‘An excommunicated priest returns to his remote island community in a documentary, previously lost to time’ – that’s the synopsis of In Wake of John Doyle, one of the shorts screening this week at DIFF, but there’s more to this disarming doc than meets the eye. For one thing, it’s a found footage piece, a recreation shot on Hi-8 by the real filmmakers Niall McCloskey and Thomas Bennett. For another, John Doyle’s exile is tied to quite unusual circumstances, as he claims to have been resurrected from the dead.
McCloskey and Bennett are a Belfast based directing, writing and visual art duo who have taken their short to the Belfast Film Festival, was longlisted at the British Short Film Awards and this week arrives to DIFF, as one of the films in the Shut Your Eyes and See collection on Wednesday 26th, 1:30pm at the Light House Cinema. Starring Richard McFerran (Hope Street, Say Nothing) as the titular priest, the film is subtly unsettling, a story of amateur documentarians Mark and Claire stumble into a story they struggle to find answers in. John Doyle is aloof and unknowable, and through that, alone, the questions his claims provoke leading to more existential uncertainty than big twists and jump scares. It makes for a disquieting viewing experience, one that might hit audiences like a splash of water as cold as the sea surrounding the island the priest once called home.
Ahead of the short screening in Dublin this week, we spoke to the real directors of ‘John’s story, to get the inside eye on how this found footage film came together.
In Wake of John Doyle is all filmed in Hi-8 to create that ‘recovered documentary’ feel. When you guys are working on stories do you build a story around the format and equipment that you want to shoot in, or vice versa?
Tom
I think with using Hi-8 we worked backwards from the story. We both have a love of physical mediums, film, camcorders look great, I do love the visual image of it, but for this we did work backwards from coming up with the idea of a found footage piece. We first thought about making something that’s like a found object on the Internet and releasing it like that and actually try and make something that could be believable as a real piece. But when we finished it, we realised we should actually go down the short film route, put this into festivals and sell it as something that isn’t real, but might maybe confuse a few people! A few people have given us feedback that the first time they watched it, they weren’t sure whether it was real, which is the highest compliment really.
Niall
At the DIFF launch, we did get a chance to speak to the shorts programmer Aisha Bolaji, and she did mention to us whenever she sent it over to her screening team, a few of them came back and their feedback was I genuinely do not know if this is legit.
We looked at the scene of short filmmaking especially in the North and you get a sense of people doing their dramas, their comedies, their action, doing all of that on any kind of budget…we’re independently funded, so when we looked into making found footage, making something that looks discovered and like a relic, using the Hi-8 came naturally from that.
Everyone loves working with physical formats, it’s a personal dream to work on 16mm or 35. Working on a budget, the Hi-8 was a perfect middle ground for using an actual tangible physical format, and something that is visually unique. It naturally suited us story wise and format wise.
The film feeds into that uncertainty audiences might have about it being real by never tipping it too far one way or another, how important was it for you to keep that balanced tone?
Tom
The huge rule that we had was don’t talk down to your audience. They’re not idiots, and there’s nothing worse when a film gives a very obvious leading line or an unnecessary reveal. We wanted the piece to be a believable, home brewed, DIY documentary that someone could stumble upon in an attic.
Niall
There’s nothing worse than you’re watching a horror piece, and it builds and builds and builds the atmosphere and then bang, it’s a jump scare, it takes you out of it. When we were making our film, we were never going down the route of spooky scary style horror. Having people questioning if it’s real, that sort of immediate unease of asking yourself internal questions about what this is, we wanted it to be more unnerving and uncertain than rushing in with the answers and trying to be scary.
There’s a somberness to the film that’s interesting, even when John Doyle is doing simple things like making a sandwich. Even watching back what you recorded, were there points that were more unnerving or hit differently emotionally than what you were expecting?
Tom
Realising things in the edit or in hindsight, there was a lot. I feel it for some reason most when the filmmakers go with John to investigate the scene where he supposedly died, I get a certain sense there of like, these guys have gone to quite a remote place with this man, who they don’t really know, there’s a certain feeling of, is this all a setup? Is John Doyle a scam artist, is something bad going to happen here?
