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.

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.

Tokyo/Glow

Check out this awesome short film, Tokyo/Glow written and directed by Jonathan Bensimon.

It follows the journey of an illuminated man from a crosswalk sign as he embarks on an adventure. Shot on location throughout Tokyo using thousands of individual digital stills, the light suit was constructed using hundreds of feet of high-voltage LED rope and a translucent nylon outer shell to achieve the striking effect of the illuminated man.

Post-production included weeks of extensive roto-scoping and compositing, a colour grade, and once the effects were complete the thousands of still images were pieced together. Quite simply it’s amazing!

Canada’s Shame

Born Of Hope

If you’re a fan of Lord Of The Rings or a low budget film maker then you have to check out ‘Born Of Hope’.

It’s a low-budget fan-made feature-length, based on appendices from LOTR, shot over a period of six years with a cast of 400, and it was produced for only £25,000.

The film runs at 1 hour and 11 minutes and due to copyright laws it’s only available to watch online.

Given how it was made, it’s damn impressive. Make sure and check out BornOfHope.com for all sorts of production diaries, concept art and more.

Mata Hari – Fast Way (Music Video)

Back in March I posted a behind the scenes video from my photo-shoot with Mata Hari; as the lads recorded their first music video.

The video for “Fast Way” has just gone online; awesomely shot and cut by student filmmaker Ivars Burtnieks.

As I mentioned before, the video was shot in a freight container in the Hebron industrial estate but it also features footage of the classic rockers in the studio recording. Much to my surprise I even make a little cameo in the video, if you look really closely at around 3 minutes and 30 seconds you’ll spot me setting up for my promo shoot with the band.

If you missed it before then you can check out my behind the scenes video and promo shots from the shoot with Mata Hari here.

Well done to Ivars for doing a great job with the video for “Fast Way”, you can check out more of his videos here on Youtube and you’ll find Mata Hari here on MySpace.

Vote for “Once I Counted Birds”

“Once I Counted Birds” a new short film by ArtLinks Director Cathy Fitzgerald is currently entered in the UK Guardian’s Climate Change film competition 1MinuteToSaveTheWorld.

This new film incorporates old footage taken by Cathy on a biodiversity research trip to Suwarrow; a remote, un-peopled atoll in the Cook Islands, South Pacific, in 2000. Suwarrow is an important breeding place for seabirds of all types including the rare and very large Masked Booby; her and fellow scientist Rhys Jones collected data was later published in the NZ Forest and Bird Journal 2001 and the project was a jointly sponsored UN and Cook Island project. While the trip may look idyllic, Cathy almost drowned when the yacht she and her colleague hitched a lift with was hit by a freak wave. Her new digital camcorder was destroyed but her old Hi8 survived to take this footage.

Many years later, Cathy is now actively involved in promoting ecological, permanent forestry in her small woodlands in Ireland; she blogs and creates works about converting her 20 year old spruce plantation to a permanent forest using Pro Silva, close to nature, forestry methods. She believes that small local ecologically based actions can have a positive effect globally and personally.

You can vote for “Once I Counted Birds” here; simply give the video a rating. From what I can tell, it is the only Irish entry in the competition and I think it would be great to see Cathy win given her huge interest in ecology/environmental politics & film and years of hard work promoting the Arts in Ireland.

The voting closes this Friday and don’t forget to follow Cathy’s EcoArtNotes on Twitter for updates and new work.

Vultures Episode 7: ‘The Long Goodbye’ & New Promo Shot!

The final episode in the Vultures series went online yesterday; here’s the official Mycrofilm’s word on Episode 7 ‘The Long Goodbye’;

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.

The Terrific Three Trailer & Behind the Scenes Photos

The seventh and final episode in the Vultures series; ‘The Long Goodbye’ goes online on Sunday October 4th and as always there’s a brand new trailer to check out (above).

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.

A Blast From The Past & Coming Soon!

Yesterday, the Devious Theatre Company released some long awaited video footage from Cannibal! The Musical!, which took place in the Watergate Theatre back in 2007.

The above scene shows Alferd Packer (played by David Thompson) returning back to camp to discover that Shannon Wilson Bell (played by John Morton) has gone mad, killed the rest of the group and is in the process of cooking various body parts for dinner.

It’s hard to believe that Cannibal! was only two years ago and it’s great to see Devious finally releasing some footage online; however it’s a pity that so many hilarious scenes have been skipped over and this was the first one up!?

It’s almost a year since I was involved in a theatre production; having taken a nice long break following the onslaught that was Trainspotting, followed by Smitten, followed by The War Of The Worlds (currently nominated for a PPI Award).

But this past week has seen me dusting off my acting shoes as I begin rehearsals for the Watergate Theatre Company’s production of Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’ which will run in the Watergate Theatre from November 23rd – 28th.

“The Beauty Queen Of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain, lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag, her manipulative ageing mother, whose interference in Maureen’s first and possibly final chance of a loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that leads inexorably towards the play’s terrifying dénouement.”

The play will be my first outing with the Watergate Theatre Company,  joined by Clare Henrique who is also make her WTC debut; I’m really delighted to get to share the stage with the Kilkenny theatre legends that are Mary Craddock & Brendan Corcoran and to work with director Ger Cody.

I’ll be blogging more about the show over the coming weeks and will hopefully get a chance to take some photos behind the scenes too, but for now it’s time for me to learn my lines.

The Watergate Theatre Company presents Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’ in the Watergate Theatre 23rd-28th November.

For ticket bookings call: 056-7761674

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