Ken had asked me weeks ago if I was interested in throwing something together for it but with the run of ‘Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!’ we had forgotten about it. With the play finished and the awards looming we met up on Tuesday afternoon to brainstorm ideas. Most of the afternoon was spent drinking tea and coming up with dead-end scenarios, all we knew for certain was that we wanted it to focus on the highly debated topic of late “Blogging is Dead!”.

The videos had to be sent on Friday so given our time constraints we needed to keep it simple, opting to go for a single set-up news bulletin with everything shot on green screen (giving me more practice in After Effects). We met up again on Wednesday for the shoot in my sitting room. The main problem was a lack of lights, Ken brought a double-headed construction work light but only one of the lights worked; I used this to light the green screen and used my small desk lamp to light Ken. It wasn’t ideal but we were working against the clock. We shot the whole thing in about 20 minutes with Ken as the Net News Nightly reporter and me as the terrorist leader responsible for the death of blogging.

The opening sequence was put together using a royalty free graphics sequence and music from the iLife collection then I added the animated titles designed by Ken. The background behind Ken is another royalty free graphic sequence, the green screen removal is a bit rough but that’s simply because of the lack of lights. The riot footage was pulled offline and Ken designed Sky News style overlays which I added to the entire sketch.

With the rough cut assembled, all the backgrounds replaced and the overlays in place, we added the finishing touches with the scrolling bar at the bottom displaying retweets from Twitter about the death of blogging and finally a completely random image of a cat and a laptop to finish Net News Nightly; your daily internet news… nightly!

I’m told there was a great response to the video at the awards on Saturday night, having missed the session this year I’m already making a plan to go to next years awards and hopefully we’ll put together another video for that too.

You can check out all the videos from the night here and you can see the list of Irish Blog Awards 2010 winners here, well done to all the winners.

First up is the shot from the test shoot in my sitting room; having spent a lot of time in the Mill studio with the lads during recording, we had worked out some ideas for the cover; the main ideas involving the band, a couch and a big old television.

With the recording finished and the tracks in the mixing stages, we met up for two photo-shoots on the last weekend in May. The first on the Saturday night, I re-arranged the furniture in my sitting room and used every lamp and light I could find around the house to try different lighting techniques, while the lads chilled out on the couch finding gross things on the internet.

Most of the lighting set-ups were a disaster but the set-up for the finished shot is as follows: there’s a household lamp positioned behind the couch to back-light the lads, another lamp positioned to the right of Ken as a side-light and another lamp lighting the back of the television. The glow from the television wasn’t bright enough to light all three faces so I used the screen from my Powerbook G4 and my Sb800 positioned on the floor (I can’t remember the setting).

The resulting shot was the best thing I got on the night but wasn’t exactly what I was going for or suitable for the album cover, but that’s the great thing about test shoots. The following afternoon we drove to the new HotShotz Studio in Callan (thanks Benny) and having a better idea of what we were now going for, I set up the studio for my first ever shoot on a Canon (EOS 5D with a EF24-105mm Zoom).

My first proper studio shoot was a lot of fun, I spent some time spotting the lights and we spent the afternoon tweaking positions and poses as you can see in the behind the scenes video from the photoshoot (above).

If you haven’t got your hands on a copy of Insula yet then the video features the awesome track  ‘Acid’ and a look at the finished front cover design by Ken McGuire.

The album will be available online in the next few weeks through SouthOfficial.com but until then if you want to purchase a copy of Insula then just get in touch with South on MySpace.

South has undergone a lineup change since the competition, my long time “partner in crime” Alan Dawson (Drums) has joined Thomas Donoghue (Guitar & Vocals) & Ken Farrell (Bass) and over the past few months the trio have been working on songs for South’s debut album, which will be released this Summer.

Last week, we finally got the ball rolling on the first in a series of photoshoots I’ll be doing with the lads in the coming months. The aim was simple; to get some up-to-date shots of South and have a bit of fun.

The shoot took place outside the Mill Studios on a damn windy day. The strongs winds were a bit of a nightmare with all three members of South having long hair which flew around, eyes were watering, nipples were hard, the clouds moved so quickly that I was constantly having to adjust settings and fight off too much flaring.

However, the nasty weather conditions didn’t put a downer on the occassion; South were in high spirits throughout, constantly focused on the fact that they were doing this “for the ladies!”.

The track used on the above video is ‘Symmetry’ and the song will appear on South’s upcoming debut. I have to point out that the version used in this video is not the finished track, although at it’s current state I think it sounds awesome.

