Following on from the scene in the underground car park, where Leeson shuts down V.P.I, the detectives return to Tennyson’s house and call their “juvenile sex-pest” lawyer Matt McLoughlin. The scene in the kitchen was shot on Shoot Day 25, with our old house once again used as Tennyson’s house.

This scene was the first in a series of night-shoots but was relatively easy; we had quickly realised that there was no way to make that kitchen look nice, so equipped with two €30 construction lights with 5oo Watt bulbs and two household lamps with 100 Watt bulbs we simply tried to “make it look less shite!”.

The balcony out the back provided a nice opening shot for the scene and once we moved inside, the lighting set-ups remained the same for all the scenes shot in Tennyson’s kitchen. We spent the shoot constantly distracted by fresh pots of tea and chocolate biscuits, barely getting the scene shot before Thompson had to go to work.

The scene cuts back and forth to Matt McLoughlin (Peter McGann) surrounded by “some slutty looking hens” in a crowded bar. We shot the bar scene on Shoot Day 19 on the stage in the back of Cleere’s Theatre, just one of several scenes shot over that hectic snowy weekend, I think we had five location moves that day in particular. The scene was a simple one set-up, two shots; Matt talking on the phone and then looking for “a hand-shandy” from Cynthia (Mairead Kiernan) on the couch, with Rosaleen Johnson & Eadoin Carthy as extras.

We used two four-colour stage lights borrowed from KilkennyMusic to light the scene and despite the nightmare trying to focus under the extreme colour lights, I managed to put together the above character portrait sequence of Matt & Cynthia.

In the final scene of episode 5, McGrain pays a visit to Isabelle Vultour (Liadain Kaminska), the scene was shot way back on Shoot Day 2 with John Morton’s house once again used as Isabelle & Tom Moriarty’s love-nest. Our second day of shooting, our first interior night shoot, we spent quite a bit of time trying to light the scene; there was limited shoot space and several set-ups as Isabelle moves around the kitchen. We wanted it to be warm & cosy but at the same time we didn’t want to have to keep changing lighting set-ups as we moved around.

The 500 Watt construction lights were too strong and the lights in John’s kitchen weren’t strong enough. In the end, we set up one construction light outside the sliding glass door and used the blinds to defuse it, the second construction light was placed high up on top of a kitchen press and bounced off the ceiling. We used the two household lamps and some candles on the table as portable lights, slighting tweaking the set-ups as the characters moved around.

We had rehearsed the scene earlier that evening in the Abbey Business Center and with the exception of a small difference in space everything ran smoothly. As with all indoor shoots we drank way too much tea that night, a fresh brew being made between each set-up, constantly listening to ‘Moonlight Serenade’ and discussing things like bathroom reading and the “word to poo ratio”. As far as I can remember, I shot the photos of Tom & Isabelle (that appear in the scene) that night and then the shot of the photos on the shelf was picked up later.

We didn’t have enough space to shoot the wide shot from inside the kitchen, so we had to move outside and shoot through the open door. John spent most of this set-up having to chase his three-legged cat Pancho away, as she kept trying to steal the scene during takes. It was during the outside set-up/cat chase that we came up with the final shot, mirroring the final shot in episode 1 as the camera slowly moves back in a series of fades, as the music swells and McGrain watches Isabelle dance around the kitchen, the final shots are some of my favourite in episode 5.

You can check out all my shots from behind the scenes on Vultures here and as always any comments or feedback are appreciated. This final batch of episode 5 photos includes a rare shot of me during the shoot, I’m not sure who took it, I think it was David Thompson!?

Photos from episode 6 on the way soon.

First up, there’s some individual portraits of John Morton and Alan Slattery taken in the Mycrofilm’s production office. Given that the premiere for Episode 4: ‘The Case Of The Poisoned Dates‘ took place two weeks into the shoot for episodes 5,6 & 7; it meant we spent most of our nights in the office (if we weren’t shooting). Those nights were a crazy mixture of editing episode 4 and pre-production for upcoming shoot days whilst drinking endless amounts of tea.