Shooting with the camcorder, you only have one tiny little eyepiece, and it’s bad for the camera and the tape to run it back and forth. So when we’re shooting, you don’t always know what you have that clearly, it’s only when you digitise onto the laptop, when we went back through the rushes that you would know.
Niall
There’s a scene where we’re on the ferry and John is going back to his island, we had Richard just sitting in a quiet corner on the boat and it’s my favourite shot in the entire piece. We told him we’re going to take a step back, we’ll be shooting, just to get this moment of John against the sea, and Richard just cuts such a phenomenally distinct silhouette, and he just started saying something very quietly to himself. I’ve never even inquired about what it was because it’s clearly one of those things where, that’s an actor’s technique, that’s an actor in his moment doing his process. Whoever John Doyle really is, the fact of him going back to this place he was shunned from, the figure Richard cuts in that moment, it has this real somberness and melancholy that we could see looking back, that was really special.
Richard is very beneficial for moments like that because he’s such an experienced performer, how did he get involved with the film?
Niall
When we had a script, we knew how we were going to do the film; the camera itself lends to a very minimalist crew style of shooting, we didn’t need vast amounts of lights or a massive camera department because we were shooting on a camcorder, our biggest hurdle was casting. And John Doyle was undoubtedly the most important piece of casting, considering he’s the face you’re seeing for 80% of the film. He is the film. When we were casting, we were going through headshots and when I saw Richard I just turned to Tom and said, that’s John Doyle.
Tom and I are fortunate enough that we work in the film industry as well. I’m an assistant director by trade and Tom works in the props and art department. I got a chance to meet Richard before on one of my first jobs, on Series 2 of Hope Street. Richard was playing a baddy, he was only on for a supporting role, but the whole time he was so professional, polite the whole time.
Knowing Richard’s work ethic on a larger set, and even just seeing his face in the head shots that we saw, immediately I was convinced that was the man for the job, and we reached out to his agent who put us in touch and sent the script over. We met for a coffee with Richard and he was an absolute gem. The entire shoot, every day he would come in with a good attitude, he was a breeze to work with. He is an insanely talented performer because a lot of the direction we gave was for less, we wanted moments of reduction and normality, having a performer who can understand when less is more was just a gift, he is a gift of a person and a good friend.
Rathlin Island itself serves as such an effective location, was that one you had earmarked specifically or did it come up in location scouting?
Tom
I had never been to Rathlin Island before but Niall had, coming from Portrush on the north coast, he’d been on holidays out that way, but initially when we first drafted up the script, we didn’t set it on an island. At some point when we were crafting the story, we came to the idea of the isolation of an island, but also with the camcorder and the way we were going to shoot, doing it small, we thought we could be a bit more ambitious with our location. When we came to the idea of setting it on an island came into the discussion, we were probably cruising Google Maps and it was a process from there.
Niall
There was a day we were sitting and location scouting, looking for a church for John to go back to, we were going through so many churches and graveyards, hundreds, we just naturally came across the small church on Rathlin Island. I remember asking Tom could we do it on an island, would that work? That led to those budget discussions, since we’re kind of reducing what the camera department would be, we can upscale where the locations can be, we can put the resources into going over there.
Tom
We recce’d the place, took the camera with us and picked up some shots of the island. And obviously we spoke to people on the ferry over, to ask about shooting on the way, and people were more than happy.
How was that experience? I imagine shooting on a ferry comes with its challenges.
Niall
The first day we all went over on the ferry to scout, it was smooth waters, there wasn’t a bump, it was the smoothest trip you could have possibly hoped for. On the actual shooting day, it could not have been more the opposite. I will not sell out any specific member of our crew in the press, but one of our members of the crew did have to go and lock themselves in a bathroom and potentially be sick because it was quite choppy, you can see it in the film!
