A comic take on famous count Dracula
However, his ambitions were scuppered while he observed a dissection and he began to feel nauseous at the sight of blood. But in true one-door-opening-while-another-closes fashion, the very next day his class received an introductory course on filmmaking from a visiting tutor.
“I enjoyed it,” recalls McKeown. “I kinda caught the bug after that.”
How ironic then that his first film should be a comic take on cinema’s most famous bloodsucker, Dracula.
Four years in the making, Christmas at Dracula’s finds the illustrious count at a low ebb and nursing a broken heart. Having lost his mojo, he decides to throw a Christmas party to impress his fellow ghouls and regain his credibility.
Inspired by his love of cult films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the old Universal monster movies, McKeown wrote the first draft of the script when he was in sixth year.
In a further neat touch he cast Barry McCarthy, the tutor who introduced him to the possibility of filmmaking, as notorious cult leader Jim Jones.
“It was meant to be a short originally but I said perhaps I could self-fund this and turn it into a film,” says McKeown.
McKeown studied filmmaking for a year at St John’s Central College in Cork city and during that time he developed his script. After the death of his grandfather he received an inheritance. This gave him the motivation to dedicate himself to his film.
Says McKeown: “I dropped out of film school and Christmas at Dracula has essentially been my film school. I think when you’re studying in film school you’re pampered in a way.
They tell you about the mistakes but you’ll never learn from your mistakes unless you out and you make those mistakes. And we have made those mistakes and I’ve learned from them.”
For the role of Dracula, McKeown cast Conor Dwane, a local actor with over 25 years of theatre experience and had, with his theatre company Skylight Productions, put on a production of Dracula in the Firkin Crane.
The pair had first met at a separate fundraising event and later on McKeown decided to sound him out. “I sent him a message not knowing that he had played Dracula already,” he recalls.
“I got a message back saying ‘ actually played Dracula before onstage’, and he literally flooded my Facebook wall with pictures of him playing Dracula. And I said yeah, that’s definitely Dracula.”
With Dwane’s experience he was also able to slot into the role of producer. He was able to secure some of the locations such as Barryscourt Castle in Carrigtwohill, a possibility the budget conscious McKeown was unable to imagine.
“In the original draft Dracula was living in a flat,” he reveals. “He had to downsize due to the recession because I never thought we could be able to shoot in a castle.”
They also got the use of the grounds and corridors of UCC as well as Innishannon House Hotel, among other locations.
“Luckily everybody allowed us to film for free,” says Dwane.
“It’s become a lot more accessible and easy to make a feature on a low budget,” maintains McKeown. “I think that’s where the challenge arises for independent filmmakers in the fact that they really have to up their game in terms of the script, in terms of the story, to stand out from all the rest.”
In Christmas at Dracula’s, a film both see as being in the vein of Young Frankenstein, they have certainly found a niche.
“Irish film is a bit melodramatic, it’s a bit heavy,” McKeown observes. “I wanted to stand out from the crowd.”
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