Ciarán Foy interview

Ciarán Foy is an Irish filmmaker in the unique position of having just helmed a major American studio production in Sinister 2.  After an excellent feature debut with Citadel in 2012, Foy was selected by series creator Scott Derrickson to take over the reigns for the sequel.  The IADT graduate spoke with TFR editor Louie Carroll about his college experience, getting started in the Irish film industry and making the jump to Hollywood.

Lets start at the start. What was your experience of film growing up? Was there a moment when you realized you wanted to be a filmmaker and is there a film or films that stick in your mind as being particularly informative?  

I grew up on a diet of Spielberg, Cameron, Lucas, Zemeckis and Verhoeven.  I loved any sense of the otherworldly, the extraordinary.  The idea that there is something else out there beyond the world we see everyday.  The first movie I ever saw in the cinema was The Return of the Jedi in 1984, a year after it’s release - I think in Ireland we had to wait longer for movies back then.  I was 4 or 5 and I was enthralled.  That stayed with me for years as I tried to repeat that intoxicating feeling of awe and wonder.  The 80’s were a good time to grow up for these kids of movies.  At first I wanted to work in visual effects, for companies like ILM.  Then I wanted to design video games for a time, but when, aged 12, a friend’s brother sneaked a bunch of us into Terminator 2 at the newly opened UCI in Coolock, I came out and knew what I wanted to do when I grew up.  I spent my teen years using a friends camcorder and we made our own little sci-fi and horror epics!    

If my extensive research is to be believed, you went to film school in Dun Laoghaire. What was that experience like and do you think it set you up well for a career in the industry?

Dun Laoghaire was great for building contacts, many of my colleagues and class mates were people I’d go on to work with in the real world once college finished.  There was also access to good equipment.  That was the main thing I got from college, access to equipment and meeting like-minded filmmakers.  You’ll learn far more by doing that than you will from lectures, reading theory or listening to DVD commentaries.  It’s only by making mistakes and taking risks that we really learn.  Film is a craft and needs to be practiced.  There were a handful of us who were like the black sheep of the film department.  We didn’t want to make kitchen sink dramas, we had no interest in aiming to win awards for “worthy” and “issue driven” content.  We wanted to make entertaining shorts and thought of ourselves as filmmakers who happened to be Irish, as opposed to Irish filmmakers.  We wanted stories that appealed to bigger audiences.  Thankfully things were changing back then, the tutors came around to the kinds of things we wanted to do and when I left college the film board was also becoming more genre friendly.  It certainly wasn’t easy but there was an appetite to broaden what was considered an Irish film.

What was your first film related job when you left college?

I worked as a runner in Screen Scene for a time.  That was back when they paid people a minimum wage and it allowed me to eat!  I loved working there and met many more collaborators and colleagues.  I didn’t want to become an editor but I learned even more tricks of the trade in there that would become useful.  I also got a job writing a feature project through the Irish Film Board.  In my twenties I wrote 6 screenplays and I made a short film called The Faeries of Blackheath Woods.  That, unexpectedly, did become an award winner around the globe and got me an agent and soon producers were knocking on my door wanting to know if I had any feature film ideas.

Making the jump from a student filmmaker to professional can seem like a daunting process. How did you manage that?

It’s not daunting.  It’s the same thing.  We are all perpetual students in this game.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve made 2 or 22 feature films you learn so much on everything you do.  It’s only daunting when there’s no clear way to make that jump.  When you’re 4 or 5 years out of college and nothing seems to be happening no matter how hard you are trying - that’s testing.  When you see others get ahead in film through nepotism or the fact that they are independently wealthy - that’s frustrating.  When you see friends, who did other things in college, now working in paid jobs, climbing a career ladder - that’s panic making.  The only thing that kept me going was a combination of positive sentiment - encouragement from my parents and my wife, who was then my girlfriend and my own blind belief that it would happen and that I would wither and die if I did anything else - and a more negative sentiment that came from a more envious place - which was me looking at the movies that were being funded and made and getting upset and how bad they were.  It was a feeling of “I don’t care what anyone says, but I could certainly make a better movie than THAT!”

How long did it take you to get your first feature Citadel off the ground, from the time of writing to when you started shooting?

Almost 6 years.  We were trying to get money in 2007, which was just bad timing with the recession.  So it took a lot longer than usual.

You’ve spoken elsewhere of how Citadel was informed by a traumatic event that happened in your life. Is your writing process always imbued with such a personal edge or was this an exceptional case?

This was an exceptional case in that I was directly referencing experiences I went through and trying to put an audience inside the head of someone who was suffering with agoraphobia brought on by post traumatic stress, but that said, I do think you need to imbue a personal angle into anything you write.  If you are just referencing other movies than you write something derivative and diluted.  

