Karen Twomey and Daniel F. Holmes get in deep with abortion drama Dive
Dive is the story of Tara, an 18 year old swimmer who dreams of one day going to the Olympics. Having sacrificed anything resembling a normal teenage life in pursuit of her goal, her dreams are soon thrown into jeopardy when she discovers that she’s pregnant on the brink of the biggest competition of her career. Afraid of the stigma associated with her situation, Tara sets out to solve the dilemma with little help and no one but her best friend to turn to
The film is directed by Daniel F. Holmes. All Actors in thefilm are Feature Film School graduates and for most it is their first feature film. The film was shot by industry professionals and was produced by Matthew Toman and Kevin Treacy for Bankhouse Productions and Promenade Post Production.
CinÉ: Dive is the Feature Film School's second feature after Gerard Walsh's Release last year. That film premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh, but this one is a little bit more time sensitive and obviously couldn't wait until July. Can you tell me about how the school aspect of it worked?
Karen Twomey: Absolutely. This is Dan's first feature with us and in general..
Daniel F. Holmes: I wrote it around the students. It was very much an inside out process. We got our group of actors, and we got really lucky with them, they are all very talented. For the first month I was exploring a few different ideas before settling on the one that we ended up going with. I was just writing and figuring out and understanding their strengths and just writing to those and forming the characters around them.
So how much of the story had you gotten before you met the actors?
Daniel: I had loose ideas beforehand, but it didn't take shape character wise.
That's interesting to see how that would fit, especially with age and gender profiles. If these are the only people that you can work with then you suddenly are constrained in certain ways.
Daniel: There were a lot of constraints, but in this case I welcomed those because there was no time to overthink things. These are the constraints, work within them, and go! I thought that that was quite nice.
Karen: It's a very different way of making a movie. It's exciting and it's challenging. That's normally not how you would do it.
Daniel: It was definitely very challenging at times.
In some ways it would be similar to the director-for-hire approach in
Words: Niall Murphy
42 CinÉireann / May 2018