Making a Film Against All Odds

I made a short film called Debutante, and to my absolute delight, it will have its premiere at the Galway Film Festival next weekend.

It hardly seems like a big deal, right? Just a short film, all of 4 or 5 shooting days with a small crew, a few actors, some props, a decent camera, off you go.

As I sat on the floor in our spare bedroom late last night, emailing my composer and a sound designer with final (final final) notes, my partner and an infant daughter fast asleep, it struck me just how much work is involved in making a short film. The market for - or audiences interested in - a short film is much smaller than a feature, and all the work put in a short by the filmmaker, crew and cast is often unnoticed.

To celebrate and to honour the work of short film makers, I'd like to share with you the mad, intense, chaotic, exhausting and deeply satisfying process of making Debutante.

In August 2015, I spent three weeks furiously writing a feature film set in the community of Jehovah's Witnesses, entitled 144,000 Lies. I enjoyed the writing so much I was walking on air. As most beginning screenwriters, when I finished the script, I thought it was the bees knees. It wasn't. It was, as the saying goes, rough as a badger's a*se. It took me 3 years to embrace the idea of starting smaller, with a short film loosely based on the feature.

On January 14th, 2018, encouraged by a befriended Dublin producer, I finished writing the first draft of the short film that became Debutante. That script was very good - I got better at writing as time went by - and I was convinced getting some funding for it would be a breeze.

A year and a half later, like a weird set of notches on my belt, I had more funding rejections than I could count. I applied to every institution offering short film funding in Ireland, both national and local. One joyous time, I got shortlisted for a funding award. My heart leapt when I read the email inviting me to the interview. This is it!, I thought.

This wasn't it. With every rejection, my confidence as a filmmaker shrank further and further. Applying for funding is a labour-intensive process that asks you to - repeatedly - blow your own horn. Why should we give this award to you? What makes you worthy of it? I cringed and mentally twisted writing my own accolades, feeling vulnerable and often just stupid. Every rejection felt like a punch to the stomach. Just give up already, nobody cares.

The final funding rejection, in August 2019, made me sort of snap. I hit the bottom and bounced off it.

I decided to stop looking for institutional funding and raise the money myself, through crowdfunding. It felt like deciding to climb Mount Everest - I wanted €20,000 to finance the film. If you ever came across a crowdfunding campaign for a short film, you might've noticed the target amounts are often much smaller, half or less of what I wanted to raise. The money I was looking for though was a very modest budget for a short drama shooting in Dublin. Institutional funding from organisations such as Screen Ireland offers €50,000 for a 10-min short. Debutante was twice that long, and I wanted my underdog film to be as good as a professional, fully financed production.

In September 2019, still recovering from my second miscarriage that year, I spent 6 weeks designing a global crowdfunding campaign. Getting Debutante funded became my lifeline, my reason to get out of bed in the morning. I roped in friends and found agreeable strangers all over the world who resonated with the idea of my film and who voluntarily translated my campaign into 7 languages, including Chinese.

On 24th October 2019, full of excitement, trepidation and shame (yes, shame), I launched my crowdfunding campaign, metaphorically breaking a bottle of champagne on the hull of this massive, monstrous ship. Metaphorically, the bottle cracked but didn't break.

My partner and a few best friends donated first. Then followed a long lull. That's when the shame hit even more. I was ashamed of this (by all means impressive and professionally made) crowdfunding campaign - I was ashamed I wasn't good enough to get the institutional funding which would've validated me as a filmmaker. Also, it must be said, this was the third time I was crowdfunding (my previous 2 short films were partially financed that way too, raising €4,500 in 2015 and €6,500 in 2016, respectively. Peanuts in comparison to Debutante's target.)

In late November 2019, my campaign wasn't even 25% funded and time was running out on the crowdfunding platform's deadline. I listened to Nick Cave's Ghosteen on vinyl, drank red wine and felt very, very sorry for myself. What a spectacular failure, I thought. The amount of work I was putting in every day to find people and institutions who would resonate with the film around the world was insane. I barely slept and lost count of the emails, tweets, messages sent to what felt, most of the time, like a gaping abyss of silence and indifference.

