One Hundred Days Without the Light – An Interview with Conor Horgan

Writer/Director Conor Horgan talks about making One Hundred Mornings, the first feature for him and for Bl!nder Films

What’s the source of the One Hundred Mornings idea?

‘‘I went to a talk in late 2005 given by Margaret Atwood, during which she recommended “A Short History Of Progress” by Ronald Wright, which is a very good book on how societies tend to collapse. I’d been reading a lot about this subject, and wrote one script inspired by this research but it didn’t work out. Then in early 2007 the Irish Film Board started the ‘Catalyst’ scheme, where three filmmakers got a chance to make a low-budget feature. I wrote the first draft of a new script very quickly, in four and a half months, and then out of 48 scripts submitted we were one of the three awarded the funding.’’

Does the film Straw Dogs have anything in common with One Hundred Mornings?
“I haven’t seen it! I also haven’t read ‘The Road’ which several people have told me has a similar take on things. There isn’t as much violence in OHM as I think there is in Straw Dogs. The conflict in the house in understated and it was very important to me that all the violence has consequences. It isn’t movie violence that has no lasting psychological effect on the participants.”

Is the film closer to the existential drama or horror/ thriller?
“We never say what the breakdown is in the movie. It’s obvious that there’s no power/electricity. I think it is an existential drama, definitely.”

These few words of synopsis foreshadow a rather pessimistic movie. Does it have any reflection with your personal philosophy of life and worldview?
‘‘Someone once told me that you should write about what scares you. Since I’ve finished the film, paradoxically I feel less scared about this possible outcome, even though it is probably even more likely to happen than when I first wrote the script. It’s hard to believe that we aren’t rushing headlong towards some kind of breakdown. The film has a pessimistic tone, undoubtedly, but in a way the making of the film is in itself an act of hope.’’

The Concept –
‘’What has caused the world of the film to come about is not for me to say. That’s not what the story is really about, it’s much more about dealing with behaviours and actions and choices. It’s about basic human nature and the way in which we live in the hope that we won’t have to deal with the consequences of our actions, and this world that the film has built is the consequence of some of those unthought through actions.

There is very little hope in the film, but the film in itself is an act of hope. And my hope for the film is that it might help people see what a world that involves a breakdown of society would actually be like’’

The Casting –
‘‘I was looking for people who had the kind of qualities that the characters had and then you find somebody who has one of the qualities and it’s fantastically exciting and then you think through the rest of the film and see is there any evidence that they have the other qualities that an actor needs to be able to bring to the story as well and you don’t really know, it’s always an act of faith. You can’t ask someone to read for every scene in the film so you have to use your gut instincts. I’m really, really pleased with the cast I have.’’

The Location –
‘‘I thought I was being terribly clever by writing a film that only needed one house, 90% of the film would take place in a single location. Then I went back and looked at exactly what the requirements of that house were and realised that it needed to be the hardest working location in Ireland, which was almost impossible to find. Being on a low-budget meant we had to be close to Dublin, and because of the nature of the film there couldn’t be any streeet lights, it couldn’t be near any major roads, it had to be perfectly still, quiet and dark, to be the world that we were looking for. We just kept looking and looking and we saw this place down the bottom of a hill and I looked through the window and instantly knew this was the place. It’s a very un-Irish looking house, and the location is an intensely private little place, it is its own world. Being here feels like being in the film, it’s a wonderful place to be working.’’

The Making –
‘‘It has been an extremely tough thing to do and I have really enjoyed it. Working with such a wonderful cast and crew makes it so great and everyone is really into it. And as nobody is making a fortune out of this film we have the complete creative freedom that comes from abject poverty, so we’re making the best film we can with the resources we have. I’m very lucky because a lot of people on this film are head of department for the first time, and all of their dedicationn has assembled itself into the visual structure of the film and it’s really working well.’’

Working with D.O.P Susie Lavelle –
‘‘I first met Suzie when I was acting in a friend’s short film and she was the D.P and I was very impressed by her, firstly as a human being and then as a camera woman. She is just wonderfully talented, and because I come from a photographic background it can be difficult for me to let go of that side of things but with her I was very happy to have the input into it that I needed to have and then take the time to work with the actors as well. She is this passionate ball of energy at the centre of the crew and it feels like a privilege to be working with her. One of the ways we’re approaching this film is to do very minimal coverage, in fact many of the scenes have been done in just one shot, with only a handful of takes. I think that makes the film feels really believable and that’s what we want, we want it to feel real, we want people to come into this world and believe that they’re in there.’’

Finance/ The Catalyst Project –
‘The Catalyst project brought a bunch of 160 budding film makers in a room together and told us what kind of film we can expect to make on this kind of budget. A production manager got up and said for this level of funding you can’t have this, this, that and the other, which is pretty much basically a world with no electricity. I had been thinking of making about these kind of issues and this kind of world for a while and when the Catalyst project came along with its reduced resource I thought well that’s actually really going to suit the kind of film I want to make and I’m very glad they saw fit to fund the film.’’