The schedule hung across the entire back wall of the office, constantly changing and being re-worked, it had quickly become a foreign language to me and indeed everyone except John. That evening in particular, I had received my wireless-flash-triggers in the post, so I took a break from story-boarding to test them out; I can’t remember the settings at this stage but I was playing with opposing colour pre-sets to get a cool blue effect on John as he stands “master of the schedule” and Sla sitting at his desk editing.

Following the scene in Noah’s car in episode 5, the fugitive V.P.I detectives and Quint Quigley retreat to Niall Tennyson’s house; where they put on some rubber gloves and attempt to retrieve the stolen data from inside the stoner. The scene was shot on Shoot Day 20 and although I didn’t take any photos of that scene I remember it was a lot of fun to shoot. We had spent a couple of days shooting various scenes in Tennyson’s kitchen (our old house was used for most of the interiors in Tennyson’s house) so lighting plans had been worked out in advance and with a basic shot-list for the montage we spent the afternoon doing various nasty things to Quigley (Kevin Mooney); making him drink cod liver oil, shaking him upside-down and saying things like “does it look like three men forcefully jamming their fingers down another mans throat!?”.

The scene eventually moves to Tennyson’s bathroom so Quigley can try force the microfilm or usb stick or possible laptop out his other end. The bathroom scene had actually been shot a few days before the rubber-gloved montage, on Shoot Day 16 in John Morton’s house. It was the only bathroom we could find with enough space to shoot four people in and even then we had a very limited shoot space. We didn’t have room for the lights so we set up a light outside the window (which is actually an interior window) and it created a lovely warm yellow glow to the scene.

Cut to a phone call from Jane Tennyson (Annette O’Shea) sitting in a car with Inspector Leeson (Paul Young), this single set-up was picked up quickly on Shoot Day 34, during a hectic weekend of shooting the scene in the Pinkerton’s lair amongst many others. We took a break from shooting interiors and moved to the car park outside to grab the shot.

Following the phone call, the detectives and Quigley race to buy some weed off Jack Street, a scene that was shot on Shoot Day 31. I have yet to master the art of taking behind the scenes photos of scenes I’m actually in, especially scenes where I get maced (again!), so once again unfortunately I don’t have any shots. On this day in particular, we had nobody to swing the boom so Sla was both the camera & sound crew. But during a quick tea-break in Jack Street’s lane-way, I managed to shoot some character portraits of Quint Quigley.

The fugitives then move to an underground car-park, so Quigley can once again attempt to poo out the microfilm. This scene was also shot on Shoot Day 34 in the car park of MacDonagh Junction shopping center. As I’ve said, we were in the middle of shooting the Pinkerton’s lair scene from episode 7 that weekend, the long scene took two night shoots and two full day & night shoots but on the Sunday morning we had limited access to the car park while it was closed.

The car park was easily one of my favourite shoot locations, I just wish we had more time there so I could have taken more photos. We had a three-hour window to shoot the scene which involved seven characters, tracking shots, interior & exterior car shots, a judo flip and a good bit of dialogue. Despite the time constraints we still managed nearly 20 set-ups; using a wheelchair for the tracking shots and then getting plenty of hand-held coverage of each of the actors outside the car.

The end of the scene had been re-written just days before, with some extended dialogue in the back of the car being added as we get our first glimpse of Nathalie Blaise (well, her pink glove). After shooting the car scene with Noah, this was a lot easier to shoot; once again putting the Canon XA-H1 on my Slik Pro 4000x photography tripod to shoot the V.P.I detectives in the backseat, a side-angle on Leeson from the passenger seat as the car pulls up and then shooting hand-held close-ups from the backseat for Jane Tennyson & Inspector Leeson’s dialogue in the car.We’d quickly set up the shot, adding or losing cast members depending on the needs of the shot and the space needed for the set-up, then driving in laps around the empty car park, repeat lines until we were sure it was covered and our time eventually ran out.

You can check out all my shots from behind the scenes of Vultures here, as always comments and feedback would be appreciated and there’s plenty more photos on the way soon.