But the news of the campaign and the film kept spreading and by the final Indiegogo deadline, Christmas Eve 2019, I raised an impressive €15,000 from over 300 people in 22 countries. I barely remember the Christmas spirit or activities of that day, I was so ecstatic to have raised enough money to start production.

After Christmas, an interview I gave to a kind Irish Times journalist came out, which led to two more interviews on the Irish radio with Ryan Tubridy and Louise McSharry. People kept donating money through PayPal. I felt unstoppable and validated.

I planned to shoot the film in May 2020. I put out a casting call and received hundreds of applications, and met some wonderful actors in three audition sessions, the last one on 1st March 2020. The film's cast wasn't complete though, and most importantly, I knew I had to keep looking for the film's leading girl, whose performance would make the film or break it.

On 22nd March 2020 I was writing to the crowdfunding backers that the film's production was inevitably delayed because of this new scary disease called COVID19, reassuring them I'd get the film made as soon as this crisis was over.

A month or so later, during the strictest Irish lockdown, I found out - to my delight - that I was pregnant. Fantastic, I thought, I have 9 months to get Debutante shot and post-produced. I had the money ready so how hard could that be, right?

The 24/7-morning-sickness struck in May 2020 and put me to bed for almost 2 months of bleary-eyed Netflix and breadsticks. I kept searching for my perfect cast and kept tweaking the script from my "desk" in bed. In the evenings, I was vomiting my guts out and crying to my partner that I couldn't take it anymore.

On the 1st of June, I was auditioning a young actress from Cork, úna O'Brien, on Skype. I was so nauseous during that audition, I barely could string a sentence together, but I knew within minutes she was the one.

An easing of COVID restrictions in the summer, corresponding with, mercifully, easing of the morning sickness, and a joyous 12-week-scan confirming that my pregnancy was viable, gave me a massive energy boost.

I made plans to finally shoot Debutante in the last week of August 2020. With great help from countless people, I found locations, props, secured insurances and permits, found 20 crew members, made countless decisions on every aspect of the shoot, down to minute details like the colour of the shoes of a cast member. There were SO MANY DECISIONS and I remember it being beyond exhausting. If I limited my work on the film to directing only, things would have certainly been easier. But I was also producing it because I wanted to save as much money for other expenses as I could. Not hiring a producer meant more money for the film - as I hadn't paid myself a penny from the crowdfunded budget (still the case today). I don't recommend this particular decision to anyone else out there directing and producing simultaneously!

In the weeks leading up to the shoot, I also rehearsed furiously with the 7 members of my cast, putting them through Mike-Leigh-inspired acting exercises so that the performances were believable and the characters real. I owe the cast of Debutante a great deal of gratitude for their truly excellent work during that process, and also their patience and respect for the story.

On the first day of the shoot, we were starting with a big scene on the quays of Dublin's river Liffey. We set everything up, actors were in costume, make-up and getting mic-ed up by the sound recordist, Caimin Agnew, when the skies opened. We waited, and waited, and waited, then decided to give up on that scene and move on to another (interior) location scheduled for that day, in Naul, about 45-min drive north of Dublin.

Disheartened and nearly in tears at this unfortunate start of the shoot, I was walking to my car with Niall Owens, 1st Assistant Director, when we noticed my car had been broken into.

The driver side window had been smashed, there was blood all over the inside of the car and stuff missing. Pregnancy hormones raging, still (not) coping with the exhaustion from the insanely busy weeks of pre-production, I sat down on the kerb and started wailing. I just wanted this whole experience to stop, I so badly needed a break.

I knew I couldn't stop though. The crew and cast were waiting, my locations were booked for that week and permits secured for specific dates and even times of day. Thanks to Niall's phenomenal support and a cool head (he elevated the role of 1st Assistant Director that day to a whole new level, songs should be sung about this man), Debutante's shoot continued that day as planned.

