About.
Myskatonic is a film and TV production company formed in 2019 by writer/director Ryan Mackfall and writer/producer Kingsley Marshall to produce the award-winning Backwoods, an adaptation of a short story by HP Lovecraft. Since then, we’ve produced short films and music videos for major labels, have three writers under option, and have developed a slate of feature films, and a TV documentary series.
At Myskatonic, we’re passionate about the power of the conventions of genre filmmaking, and how these can serve as a trojan horse to convey political ideas. Across our slate, we’re interested in exploring the feelings of displacement and change that dominate global political discourse. While Backwoods, Whisperer, and The Birdwatcher use horror conventions to drill into the origins of xenophobia, C-H-A-I-N and There Were Nine Children Left align elements of folk horror – the power of nature, the rural landscape, and the decline of natural resources – to the existential dread of a generation faced with the danger of catastrophic climate change. In these ecosophical dramas, we ask our audience to consider how one character’s loss of identity is directly related to the accelerating loss of land and plant life, of the drivers of global migration, and how our unending demand for natural resources directly aligns with a diminishing sense of ourselves and our communities.
What connects our work is how characters look behind what initially appears innocuous – a book, a recording, a retreat, a map, a drawing - to pull the curtain on reality and reveal their own fears and prejudices, and those of our audience.
Ryan Mackfall has over 15 years of experience in music documentary and video and live performance, working with some of the biggest global artists (including Bruce Dickinson, Green Day, Trivium, Caspian) and shooting in the world’s most recognizable venues, including Wembley Stadium and the Royal Albert Hall. Kingsley Marshall has over a decade of feature film production experience across music video, shorts, feature documentaries, and the feature films Enys Men (2023), Long Way Back (2022), The Tape (2021), and Wilderness (2017).
Myskatonic is committed to developing new talent and increasing the visibility of the UK’s regional film industry and the history and culture of our home in Cornwall to a worldwide audience.
Biographies
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Writer/Directorhttps://www.imdb.com/name/nm5606217/
Ryan is based in Cornwall and has worked in music video, live performance capture and documentary for over a decade. He has toured with acts including Slayer, Caspian, Deftones, Mastodon and Robert Plant, shooting everywhere from Melbourne to Santiago and Los Angeles, and collaborated with some of the world’s biggest record labels through his company Crashburn. His most recent music videos have been for Trivium and Bruce Dickinson, while his live shoots in 2024 have included Green Day at London's Wembley Stadium, and Train at the Royal Albert Hall. His productions have total views exceeding 100 million through streaming platforms.
Backwoods, an adaptation of a short story by H.P. Lovecraft saw Ryan shift to narrative drama. The film premiered in the USA at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, winning the H.P. Lovecraft Award in 2019, before making its UK premiere at the BIFA and BAFTA qualifying London Short Film Festival in 2020. The film was subsequently licensed for release as part of Kier-La Janisse’s definitive folk horror documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched through Severin Films, winner of the Audience Award at SxSW 2021.
Backwoods made its online premiere through the independent cinema platform Director’s Notes in 2022. As a screenwriter, Ryan has developed the original folk horror feature film C-H-A-I-N, and is developing the H.P Lovecraft adaptation Whisperer, co-writing with Lachlan Marks.
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Writer/Producerhttps://www.imdb.com/name/nm7050103/
Kingsley is a writer and producer based in Cornwall and specialises in the production of narrative shorts and feature films. Kingsley has worked as an executive producer on the feature films Wilderness (director: Justin John Doherty) and The Tape (dir: Martha Tilston) both released in 2021,Long Way Back (director. Brett Harvey) released in cinemas 2022, and the Film4 production Enys Men (director: Mark Jenkin), which premiered in Cannes as part of Director’s Fortnight in 2022, and was released by the BFI in the UK and Neon in the US in 2023. He is an associate producer on the archive documentary Atlas Pool (dir: Jane Darke and Andrew Tebbs 2024), and is developing the TV documentary series Nevermade.
He established Myskatonic with Ryan producing Backwoods (2019) and The Birdwatcher (2024) and the music video Rain on the Graves (2024) and is developing feature films with the same creative team. Whisperer, C-H-A-I-N, and There Were Nine Children Left secured support from the regional Screen Growth fund in 2023. A feature film co-production with writer Carl Grose and o-region films, Horse Piss for Blood, secured BFI Early Development funding in 2022. As a screenwriter, Kingsley is developing There Were Nine Children Left with Lucy Grace from her original story, having adapted Lucy's short story Fear of Shallow Living for the screen in 2024.
Kingsley completed the BFI Creative Producers Lab in 2021, Creative UK’s Selling Screen and Foundations schemes in 2022, and joined BAFTA in October 2022.