We made the delightful decision to shoot in the middle of winter, it fit the setting of the piece, so we shot in December and January and our day out to Rathlin was freezing cold. It was something like -5 or –6, nuclear cold, and as much as our camera has been a a resilient soldier in the war of trying to make this, we did have to keep it inside our jackets whenever we weren’t shooting, because if anything internal froze, it would have been a case of well, we came all this way and our camera has decided to break. It was lethal, but even in hindsight I wouldn’t change a single thing of going over, the people on Rathlin were so lovely, and the landscape and the church were all second to none, going to the island was one of the best decisions we made for the whole project.
The film has this allure from that feeling that there is so much more to the events around the story than what we see. When developing the story, to what extent do you fill in those blanks mentally? Particularly for the documentary maker characters, and working with the actors, did you have a sense of what they were about, their background?
Tom
Definitely, I think we just enjoy creating worlds, you know? And it gives you confidence when directing or creating something when you know that world inside out. Niall and I came up with loads of ideas of who these people could be and the wider consequences of the story and all sorts of stuff that you don’t see in the film, but I also remember talking a lot with Anna and Matt who played the documentary makers over what they thought, what’s your character’s background? There’s something about the collaboration aspect that finds its way in, gives it nuance.
Niall
Talking with Anna and Matt and even Paul, who plays Father Oisin, we were able to go in when we were casting and have a dialogue with them and tell them a little bit about the characters. As much as we have ideas, we didn’t want to over direct them. The script itself warrants ideas of giving the cast time to talk about it as well, we’re not going into this saying we ourselves have no idea what happened to John, but revealing that would tarnish any ideas that the actors might want to bring, or that the other storytellers might want to bring, even down to our script supervisor, even just little bits of could this be this, could this be this? Having that dialogue on set with your cast and crew is so important for building characters, and you have to very much be prepared to, you know, let go of your children and let them go off and do their own thing, because an actor is going to bring their own meaning to it. It’s a conversation and collaboration.
Tom
Similarly with your audience. You’d be a bit of a fool if someone just came up afterwards and asked like oh well, did he die or did he come back? No film maker is going to suddenly be like, here’s all the answers, here’s what this all means.
What is your sense of how audiences have received the film, how does it seem at festivals and screenings that people are absorbing this story?
Tom
We had a conversation about this from the inside, when you’ve made a piece and then you’re in a room with everyone watching it, my natural inclination is to think everyone hates it and wants to see it destroyed or something! It’s a hard one to answer in a way, but it’s great when you get someone who’s keen.
A lot of a lot of the time, I’m sure you’ve had this experience where you go see short films at a festival and you’re watching 10-15 back to back, it’s nice to have something that breaks that up, like a comedy can break that tension, but it’s also nice, like with John Doyle, to have something a bit slower and a bit more meandering, I think that’s worked well, I’ve felt that from an audience. But it is hard to tell.
Niall
We had the pleasure now to screen this at Belfast Film Festival, we’ve screened in a few smaller ones as well, but DIFF is by far and away our biggest hit so far, and one thing that I personally am curious to see how it plays out at DIFF is that audience reaction. There is one part of the end of the film, when we finally cut to our credits that always hoodwinks people. We have fake credits for the fake people behind the ‘documentary’ before our real credits, and you always get a big round of applause for the fictional characters, before it cuts to the real credits.
There’s been a few times at these festivals where people have come up and asked us about it. I think personally for anyone, if you go out there and make a piece of art, big or small, and someone comes up and asks you questions about it, that shows they’ve digested it, something in what we’ve made has hit a chord of some inherent level in them, that’s made them think.
And then we can be suitably vague about it!
Would you be tempted at all to lean into it, tell people the directors disappeared? In some ways that’s honouring their reaction.
Niall
We’ll pass them a non-disclosure agreement! That would be the dream. Honestly, I’m a big fan of keeping it vague. As I said earlier, of course we have an idea of what happens, we’d be poor world builders if we didn’t go in knowing our own answers, but it’s nice to give an audience the breathing room to make their own interpretations. Having a piece that opens up a dialogue in people, whether it be big or small, I think that’s the ultimate win.
In Wake of John Doyle screens as part of Shut Your Eyes and See at DIFF 2025, Wednesday 26th, 13:30. Tickets are sold out but a waiting list is available.