When the film's shoot was completed on 5th September 2020, instead of feeling accomplished and delighted, I collapsed mentally, emotionally and physically. I spent weeks in bed, depressed and anxious, and hating even the thought of Debutante. I was burnt out, and my beloved film turned on me, becoming my torture. I worried about the impact of this on my unborn baby, which only added to the darkness of those weeks. Thanks be to Peter Capaldi and The Thick of It for getting me through that chapter.

It was only in late November when I managed to get myself together enough to find a (brilliant) editor, Eoin McDonagh, and to start looking at the rushes from the shoot. Eoin came to my apartment every day for a week, and tweaked the assembly edit as I sat nearby, giving directions from my station on a birthing ball. I was huge, still tired if less depressed, and thought I had another month of work before my baby would make her appearance.

We finished the edit to the point of a "soft" picture lock on the 3rd December. I thought - wow, we are so close. I might even get the film finished before my baby is due! The next day, indoor dining reopened in Dublin and I ran out the door first thing in the morning, like a caged animal let loose, to meet a friend for lunch and another friend for dinner. By the end of that day, I couldn't walk, courtesy of excruciating pelvic girdle pain due to the increasing weight of my daughter.

All work on the film stopped, and I cried for hours at night, on all fours in my bed, cursing that the only painkiller I was allowed to take, paracetamol, did exactly nothing to the feeling of my bones being lit on fire.

I went into labour on the 16th December, lucky that my partner was allowed to join me only 4 hours into the most intense experience of excruciating pain I ever had. He held my hand as I was getting the blissful relief of the epidural. 11 hours later, we welcomed our beautiful, magnificent daughter, sobbing with joy.

I emerged from the love & bliss bubble in March 2021, sleepless but oh-so-elated, to shoot pick ups for Debutante, an elaborate sequence of shots for a fancy montage featuring props. My partner, Barry Doyle, also happens to be the (enormously talented) cinematographer on the film, and to make things easier, we organised the shoot in our apartment.

I'm smiling on this photo but, it needs to be said, shooting anything with a breastfed newborn is a major challenge, and is not recommended.

Post-production of Debutante has been coming along nicely in mid-May. With trepidation, I submitted the rough cut to the Galway Film Festival, crossing my fingers and holding my breath. Days later, my Mum had a major heart attack and barely survived. I flew to Poland with my baby daughter and spent 5 weeks there, minding my Mum until she got better. (Presence of grandchildren is a highly recommended cure!)

While in Poland, I found out the film got accepted to the festival. That day I was so run down, I felt nothing upon seeing the email. It was only a few weeks later, as my Mum started getting better and the stress started melting away, that I allowed myself to feel the happiness and the sense of joy at getting Debutante to Irish audiences at the Fleadh.

If you read this far - thank you. Please know that the story above features only highlights of this crazy journey that has been the making of short film Debutante. Some of the lows and obstacles are not fit for sharing on the internet ;)

Here's to all the short filmmakers out there, working tirelessly to make their stories come together, often with no reward of any kind, other than - if they're lucky - a pat on the back from a parent or a close friend. I hope you give yourself the respect you deserve.

Thank you to more people than I can list, who supported me in so many ways. Most of all, thank you to my partner, who tirelessly stood by me through many-a-meltdown on this creative rollercoaster, while also delivering beautiful cinematography on Debutante.

Debutante premieres online at the Galway Film Festival on 24th July 2021. Click here for tickets.

Written, directed & produced by Kamila Dydyna

Plot outline: Meg's simple life revolves around her duties as a Jehovah’s Witness and a platonic relationship with her boyfriend Sam. It all goes well until she is summoned to a judicial committee hearing, where three congregation elders shatter her carefully-constructed world.

Starring: úna O'Brien, Arthur Riordan, Richard Neville, Sam McGovern, Gary Mullan, Noelle Brown, Anthony O’Boyle

Director of Photography: Barry Doyle

Editor: Eoin McDonagh

Original Score by Natalia Tsupryk & Ray Harman

Audio Post-Production: Killian Fitzgerald

Photos by Patricia Barata , Eoghan O'Carroll and Rafal Kostrzewa

If you like this story, please consider supporting the post-production costs of Debutante! Click here to donate.