Dreamstuff 10 Announced!

This is going to be awesome!

For more info check out www.YIFM.com/dreamstuff

Devious Theatre’s Dario Fo Season

Just online today is a selection of clips from Devious Theatre’s productions of Dario Fo’s ‘Accidental Death Of An Anarchist’ and ‘Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!’ which ran in the Set Theatre in Kilkenny in December 2009 and March 2010 respectively.

I still miss my orange dungarees.

ArtLinks Survey 2010

The South East’s free and unique Arts Resource Service Artlinks is currently calling on it members to complete an online survey.

Recently celebrating it’s 3rd birthday, the ArtLinks community has grown to nearly 1500 members so far and is responsible for organising the first local arts training opportunities in the South East.

They are currently inviting “all who are passionate about the development of the Arts in the South East region to contribute to the future direction of this programme“  by taking a couple of minutes to complete the online survey. And there’s a €100 book voucher to be won too!

The survey contains a series of questions about courses, art development programmes, financial support and internet services you use or require for your Arts development, it will only take you 5 minutes but it’s very important for the future of ArtLinks.

The ArtLinks 2010 Survey is open to all members; amateur and professional individuals, groups and venues involved in Dance, Drama/Theatre, Music, Literature, Visual Arts and Film and the survey will run until the 26th of May.

The key findings of this survey will be available on ArtLinks.ie before July 2010.

If you’re not already a member of ArtLinks then you can sign up for free here and you can complete the online survey here. Spread the word!

After Effects: 3D Cityscape At Night

A first attempt at creating a 3D cityscape at night using an Andrew Kramer tutorial from Video Copilot.

I didn’t spend a lot of time on this, like in the tutorial I just duplicated the same building created from a single image. I just wanted to get through it and figure it all out.

Now, I’m going to go back in and play around with it, try add some weather elements, some new buildings and then hopefully… blow them all up!

Selfish Bass – Behind The Scenes (Photos)

Here’s the first batch of behind the scenes photos from ThanklessFilms music video shoot for Diarmaid O Meara’s ‘Selfish Bass‘.

Taken in my apartment on the first night of the shoot, where we slowly got our heads around the equipment, assembling the mannequins, dressing them, laughing at their weird mounds and trying not to drop them.

We shot a variety of stop-motion and puppetry sequences involving the main character as he prepares for his night out. We also shot two green screen shots, a leg-crossing shot and a TV screen replacement.

The leg cross was improvised and rushed so it never really worked out in post and was scraped. There’s a slight camera movement in the TV screen replacement shot (featuring Dave running me over in Turn Around!), I tracked the shot for the mask but couldn’t manage to get the colour/shine right on the screen before the television turns on.

Other random trivia:

• For some reason the gels kept melting on the lights all night.
• Mannequins can take a good slap when dropped on their faces.
• One of the mannequins had a very strange hole in a very strange place… before we took him out of the box!?
• One of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen is Dave & Der showering a mannequin!?

You can check out my favourite photos from the bunch here on the Oss237.com Homepage with links to the rest on Flickr and if you haven’t watched the music video yet then click here.

More photos coming soon!

Selfish Bass (Music Video)

The music video for DJ Diarmaid O Meara’s track ‘Selfish Bass‘ has just gone online. Produced by ThanklessFilms, the video was a five-day shoot filled with mannequin madness.

Behind the scenes photos coming soon.

Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay? Forgot to Pay! (Photos)

Following Devious Theatre’s production of ‘Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!’ in the Set Theatre last month, I’ve spent the past few weeks quietly battling a severe case of what is commonly known as “post-show blues”.

I’ve had withdrawal symptoms for everything from wearing orange dungarees to Angela’s obsessive manners!?

My memories of the week of the show (and the weeks before it) are a crazy blur of colour, sweat patches, laughter, sessions, swanky surroundings, shenanigans, hilarious moments and madcap farce!

The production definitely goes on my list of favourites for so many reasons, going into them further would probably just make me sad all over again.

Today, I realised that I had completely forgotten to upload the only photos I took during the production, a collection of shots taken during Act One of the dress rehearsal before I made my entrance as Luigi… god I miss Luigi!

You can check out my favourite photos here on the Oss237.com Homepage with links to the rest on my Flickr.

You can also check out all sorts of behind the scenes bloggery, reviews and info from the show over on DeviousTheatre.com.

Green Screen Test: Backgrounds and Bullets

I’ve just uploaded a new video, some basic green screen background replacement tests I’ve been playing around with the last few days.

Shot on the Canon HG10 with the green screen set up in the sitting room; I was on my own so had to keep it simple with the camera set up on the tripod. I only had one construction light so it was pretty difficult to key properly after.

The first shot was the easiest, adding the alley to footage of me walking on the spot and then playing with the scale and position to add some movement. The second shot took a while to get right, my first attempt was scraped after I got well and truly lost in 3D & time.

Attempt 2 went better, but you’ll notice as I raise the gun at the start that it disappears briefly, I spent hours trying to adjust things so that wouldn’t happen. I’m told it’s not my fault… it’s something called inter-frame compression on the camera. I’ve had Sla explain it to me a few times and kind of understand it but if I tried to explain it then my head would explode.

The next problem I had was timing the movements of the two separate clips of me with the background as the camera follows the bullet. Once everything was in sync I added the muzzle flash and the bullet hit. I did some very basic colour correction on the whole thing and added the bars, some sound effects from iLife and music from Garageband.

The first version of the shot was sped up by precisely 715% (thanks Sla) to get the fast whip and the second shot plays at the speed I put the whole thing together but appears in slow motion thanks to a nice bit of sound design, once again thanks Sla.

Finally, after explaining inter-frame compression several times then cleaning up my speed and sound issues, Sla added some colour grading in Magic Bullet.

Overall, it was good fun and better practice and as always comments, feedback or advice are welcome.

Veggie Kilkenny: “11th No Meat & Greet”

Irish Blog Awards 2010 – Net News Nightly – Blooper Reel (Video)

Out-takes from the Net News Nightly sketch for the Irish Blog Awards 2010 featuring Ken McGuire and lots of bad language. Enjoy!

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