it some more. Employ a good script editor (we did this early on in the process and should have done it again at a later point.) There will always be changes made on any given day, but if the core of the story is rock-solid, it will survive any minor alterations.
WORK WITHIN YOUR MEANS
Writing to the limitations of your budget is also crucial for obvious reasons: filming a nuclear explosion or helicopter stunt chase in Belturbet, Co. Cavan was never going to happen. Instead, we spent weekends researching and viewing locations we thought we might use, then wrote around them. We also shot the film in a hand-held style, with no need for elaborate rigging; we adapted the story to be a documentary, so that we weren’t tied to extravagant lights or high-end production values. We also shot the film in an unorthodox manner, working around people’s availability and day-jobs, shooting for two or three days a week across several weeks. In retrospect, this didn’t work well as it made it difficult to build momentum and ultimately proved quite stressful. Lesson learned.
TREAT YOUR CAST & CREW WELL
Even though we were working off a small budget, it was important to us that a) the cast and crew were all paid and b) they were looked after well, fed sufficiently and provided with accommodation when required. Our cast and crew were amazing, the vast majority sourced from the Cavan area. Our lead actor Tommy is a phenomenal talent who worked mostly in local theatre; he carried the film on his shoulders (and his heavily bandaged finger, which he broke mere weeks before we started shooting. Lesson #6438 - expect the unexpected.) Our line producer Aine was invaluable in keeping the show on the road. Our brilliant art director Rosie drove the backroads of Cavan looking for poor unfortunate dead birds to use as props (they all got a decent burial, don’t worry.) People generally want to help, so be sound and don’t take advantage of them.
A GOOD EDITOR IS WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN GOLD
The saying goes that you make a film three times: when you write it, when you shoot it, and when you edit it. Heathen was definitely forged during the editing process. Very early on, it became clear that the longer version wasn’t working as we’d hoped. We made the difficult decision to pare everything back and build it from the ground up, retaining the core of the original story: a middle-aged man who was coerced into returning to his hometown, decades after being implicated in a sinister incident. Even then, the editing process took literal years; we would do another edit whenever we could cobble together the funds to finance it, then leave it to sit for a while before returning to it again. It was an agonising process, but now we’re very happy with the 16-minute film that we have. Really, the version of Heathen that exists now tells the story that we always wanted to tell, but in a much more concise, impactful manner.
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE THE SOUND DESIGN
Before we made Heathen, I would have made the incorrect assumption that post-production sound was a minor thing that needed a bit of dickying around to be sufficient, but in many cases - certainly ours - sound design can make or break a film. When a creepy ambience takes precedence over jump scares, sound is really another character. It was only when our brilliant sound designer Dom from Ear of the Dog brought it to life, that Heathen became the atmospheric film it is now.
The plan now is that Heathen will travel around the world at various festivals in 2026 and with any luck, it’ll play at a few Irish ones too. It’s certainly been an interesting learning curve and that this one is finished, people have already started asking whether I’d make another one. If there’s truth to the cliche 'What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, apparently I’m stronger now - but mostly just tired.
Heathen premiered at the Clones Film Festival in October - watch out for it at a festival near you soon.
