Jason Figgis (3 Crosses, The Twilight Hour) is currently in post production with ‘A Christmas Carol’. The editing which is taking place in October Eleven Creatives stars stars Vincent Fegan (Anton) as Ebenezer Scrooge alongside Bryan Murray (Fair City, Brookside), Brendan Grace (Father Ted), Brendan O'Carroll (Mrs Brown) and Lara Belmont (Rise of the Footsoldier, The War Zone).
'A Christmas Carol' was shot on locations in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare from April to August this year. Jason directed and shot the project and he is also, as mentioned above, editing the feature. The film's producers are October Eleven Pictures’ Jonathan Figgis (The Guards) and Carl Shaaban. The feature will premiere at a charity screening for Barretstown at a Dublin location that is TBC.
The other cast members in the film include Adam Goodwin (WC, The Clinic), Steve Gunn (Blood, 3Crosses), Neill Fleming (Portrait of a Zombie), Christen Mooney (The Secret of Kells) and Laurence Foster (The Mannions).
Jason tells IFTN that this feature will see a return to the original feel of the tale: “It is very, very dark,” he says. “We’ve gone back to Dickens image of the characters. He was a complete socialist and wrapped up his socialist ideals in this form of entertainment – he used it as a way of disguising certain messages. So we’ve kept his descriptions and his world in our film.”
As part of this approach he describes the way the film’s three ghosts have been created: “With the ghosts we used black screens in Marlay House. I didn’t want to use green screen and CGI because I never think it really rings true. So we’ve gone completely old school with this in that the actors do their scenes in front of the black screens and they are lit in the foreground so that they are transparent looking and some parts are more transparent than others. It looks really well.”
Finally, as to the man charged with embodying the iconic Ebenezer Scrooge, Jason is confident he has struck gold with Vincent Fegan: “He is perfect for the part,” Jason tells us. “He is exactly the way Dickens describes Scrooge. A lot of productions have him as a cuddly granddad but Vincent looks as the character should – hard as nails! His Scrooge has a very Nosferatu feel to him complete with scraggly beard. It really was a case where you could see him getting into character the minute he put on Scrooge’s coat.”
Following the charity Christmas premiere of the film it is expected that ‘A Christmas Carol’ will receive a general Irish theatrical release – sales agents are in early talks with several distributors.