We had scouted the location a few days before and found a nice wide road with a dead end, meaning not much traffic and plenty of room for us to shoot what we needed. We were planning on using car mounts for the scene but the process of actually renting them had been too much of a nightmare so we scrapped the idea a few days before the shoot, opting to shoot everything from inside the car.

We were still very much against the clock, we hadn’t shot anything like this before so this shoot was going to be very tricky and the weather was due to turn against us, but for the moment we had strong sunshine so we moved quickly. I had been watching a constant flow of films like Hot Fuzz and knew we needed a lot of coverage to keep the cuts quick and keep the pace in the scene, even if we were driving very slowly. We shot in sequence, finishing the chase as the detectives run into a dead end and the Pinkerton goons close in on them. Then Noah comes to the rescue in his little taxi, but because Gus couldn’t actually drive; Sla would set up the shot then drive the car wearing Noah’s jacket.

Then we shot all of Noah’s dialogue in various set-ups inside the car; with Sla sitting back to front in the passenger seat using the bright sunshine to burn out the background for a side-angle on Noah as we pushed the car along, shots from the back seat when Noah looks around or uses the mirror and some quick whips from outside as he pulls up. Then came the tricky parts, the reverse coverage of the detectives and Quigley in the back seat.

Our main shoot tripod was too big to set up inside the car so instead we put the Canon XA-H1 on my Slik Pro 4000x photography tripod and framed the shot on V.P.I & Quigley in the backseat. Sla once again became the driver (wearing Noah’s jacket) and I sat in the passenger seat between the legs of the tripod, with the boom resting between the two front seats. We drove laps around a stretch of quiet roads in the industrial estate, with me shouting Noah’s dialogue and the lads giving their lines.

We had borrowed a field monitor for the shoot but 10 minutes into shooting it had died. As we drove in circles, we had problems with the bright sunshine moving across faces in the car, burning them out, and the tripod would lean on the turns. In the end, we shot one continous take of this scene, driving in circles for about half an hour, holding lines on corners we knew were too sunny and only stopping to reframe for close-ups and then repeat the process until there was no way we couldn’t possibly have enough coverage.

It was one of the most intense days of shooting; a morning of running mayhem followed by a cramped car shoot but it was so much fun. We shot until the schedule would allow and then took a quick lunch break before moving location to Jenkinstown woods to shoot Noah’s montage sequence from episode 6.

I’ve just uploaded some behind the scenes shots from the car scene shoot; it was a hectic day so I didn’t have much time for photos but there’s some shots of our guerrilla style car-shoot set-ups and a glimpse at how much abuse actors can take in one day.

You can check out my behind the scenes shots from the car scene shoot here on my Flickr. More photos on the way soon.

As I’ve said before, I’d like to put the photos up in the order that the scenes appear in the episodes, not in the order they were shot. The result of that choice is quite confusing; the shooting schedule was pretty complicated and scattered, I’ve got over 2000 photos from the shoot that need to be put in the right order before I can work on them. After previous episodes I was aware how frustrating it was to have to hold back on uploading shots to avoid spoilers. It meant that I had looked at the shots so many times before they went up that I just wasn’t happy with them anymore.

Thankfully, over the past few months I’ve learned a few new tricks and tips, I’m beginning to concentrate on the overall presentation of my work and I have a lot of new ideas with plenty of photos stocked up to test them out on. Recently I’ve been looking at a lot of commercial photography and in particular image sequences, it’s something I wanted to try. I was never quite happy with the final presentation of most of my Vultures character portraits, so as a test I revisited three individual shots of the gentlemen detectives of V.P.I: Niall Tennyson (Séan Hackett), Jim Vultour (John Morton) and Dan McGrain (David Thompson), each standing outside the red door exterior location used for the V.P.I offices.

I wasn’t happy with the overall finish of the shots but at the time didn’t know what to do with them. Now, I’ve done a bit more work on them and feel they go better together in a sequence which you can see here.

I’ve also uploaded a couple of behind the scenes shots from the scene in episode 5 where Dan McGrain stalks Tom Moriarty. For such a small scene it was surprisingly complicated to shoot; with bits of the scene being shot on different shoot days. The stuff where McGrain gets a lift from Noah (Gus McDonagh), who suggests running him over, was shot on Shoot Day 22.

