Shannon teen gets Blind Pass for movie

NEW movie Blind Pass is being launched in the coming weeks and Shannon teenager Lauren Sexton (pictured) sings on it. The film is something of a family affair as her father James is an associate producer and was locations manager in Ireland.

He told The Clare Champion that the film showcases a lot of Clare landmarks. “Sixty percent of it is shot in Sarasota in Florida and 40% of it is shot in Ireland and most of that is shot in Clare. I was the locations manager and associate producer for the Irish shoot. In Clare it’s Killaloe, Miltown Malbay, the Cliffs of Moher, the White Strand, Dromoland Castle is really well featured and Spanish Point.”

His daughter came second in an All-Ireland school’s singing competition last year and he says her song is heard throughout Blind Pass.

“On the soundtrack, they picked a song that they wanted for the opening of the movie, and there are hints of it going through the movie and near the end of the movie it comes in again. It’s called Stretched on Your Grave.

“It’s a haunting song, an old Irish song and she sang it. After it was recorded it was sent to a producer in LA and composed the music around it. We sent him Lauren’s raw vocal, he built the composition around it and it came out great.”

When he spoke to The Clare Champion last week he was just back from Florida where there had been a press screening of the film. He says it will be going to a number of festivals in the next few months.

“It’s being premiered in April in Sarasota and hopefully it’ll be at the Tribeca festival in New York in April as well. It could possibly be screened at the Galway Film Festival too, we’re working on that. There has been some interest in it from agents in Hollywood so the deal is that if somebody buys the distribution rights to it, things could change.

“What direction it goes from now will be interesting, but it looks almost certain it will be screened at the festival in Sarasota which is from April 4-12 and it’ll be one of the main movies there.”

Irish audiences will have a chance to see it, although it’s not certain if it’ll be in cinemas. “Whether it hits the cinemas or goes straight to DVD depends on distributors and what they think of it, but it’s well up there.”