Photo credit: Ugnius Brazdžiunas
The process of making ‘A Simple Killing’ started with the screenwriter, Mark Conway. Mark’s an emerging writer and had attached producers Emer Durcan and Mark De Carreau to the film before I joined the team. Having worked with Emer on my previous short film, ‘Picture Day’, she approached me about directing the film. Mark’s script really interested me, and he had developed this unique relationship between the two main characters, Mai and Anna, so I quickly jumped on board.
We funded the film through the Film Offaly Short Film Bursary, winning the competition in 2023. ‘A Simple Killing’ is an ambitious short film for its budget level – €10,000 – so once we won the award, we quickly began to look at the practicalities of making the film.
The largest consideration was the firearms and stunt element of the film. I can’t give too much away as the film has yet to premiere but the script required a shotgun and some violent falls. Coming into the film I brought some substantial stunt directing experience having previously blown up a building, crashed a car, blown up a car and shot people during my time directing Ireland’s longest running drama series, ‘Fair City’. I had a great relationship with Joe and Sean Condron and the team at Total Stunts, and they’re the best in the business, so they were the first people we engaged.
Image: Fair City anniversary special (courtesy Jason Branagan showreel)
After that we turned to casting. I always knew I wanted Aidan O’Callaghan for the role of Terry in the film. I had the pleasure of directing Aidan on EastEnders when he came into the show as Lewis. His work as Lewis impressed me. Plus, his first day on EastEnders was also my first day on EastEnders so we bonded over that and have become good friends. Casting then turned to Mai. As written, Mai is a 50–60-year-old East Asian woman living in the Irish countryside. It was so important to find the right performer for this role and we knew that unfortunately, there is a scarcity of actors who could play the role in Ireland, so we hired Dawn McAllister, a wonderful casting director, who found Daphne Cheung to lead the film.
Casting outside of Ireland comes with cost, but in this instance, it was entirely necessary and absolutely worth it. Daphne plays a wonderful Mai, full of grief and inner turmoil but with a stoic resilience that’s reaching its limits. Claire Gavin rounded out the cast. Having worked with Claire previously on ‘Fair City’, I knew her capabilities and was excited to cast her in a role I hadn’t seen her play before.
Image: Jason Branagan, Aidan O’Callaghan, Daphne Cheung behind the scene on ‘A Simple Killing’ (courtesy of Jason Branagan)
The other challenge in making a film with this ambition on a budget of this level was the need to shoot overnights. While the film is set predominantly inside Mai’s house, we chose a location that we simply couldn’t black-out so we needed to wait for darkness and shoot through the night. Our schedule ran 6pm – 4am each night, running 10 hour semi-continuous days. The overnights came with additional practical costs such as providing additional catering. I can’t reiterate enough, feed you cast and your crew properly!
What all of the above meant was that our intended 3 day shoot had to become a 2 day shoot. We simply didn’t have the money to film for three days. This is where my television directing experience benefitted me. Working in TV has taught me many things, but one of the most important elements is the absolute requirement of completing your days. Myself, my producers and my Director of Photography, Brian Durcan, spoke at length about how to manage the film over 2 days but we ultimately agreed that as vast number of television dramas and independent feature films are shooting 6-9 pages of single camera per day, we need to be able to work at that pace and we relished the challenge of shooting ‘A Simple Killing’ over two nights. Which we accomplished.
To do this, I heavily storyboarded the film and myself and Brian spoke at length about the shots and visual style of the film. As we both have backgrounds in editing, we were always shooting for our cuts, and knew exactly what we needed and when we had it. I always approach my films thinking about my edit, but what made ‘A Simple Killing’ a little different was the time restraints; we simply didn’t have the time to shoot extensive coverage. To help me through this shoot I relied on something I learned from the brilliant HETV director Diarmuid Goggins (KIN, Silent Witness, Witness Number 3) when I shadowed him on the Channel 5 drama, ‘The Night Caller’. This is the idea of the moving-master-shot; if I was only able to cover the scene in a single shot, what would that be? It’s not a new idea, but in an age of relentless coverage, it’s one that’s worth reminding ourselves of over and over again.
Image: Jason Branagan talks to DOP Brian Durcan on the set of ‘A Simple Killing’ (image courtesy of Jason Branagan)
This meant our post process was much more streamlined because we pretty much knew what the film was going to look like, cut by cut, before we shot it. That isn’t to say we weren’t open to fresh ideas on the day. We still explored and interrogated scenes and the space to find the best way to tell the story, but we could do this confidently due to the heavy prep we had done. We’re now picture locked and we’re completing the film in Element Post-Production in Dublin. We’d love to premiere the film at Raindance Film Festival in June, but that will be the programmers’ decision.
Jason is an award-winning writer and director working successfully across drama, comedy and genre. His films have screened and won awards at some of the most prestigious film festivals around the world, including LA Shorts International Film Festival, Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, Galway Film Fleadh, Chicago International Film Festival, Foyle Film Festival, Belfast Film Festival, amongst others.
TV directing credits include BBC’s Eastenders, RTÉ’s Fair City and the third season of the comedy series, The Doireann Project for RTÉ Player and RTÉ 2. Most recently, Jason helmed the Christmas hit, The Most Magical Christmas Movie Ever! for LIDL, which released in Irish cinemas nationwide. Other credits include the award winning short films, The Wall, Forever Hold Your Peace and the viral horror short, Mr. Eckles.
Jason is in post-production on his next short film, A Simple Killing (funded by Film Offaly). He is in currently in development on his debut feature film, The Others (Northern Ireland Screen/Playbook PIctures/Western Front Studios), which won JETS 2024 at Berlinale.
Jason is currently studying an M.A. in Filmmaking at Raindance Film School, has a post-graduate diploma in Advanced Producing from TU Dublin, is an alumni of the Reykjavik International Film Festival’s Talent Lab (2022) and guest lectures on directing multi-camera drama at the National Film School of Ireland, IADT.
