The gentlemen detectives of V.P.I. have willingly decided (apart from a certain Niall Tennyson) to use their Christmas bonuses to pay for a public service announcement. A public service announcement that will effect YOU!
This handy audiovisual advertisement tells you everything you need to know about the PINKERTON agency.
Today marks the one year anniversary of Vultures pilot episode, The Kris Kringle Konundrum, going online. One year on you can now watch the first 3 episodes of the series, along with trailers, loads of character profiles and behind-the-scenes photos over on www.VulturesPI.com.
And there’s plenty more to come from the hapless detectives of Vultures Private Investigations. With episode 4 (my directorial debut) currently in the editing process and set to premiere in the middle of January, we’re taking it up a notch in 2009. We’re already in pre-production for a huge shoot in January and February which will see us filming episodes 5 & 6 back-to-back to wrap up the series.
I’ll have plenty of news and photos to come but for now on behalf on myself and everyone involved in Vultures; have a Happy Christmas. We hope you enjoy and learn from this informative public service announcement and whatever you do, do not go to www.pinkertons.ie.
Devious Theatre have just released the first of several videos from our production of Irvine Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting‘, performed in the Watergate Theatre, last June.
Check out the first scene from the show featuring myself (Mark Renton), John Morton (Sickboy), Ken McGuire (Tommy) and Stephen Colfer (Spud), filmed on the Friday night performance, with the crowd erupting before the lights even went up.
You can read all about my experiences during Trainspotting here on a previous blog post. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Devious Theatre Youtube for plenty more video clips to come.
At this stage, the dream of writing daiIy blog posts is something I laugh about (when I have time to), I know things are bad when I can’t even post a blog a week. None of this is out of laziness, more the problem being too active to blog about my activities.
The past few months or so have been an awesome blur of learning-by-doing, filming for Mycrofilm’s web-based sitcom, ‘Vultures‘ episode 4, my first venture into the area of directing, has finally wrapped and I’m truly over-joyed with how the footage looks, I’m really excited about the next few weeks as we beginning editing. We’ll be releasing a new trailer and loads of promotional material and we’re already in Pre-Production for episodes 5 & 6.
I’ll definitely be blogging more about this soon and you can read series co-writer John Morton’s blog about the shoot here, but for anybody who hasn’t watched any episodes of Vultures yet then shame on you! All episodes are FREE TO WATCH on VulturesPI.com, you can also subcribe to it through iTunes and theres a whole host of behind-the-scenes photos and character profiles to check out too.
The Janine Drew – Work Experience trailer has just been released on the Mycrofilms YouTube, if you haven’t seen it then click here, if you have then why not click here anyway, watch it again and this time add it as a favourite, leave a comment or rating!? We want this “chav” to take over the internet so Bebo users please add it to your flashbox and bloggers please add it to your blogs!!! Now is the perfect time to get up to date with ‘Vultures‘ before it explodes all over 2009, well before Pat Shortt hops on the detective comedy train! Remember we were here first, just imagine what we could do with his budget!
Aside from eating, sleeping and breathing ‘Vultures’, I’ve been offered a couple of parts and I’m reading various scripts, more on this soon. The Devious Theatre Company have released our first podcast, our 70th Anniversary production of ‘The War Of The Worlds‘, set in Carlow/Kilkenny, which aired on KCLR 96fm, 70 years to the date of the original broadcast. ‘The War Of The Worlds’ is now FREE TO DOWNLOAD or simply listen to on DeviousTheatre.com.
I’ve also been gaining some really awesome studio experience and training thanks to Benny in HotShotz Photography, I’ve been developing a P.R Strategy for ArtLinks (SIGN UP FOR FREE!) and I had the awesome experience of working on Kilkenny-based animation company Cartoon Saloon’s first venture into live-action, BlueBeard.
I was really delighted when I got a call from the Cartoon Saloon (who were recently nominated for a BAFTA, hard luck guys) and asked to be a camera assistant on the shoot for the BlueBeard Promo. My excitement grew when I saw the first trailer, an awesome mixture of live-action and animation. It continued to grow every day before the shoot, as Sla talked about how awesome the “RED” was, apparently it was the greatest camera ever! After seeing it in action, I only wish I fully understood how technically awesome it is. I don’t think I can describe how amazed I was when myself and Lucy McKenna (check out her awesome paintings!!!) drove through the large automatic gates and came to the end of the long driveway to find Castle Oliver. Surrounded by large gargoyles, acres of land, ponds and fountains, with a view of the mountains, the Castle is like something plucked straight out of a fairytale and decorated suitably so with suits of armour and even a stuffed badger!?
When the camera crew arrived, we unloaded all of the gear and begin to set up. The next three days, I stuck to James and Des like glue, pretty much studying how they worked from lighting set-ups to shooting techniques, constantly asking questions which they seemed happy to answer or just watching how they worked. The first day was spent using the awesome steadi-cam, shooting in the large cellar most of the day, then the dining hall that night before we all sat down to dinner, before going to bed; each with our own lavish rooms in the castle. My bathroom had a jacuzzi bath!?
The second day of shooting had an early start in a small graveyard near the Castle then shooting in the grounds of Castle Oliver. Catering for the two day shoot in Castle Oliver came from BlueBerry in Kilkenny, for anybody who has ever eaten from there, that sentence alone is enough to make your mouth water and I was delighted by the wide-variety of veggie options. That afternoon we shot the remaining scenes and in a tetris-like fashion loaded the equipment back into the PathFinder Jeep, filled the cars with the costumes and people before heading to Dublin.
On the third day of shooting we arrived at Ardmore Studios in Wicklow, unloaded all of the gear into Studio C; a large warehouse with a huge greenscreen. Notably, there were several large trailers just outside for individual actors in The Tudors. At one point I went to the Grips Warehouse with James and Des, completely in awe at the amount of equipment and lights inside, with forklifts and guys moving busily throughout and the warehouse covered in banners for films that have been shot there.
The morning was spent doing a variety of jobs, taking photos, chatting with cast & crew including actor Jonathan Ryan (he was on Bosco and he’s a legend!) After lunch the time came for me to get into costume as an enemy soldier and shoot my scenes, without saying too much I had the opportunity to get some really awesome make-up and special fx covering half my face, courtesy of make-up artist Luarena Hanley. The side of my face was covered in blood and gore, which I decided not to take off until I came home and showed people how awesome it was.
The entire experience was truly inspiring and I’m delighted to finally have time to get all my photos from behind the scenes on Bluebeard online, you can check them out here on my flickr and I’d really love some feedback on them. The footage is already being edited before the animation process will begin and official word at present is that it will be complete sometime in March. I’m hoping to get a look at it during the process so I’ll blog about any news or updates I have.
For now, I would like to say a huge thanks to Producer Ross Murray, Director Nora Twomey, James Mather, Des, Lucy, Jonathan, Luarena and indeed everyone involved in the BlueBeard shoot. I hope you like the photographs and that I’ll get to work with all of you on projects in the future.
I also have behind-the-scenes video footage but it will be a while before I get around to editing it as I’m currently editing the ‘Smegma‘ music video for The Lions Mane and a behind the scenes documentary from Vultures episode 4. Dear God, I love my new iMac! More on all of this and more soon…