We only had four days to shoot any scene featuring Noah and it was the most intense four days of shooting overall; attempting to shoot scenes that were bigger and more complicated than anything we’d shot before. We had been shooting all day and then before we completely lost the light we picked up this part of the sequence. Gus can’t drive so we simply found a quiet street in an estate, with a gradual slope and then we slowly pushed the car along. Sla was positioned sitting back-to-front in the passenger seat to get the shot and I watched on the monitor through the window as we pushed the car along. I didn’t get any photos.

But I did get a nice shot of McGrain watching Tom through his binoculars at the Black Abbey. It was Shoot Day 37 and it was horrible. I can’t remember what else was shot earlier that day but we went to pick up the shot outside Frank Walls and it began to rain, ice cold rain. Snow was soon to follow. We moved quickly to the Black Abbey, the rain stopped but then Sla got called away. We attempted to shoot without him (NOTE: never attempt to shoot without Sla), but we ran out of tapes. There was more in the office but Sla had the keys. It was a painful day!

The rest of the stalking sequence was shot on Shoot Day 39, the last day of shooting. I’ve uploaded two new shots from behind the display of the Canon XA H1 featuring McGrain watching Tom leave his house and one shot of Tom leaving his house with Isabelle watching him strut away. Shooting the rest of the sequence where Tom walks through town and all the ladies swoon was hilarious but I didn’t get any photos, I was either laughing too much or in awe of sexy Tom Moriarty!?

Episode-wise, the stalking sequence leads us back to the office, Quint Quigley makes his entrance and then all hell breaks loose with a chase sequence through the various lanes of Kilkenny. We shot the office interior stuff with Quint on a different weekend entirely, where we also shot the dialogue for the start of the chase sequence. We shot the chase sequence itself over the intense weekend that Gus was available, on that day in particular the Post Office on High Street had been robbed and so the high presence of squad cars and helicopters added to the mood.

Sla managed to nab a couple of handy pick-up shots throughout the day and we got quite a lot of funny looks. We started an hour later than planned, somebody got delayed, it was already going to be a tough day and now we had to pick up speed. In the hour wait, I managed to pick up a character portrait of Alan Dawson as the randomer-punching eye-patch-wearing samurai-sword-swinging Pinkerton goon which you can check out here on the Oss237.com homepage.

Shooting was quick and frantic, we were against the clock,  shooting the sequence in order, quick handheld set-ups that I had mapped out in advance, moving through the various lanes, dashing across roads, dodging traffic and occasionally having to hold for human traffic wandering through shots or simply for actors trying to catch their breath. I kept putting my script and flask down for set-ups only to forget them. Thankfully Pip was with us and was good enough to constantly pick them up for me!

The chase sequence was also the first introduction of new Pinkerton goon BrickMan played by Matty Gargan. I didn’t get to take many shots that day but I had already snapped his character portrait during Shoot Day 8 where we shot some of Ned Savage’s montage sequence for episode 6. Again I wasn’t entirely happy with the finish of the overall shot so I’ve gone back and worked on it to produce a two-shot sequence that properly introduces BrickMan, you can check it out here.

Following the chase through the lanes we moved location to an industrial estate to shoot the end of the sequence where Noah shows up to rescue the detectives and Quigley, which was then followed by a location move to Jenkinstown woods to shoot Noah’s montage sequence from episode 6, but I’ll talk more about those scenes when I get the photos sorted.

The result of the quick-paced shoot for the chase scene meant I didn’t get a lot of time to take photos but I had a couple of rough shots. Alone I wasn’t happy with them, they were taking on a corner as the lads ran uphill and towards the camera. I hid behind a car out-of-shot to get the photos during a take, but as they came around the corner the sun was shining and I didn’t have the chance for a second take or adjusting settings. It also wasn’t ideal to be trying to shoot all this action on a 50mm lens, focus was a nightmare. So rather than not have some of the scene captured in photos I spent a bit of time working on the five shots I had (seen at the top of this post), playing with colouring and textures for a sequence that I’m very happy with, for a first attempt at this sort of thing.