How was your experience on the set of Citadel, was it a big adjustment from directing shorts or did you feel well prepped from your previous experiences?

The Citadel shoot was so chaotic and crazy.  I had no choice but to swim or sink.  It was 23 days in the worst winter Glasgow had on record, with a cast of kids and infants and 16 locations.  So it was like going to war after having only done a little target shooting.  I felt a somewhat prepared but it was baptism by fire.  It could have written an easier debut I think!

What kind of films influenced you in the making of Citadel? I saw touches of Guillermo Del Torro with The Devil’s Backbone and The Orphanage, a film he produced. Were those in your mind at all?

I think all your favourite movies and influences are in the back of your mind, no matter what you direct.  But I try not to just reference other movies.  Like I said, you don’t want to just make a cheap trace drawing of something else.  You want to bring a certain personal flair to things.  In prep we looked a photographs, paintings other influences.  I was also drawing upon things I’d seen or experienced first hand.  From the film world I would say my biggest influences were The Brood, Jacobs Ladder and the videos of Chris Cunningham.

More generally, what are you’re favourite horror films?

It totally depends on what mood I’m in.  I tend to swing from Jaws to Jacobs Ladder via The Exorcist!

You’ve spoken about how you got the Sinister 2 job through some fairly strange circumstances involving a twitter exchange with the director of the previous installment Scott Derrickson.  Do you think the film industry is changing in terms of how filmmakers get their work seen and how they make their break?

Absolutely.  In my case Scott saw my movie on Netflix, tweeted about it on Twitter and I pitched to the studio on Skype.  There are people who make a living with their youtube videos.  The landscape is totally changing and evolving.

If IMDB is to be believed, Sinister 2 is the first film you’ve directed that you haven’t written.  Not only this but you’re also working within a world that’s already been established.  Was that challenging?  Did it make it easier or was it more restricting?  And did you have any creative say when it came to the development of the story or the characters.

I think one of things that led Scott to thinking I was a good choice was my aesthetic sensibilities and tastes.  We share a number of similarities in that respect but we are also very different directors.  So that gave him a confidence that I could certainly make this feel a part of the same universe but I was free to bring my own flair to it too.  Otherwise what's the point in doing it?  If I had been asked to do direct a sequel to Tucker and Dale vs. Evil I simply couldn't have done it.  That movie is one of my favourite horrors of the last few years but it's not close to my aesthetic sensibilities.  So I approached Sinister 2 like I'd approach any work - you need to find a personal way in, a connection to the characters that you can relate to.  I got to bring some ideas to the table in prep but they had to percolate through the writers.  I don't suspect I'll write everything I direct and some of my favourite movies were certainly not written by the director.  So the approach is the exactly the same.

Was Sinister 2 another big leap in terms of the size of the production compared to Citadel?

I’d say a hop rather than a leap.  Citadel was 1.2 million euro, Sinister 2 was 5 million dollars.  We got 30 days to shoot it as opposed to 23 for Citadel.  But the gas just expands.  It was equally as difficult.  Time was tight.  You can’t afford to shoot a scene from 5 or 6 different angles when you’re shooting 4 pages in a day, you almost have to see it and edit it in your head and then shoot exactly what you see.  And you’re working with a large cast of kids, which has it’s own challenges.

How did you find having to work within a studio system? Blumhouse Productions seem fairly unique in this day and age, giving interesting directors moderate budgets to make very profitable films.

The studio side of things didn’t really come into play until we were in post.  They utilise test screenings.  We had three of them.  They were fascinating.  300 people watch your movie and have no idea you are in the audience.  Then they fill out surveys.  The results can be eye opening.  The trick is in knowing what opinions to take on board.

Do you want to keep working in and around the horror genre? Are there any other genre’s you’d like to work in?

In many ways my favourite movies are more science fiction than they are horror.  I would love to do a cool sci-fi.  But a good story is a good story no matter what the genre.  However there are something’s I don’t imagine I’ll ever do, like a rom-com!

Do you know what you’re working on next? 


I’m developing another horror (that would shoot in Ireland) and a science fiction.  So whichever one happens first.  I’m also getting sent a lot of material to read, so we’ll see.

And finally it’s the obvious one but I have to get it in. What advice would you have to students who want to make a career out of filmmaking?

As Yoda said to Luke in The Empire Strikes back - “Do or do not, there is no try”.  Just do it.  Make stuff.  Today even our phones can shoot in HD!  That’s a good and a bad thing.  Good in that anyone has access to it, bad in that there is more of challenge to stand out from the ever-growing crowd.  There is no excuse not to make something.  The real trick is in making something unique.  My real advice - do something personal, take risks, be different.  Don’t just try and ape what someone else has already done.