Sunbeam | Sinead O’Toole reaches for the simple pleasures

Painting with monkeys is the surprise inspiration for Sinead O’Toole’s new short Sunbeam. The monkey doings are combined with things like hotels with penguins in the lobby, and a whole host of other unobtainable, expensive and unsustainable wellbeing aspirations which promise a paid route to happiness.

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“It’s not that complicated”

“It’s completely ridiculous to me,” Sinead tells D&CFilm about artistic apes, et al. “It’s so intense, it’s so high level, and it’s nothing that you’re going to be able to recreate in your everyday life.”

In a world where feeling better has been commodified, Sinead has something else to counter it. Imagine a montage of New Year, New You improving hobbies, tried, tested and… ditched before the paint has even dried.

“I wanted to say, actually, it’s not that complicated,” she enthuses. “Sometimes it’s about slowing down and just feeling what you already have.”

So far, so elegantly simple.

Sunbeam is an Exeter Phoenix commissioned microshort that will premiere at Two Short Nights. The blurb says, “Sunbeam is a light-hearted comedy that explores how we find joy in our everyday lives. It looks at the overwhelming nature of social media advice and the value of knowing what works best for you.”

Undercover agenda

In the film, a lady is scrolling through self-help articles, the kind with the headline 7 Ways to have a More Productive Morning. It’s a series of really basic tips, but by number five, it’s already trying to sell to you.

“That undercover marketing really annoys me,” says Sinead.

Disgruntlement, disillusion and self-discovery

As a microshort, there’s quite a lot to fit in to the three minutes: disgruntlement, disillusion and an element of self-discovery. But it’s the way Sinead, who as an editor can cultivate story beats like Buddy Rich, has designed the piece. It’s all in the contrasts of pace which make points and bring the film to life.

Universally appealing

And to keep it universally appealing, Sinead has kept dialogue to a minimum.

“To be honest, that comes from editing experience. People don’t really understand how long it takes to say something,” she says, mentioning scripts whose dialogue runs to three or four times longer than the desired length of the film. “The explanation that someone gives takes so long to get through that it takes a huge chunk of the time. “It’s something I see a lot in new writers, so I wanted to try and avoid it myself.”

Sunbeam leans towards visual comedy.

That comedic lifting is carried out by Beatrice Savill, who was in last year’s Exeter Phoenix Commission Abigail’s An Activist Now, written and directed by Micha Colombo. Sinead edited.

“Towards the end of writing, I had Bea in mind for it. I did do a call-out to make sure about the role, but Bea had this really nice gravitas in some places, which is what I wanted.”

That quest for capturing simple and profound inspiration can be a little like trying to bottle starlight.

Develop and grow

Sinead’s film joy is in editing, fixing and seeing things develop and grow.

“I really enjoy seeing stuff come together, which is, I think, why editing has appealed to me so much. I like building things, and it becoming more than it was before. And finding clarity. So I’ve greatly enjoyed actually having control over what I’m getting,” she says.

And in life?

“I am a big fan of a cup of tea,” says Sinead with reassuring simplicity. “Which is going to shock absolutely no one. You could change your day with a cup of tea. I’m very simple, honestly.”

Sunbeam by Sinead O’Toole is an Exeter Phoenix commission, and premieres at Two Short Nights film festival on Friday 6 March.