I wanted to give it a film sequence look, making it look like old film footage that had been slightly damaged and exposed. To finish it off I added some lines directly from the script that best described the scene and explained what exactly was going on in the sequence.

So please have a look at The Chase Sequence and as always any comments, critcism or feedback would be greatly appreciated. More photos on the way soon.

Over the course of the 10 week shoot for episodes 5,6 & 7; I tried my best to get some shots from every scene but it wasn’t always easy. Some days were extremely fast-paced, as we worked against the clock trying to meet the schedule and work with everyone’s availability. Some days there was just too much going on.

But even though I may have missed a few small scenes, I still have hundreds of behind the scenes shots to get through. I’ve spent the past few days just trying to organise them. I’ve decided it’s best to upload the photos in the order that the scenes appear in the episodes as opposed to the shoot day itself.

First up is a collection of behind the scenes shots from Episode 5:’ The Adventure Of The Hidden Microfilm‘; the scene where Janine Drew (played by Suzanne O’Brien) meets the Hardy’s (played by Peter O’Connor and Geoff Warner Clayton) for the first time. It’s a very short cut-to scene as Vultour reveals to Tennyson that he’s been passing on work to Janine; we find the chav detective interrogating the Hardys about a street full of keyed-cars.

This is the first appearance by the Hardy’s and according to my video diaries we shot it on Shoot Day 32. Given the length of the scene it was a relatively easy shoot that afternoon; it was Sla’s birthday and we spent most of the time making fun of him and talking to “da hoss’s” in the field beside us.

We were in the middle of a four day shoot for the Pinkerton Lair Scene at the end of Episode 7 but that afternoon we shot this scene and Janine & the Hardys’ part of the montage from Episode 6 before heading back to shoot more of the Lair scene that night (and eat birthday cake).

You can check out my brand new shots of Janine Drew & the Hardy’s here and here on the Oss237.com homepage and you’ll find the rest of the shots here on Flickr.

As always any comments or criticism would be appreciated. And there’s plenty more shots from behind the scenes coming soon.

With Isabelle Vultour captured and the Pinkertons establishing their firm grip on the town, the gentlemen detectives of V.P.I. must concoct a plan to get Isabelle back, stick it to the Pinkertons and for Vultour and McGrain… avoid a threesome with Natalie Blaise? But in order to do so they must rally the troops. And the actions of the bullying Pinkertons has ensure that there’s plenty of volunteers. This is it. The final battle. The detective apocalypse. Who will reign supreme? Who will prove to the best detective force in town? Or will it all descend into a terrible mess? This is the long goodbye, where the goodbyes are long and the farewells are hard.

With the last episode now online, I’ll be spending the next few days getting to work on hundreds of photos taken during the 10 week shoot for episodes 5, 6 & 7. To avoid spoilers I’ve held back on uploading any of the images.

I’ve also got hours of behind the scenes footage from the shoot that I might use for a bit of editing practice, I haven’t really decided what to do with it yet. Now that it’s all come to a close I’ll also be able to talk about the shoot in detail.

For now I’ve uploaded yet another promo shot of the hapless detectives of V.P.I, which you can check out here on the Oss237.com homepage. I’ve already got some great feedback about the final episode and as always I’d love to hear people’s comments and feedback.

Unlike the previous trailers which were often scenes to bridge the gaps between episodes, the newest and final trailer for the series is a flashback to 1998 featuring teenage versions of Jim Vultour (James Doran), Dan McGrain (David Galster) and Natalie Blaise (Hazel Doyle).

We shot the Terrific Three trailer on the very first day, of the 10 week shoot for episodes 5, 6 and 7; January 4th to be precise, a cold and frosty Sunday morning. We once again took over the Slattery family home, drinking endless amounts of tea and despite the bitter cold we had a great laugh capturing the Enid Blyton-style adventures of the “Vultures babies”.

At the time of the shoot my arm was still in a sling (see my first attempt at video blogging) meaning it was difficult to balance my script, my tea and to try taking photos at the same time, but I have uploaded a couple of shots from behind the scenes on the first day of shooting; including a before & after version of the shot seen at the end of ‘Attack Of The Pinkertons‘.