You can listen to full versions of ‘Symmetry’ and ‘Levity’ here on the South MySpace and don’t forget to subscribe to their blog for updates on the album.

***For best results, watch the above video in HD***

The classic rock trio were shooting their first music video ‘Fast Way’ with student film maker Ivars Burtnieks, and they asked me to come along and do a promo shoot. I have to admit that I was quite surprised by the preparation gone into the music video shoot and I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Shooting in a freight container in the Hebron industrial estate, the lads were fully prepared for a whole day of shooting; the container had been decorated days before the shoot, the equipment & gear was set up, the container beside was stocked with beers and food to ensure it was a enjoyable shoot for everyone.

I have to highlight that the track used on the above video is only a demo recording!!! Mata Hari are hitting the studio in the coming weeks to record the proper track, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of some shooting/editing practice from my first band promo shoot of 2009.

You can check out all my shots from behind the scenes of the ‘Fast Way’ music video and promo shots of Mata Hari here on flickr.

The Kilkenny premiere was held as a fundraiser for the Young Irish Film Makers and the above video contains an introduction to ‘The Secret Of Kells’ by Ross Murray from the Cartoon Saloon, Mike Kelly (Artistic Director of YIFM) talks about the early days of Cartoon Saloon and Tomm Moore (Director), Ross Stewart (Art Director), Paul Young (Producer) & Fabian Erlinghauser (Animation Supervisor) talk briefly about how ‘The Secret Of Kells’ came to be.

I have to say that it was a great honour for our mixed gang of Devious Theatre & Vultures‘ crew to be invited to the premiere, and then to receive such awesome words of encouragement on the night.

Seeing something like this come out of Kilkenny is truly inspiring. ‘The Secret Of Kells’ is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before and I found myself sitting wide-eyed with my jaw hanging open throughout.

‘The Secret Of Kells’ is in cinemas now, GO SEE IT!!!

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had the chance to post a vlog, mainly due to that fact that most of the content I’m shooting contains spoilers for upcoming Vultures episodes. I do have a behind the scenes documentary for ‘The Case Of The Poisoned Dates‘ on the way, it still needs a bit of work. But for now, something unrelated to Vultures, well… sort of!?

Over the past few weeks (aside from shooting Vultures), myself, John Morton and David Thompson had the pleasure of working on a short film with the Young Irish Film Makers. All three of us are former members of YIFM and we were delighted to be asked back to star in ‘Attic’. A short film written by David Galster which to the best of my knowledge will premiere sometime in March.

Aside from getting to just do some acting and not worry about anything production-wise, I saw the shoot as an opportunity to improve my filming and editing skills. I ended up with more footage than I expected, it’s always hard to cut things out especially when your addicted to special features and behind the scenes content.

Whilst this may not be the greatest behind the scenes documentary as far as the process of making a short film goes, it does offer an insight into how much fun it is to work with John Morton & David Thompson. Yes, if we’re not getting lost on our way to the shoot location then we’re breaking the world record for “c**ks drawn on a clapper board” or attempting to befriend swans!?

The above video captures our adventures and misadventures over the three day shoot for ‘Attic’, working with the next generation of Kilkenny film makers. I’d like to say thanks to all of the lads, it was a pleasure to work with you and I’m looking forward to seeing the outcome. I just hope we weren’t as big a nightmare as the video makes us out to be!?

A couple of people have been asking questions, so I thought I’d continue with the pre-production side of things. Video blog number 2 offers a little insight into our location scouting, from finding the locations to getting permission to shoot there. Oh and drinking a hell of a lot of tea! Please bear in mind that I’m only learning to edit for the past few weeks, but it’s certainly a step up from the first attempt. Enjoy.

A quick tour of the Mycrofilms‘ office, as we’re deep in pre-production for Vultures episodes 5 & 6, some quick chats with series co-creator John Morton, work experience student Richie Cody and series producer Alan Slattery.

Video blogging, I’m not sure if I’m bothered to be honest. But hey, at least I’m not some fat kid bitching about how people shouldn’t like comics because he doesn’t want to be mainstream cool!? The only reason I’m even attempting “vlogging” (as the cool kids call it), is in an attempt to keep me occupied until we release Vultures episode 4 along with a whole host of behind-the-scenes content.

Anyway, here’s a first attempt at video blogging. As usual any comments, feedback and criticism are welcome even if your a fat kid and want to bitch at me!?