Childhood best-friends Ciaran McCann and Shaun Doogan made a splash with their music videos for local hero Daniel O'Donnell - now they're branching into movies with their debut film, a comedy-horror short entitled The White Lobster - watch the trailer above, while Shaun tells the story to date below.
Before we founded Re-Act Productions we were making comedy skits for our own entertainment, and in 2018 we started our own production company because everyone needed video content for their social media and there just weren't many people doing it in Donegal. We always wanted to convince clients to go the fun route and make videos that were fun, engaging and surprising. This was also a great way for us to sneakily practice filmmaking...
We love doing music videos and probably our biggest claim is the work that we did for our next-door neighbor; Daniel O'Donnell. It was during lockdown in 2021 when Daniel wanted to do a video where we could follow Covid guidelines, so we put him on a treadmill in front of a green screen and that was Down at the Lah De Dah, which did really well
After that, I think we gave Daniel and his team enough confidence to let us go absolutely mad with the next one, and that led us to create what will forever be our magnum opus, Night of the Daniels.
Watch the video for Night Of The Daniels
We've always wanted to try our hands at real filmmaking, so after Night of the Daniels we applied for the Donegal Film Office short film bursary and won €10,000 to produce our very first short film. We'd always done really ridiculous videos, but we wanted to see if we could pull off something a bit more serious. A film with proper actors, good sound and cinematography, but that still had a dash of Re-Act madness.
So we came up with The White Lobster.
Here's the story: 'When a young lobster fisherman hauls up a white lobster from the deep, he ignores the curse his great-uncle swears it carries. He brings the creature ashore and soon begins to feel the weight of something unnatural.'
We're delighted with the result and very proud to be able to say that our film has been selected for the Foyle Film Festival in Derry! We plan to tour the country and abroad, screening at festivals, freaking people out, and putting them off their lobster dinners.
The White Lobster screens at the Foyle Film Festival on November 29th - find out more here