The before shot features the Terrific Three complete with Marlowe the dog (played by Jack the dog) and thanks to the photoshop skills of Paddy Dunne; the after shot features a young version of Isabelle Vultour (played by Liadain Kaminska). You’ll find the photos here on my flickr.

Vultures Episode 7: ‘The Long Goodbye’ goes online this coming Sunday (Oct 4th) and following it’s release I’ll finally be able to talk about the shoot in detail and upload all my behind the scenes photos.

The official Mycrofilms’ word on the new episode is this;

“Unemployed and underground (well, in Tennyson’s house), Vultour and McGrain are intent on eluding the clutches of their old friend Natalie Blaise. Tennyson however is looking for a peaceable resolution, no doubt with a strong mug of scald and a chat involved. However, Natalie Blaise doesn’t seem to be open to dialogue. The Pinkertons are making their presence felt. And people are getting hurt. Can V.P.I. regroup and fight back? Will Natalie Blaise emerge from the shadows to explain herself in a long winded villainous fashion? Or is she merely just misunderstood? And what will Tennyson do to fill in the unemployed hours?”

The new episode is essentially a two-parter, with the final installment of the web-series going online in a few weeks time. I got a lot of really great feedback last night and I can easily say that this episode contains my favourite scenes from the series (to avoid spoilers I’ll talk about them at a later date) but I’m very proud that some of the more ambitious scenes worked out they way they did.

Given that this episode was shot over the course of 10 weeks along with episodes 5 & 7, I’ve so far held back on uploading most of my photos from behind the scenes. As the series comes to a close I’ll soon be getting to work on literally hundreds of photos, for now I’ve uploaded a brand new character portrait ‘Meet Brickman‘ to the Oss237.com homepage and rest assured there’s plenty more to come.

So sit back and enjoy Vultures Episode 6: ‘Attack Of The Pinkertons’ and as always any feedback or comments are greatly appreciated.

Vultures episode 5: ‘The Adventure Of The Hidden Microfilm’ is now online and as always free to watch!

The fifth installment of the Mycrofilms web-based detective serial was my second outing as a director, and from the feedback I got at the cast & crew screening last night it appears to be one of the most popular episodes so far!?

Following the lengthy 10 week shoot for episode 5 & 6, I had a huge backlog of work and commitments to other projects, meaning I didn’t take part in the editing process for the episode. I’ll hold off from going into any details about the episode, for fear of spoiling anything, but after watching it myself for the first time last night I have to say a huge kudos to editing wizard Alan Slattery for doing another damn fine job.

The episode is far from without faults, but in my opinion, it’s one of the funniest and best paced episodes so far; with the gentlemen detectives of V.P.I. contacted by a mysterious fugitive on the run from the authorities. The fugitive in question is in possession of a secret microfilm belonging to the rival Pinkerton agency. Except he doesn’t know exactly where he put it!?  He suspects it might be inside him!? And it could be a floppy disk… or a USB key. He’s not sure!?

Can V.P.I. strike a blow to the Pinkertons before they’ve even opened? How do they get the microfilm from the fugitive? And who is this Natalie Blaise we keep hearing about? All is revealed in ‘The Adventure Of The Hidden Microfilm’.

As always any comments, criticisms or feedback on the episode would be greatly appreciated and check out the brand new VPI promo shot here on Oss237.com.

I’ll have plenty more Vultures photos & Director Diaries on the way in the coming weeks. For now, sit back and enjoy Vultures Episode 5.

Buried in the back of Tennyson’s ill-fated trip to the cinema, in Vultures episode 4: ‘The Case Of The Poisoned Dates‘, is the trailer for what would surely be the greatest action movie of all time, two Jason Statham’s for the price of one in; Dopplehammer.

Check out the full audio trailer (above); featuring the voices of myself, Eddie Murphy, Maria Murray and the legend that is Murt Brennan, as the voice of the legend that is Jason Statham.

Dopplehammer will also be featured in upcoming Vultures episode 5: ‘The Adventure Of The Hidden Microfilm‘ which goes online on the 7th of June.