25th April 2006
Shot the footage with Esther (Sarah) and Fionn (Jack) for 'The Last Hurrah' at the Mauritius Turf Club in the Champs de Mars racetrack in Port Louis, Mauritius (22nd April). Also shot footage at the Beau Rivage, Belle mar (23rd April).
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16th April 2006
Eoghan Harris mentioned his performance on Tuesday's shoot in his Sunday Independent article today.
14th April 2006
The first trailer of 'The Last Hurrah' is available here. The (epilogue) scene of the PN will be shot next week in Mauritius. The film is being synched up at NMTC. The edit should begin the week of 24th April.
12th April 2006
Shot the final scenes of 'The Last Hurrah'. Locations included Harlequin clothes shop (Castle Market), Stanley's Newagents (Harcourt St), Thomas Cook (College Green), and various street shots.
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11th April 2006
Today we shot the office scene from 10.30 - 12.00 at NMTC with Jill Doyle and Eoghan Harris playing Martha and Gerry (EN 1, EN 11). After lunch Jill and Esther shot the garden scene (EN6), followed by two scenes off Carysfort Avenue. The rest of the the afternoon we shot the scenes (including EN9) with David Walker as Martin. Much of these scenes was improvised and the camera movements were much quicker than in previous scenes.
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Photos by Tadhg Doorly-McErlean
10th April 2006
Shot (The Last Hurrah) in house in Ballsbridge all day. We shot all the scenes with the Jacobs (Dermot Doorly and Maimie Loughlin) and Sarah (Esther Doorly). The Fig Rig and ring light worked great and we shot about 1hr 10 mins of footage.
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Photos by Tadhg Doorly-McErlean
8th April 2006
The shooting schedule hasjust been finalised by Basil Al Rawa and is available here.
Some more location images below. Tried to find park area to use for the scene where Sarah meets Martha with school in the background. The school is closed but you cannot see the playground from this angle (middle photograph) so we can just add playground sounds in this shot. The first and third shots are other location shots.
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7th April 2006
The Concern Ad post-production has been completed. Thanks to John O'Connell and David Casey at Screenscene for all their work. The audio was completed in the Music dept. at NMTC. The completed ad can be seen here.
Spent the day collecting equipment for 'The Last Hurrah' shoot starting Monday. Picked up camera ring light from CineElectric at Ardmore Studios, collected Promist Black filters from Digirent. Will also be collecting two radio tie mikes from Digirent on Mon to use Tues on the street shots where Sarah meets Martha in the street. Will shoot one of these shots from moving car. We are going to use the Mike Figgis steadicam system with the Panasonic DVX100.
4th April 2006
Uploaded notes on 'Big Bangs. The Story of Five Discoveries that Changed Musical History' by Howard Goodall.
Did another script revision of 'The Last Hurrah' PN.
Working on locations. Have taken some stills of the Jacob's house (drawing room and bedroom) and the shop where Sarah finds the Jacob's ad for a cleaner.
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31st March 2006
Revised and uploaded several of the scenes of 'The Last Hurrah' script. Arranged rental of some gear for the shoot - Black Promist filters from DigiRent to use with the Panasonic Avx100; ring light (for close ups) from CineElectric. The filters soften the image (needed with video) without burning out highlights. The ring light gives a soft etheral light effect.
30th March 2006
New notes in Research include 'Image Music Text' by Roland Barthes and 'Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Changed the World' by Henry Hitchings.
Had meeting yesterday with my PhD supervisor Dr. Paul O'Brien at NCAD. Most of research time now being spent on pre-production of 'The Last Hurrah'. Casting is nearly finished. Starting work today photographing locations. Need to organise rehearsals for next week.
Shot some images for NMTC Performing Arts group play. As you can see it's a drama!
25th March 2006
'At Debt's Door' has been listed on the Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com. You can view the details here.
UK-based photographer David Robinson will light 'The Last Hurrah'. Dave's work can be see here.
'The Last Hurrah' is due to shoot 10th - 12th April in Dublin.
24th March 2006
Uploaded some brief notes in Research section on two articles from the December 24/31 2005 edition of New Scientist Magazine. The artcles are 'Windows of the Soul' Liz Else interviewing Jim Coan (the effect of facial expressions on emotions) and 'Flogging a Dead Horse' (how the brain can be distracted by information overload) by Richard Fisher.
20th March 2006
Uploaded a new photo essay titled 'One Day in Geneva'. The Concern ad audio has been re-recorded and sent to Screenscene to complete the ad. We are arranging to shoot a documentary on the National Performing Arts School bi-annual play in the Olympia Theatre. There will be over 1800 actors, singers, dancers involved. We will shoot the rehearsals and do some interviews etc.
Casting on 'The Last Hurrah' is still going on. Dave Walker will play Martin.
8th March 2006
The short film 'At Debt's Door' will be shown on Dublin's City Channel Wednesday 15th March 7.14pm. This will be the first televised broadcast of the film!
4th March 2006
Recorded the final voiceover for the Concern Ad at the National Performing Arts School, Dublin.
Listen to MP3 of voiceover below
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3rd March 2006
New film work uploaded includes a near-complete version of the Concern Ad (completed version will replace this next week), a high speed clip test (using frame blending in FCP) with music by Diarmuid Slattery and Erica Spreij, and a no-budget short by Esther Doorly titled 'Sarah' from 2004 (I was lighting cameraman on this). I also added a new poster for 'At Debt's Door'. You can download it here.
Casting is ongoing for 'The Last Hurrah'. Jill Doyle will play 'Martha' and Esther Doorly will play 'Sarah'. I made contact with the Lisa Richards Agency to enquire about casting Eileen Colgan ('At Debt's Door') as Mrs Jacob.
New notes include 'New Media: A Critical Introduction' by Martin Lister, Jon Dovey, Seth Giddings, Iain Grant, Kieran Kelly.
20th February 2006
Uploaded notes on excellent book 'Subtitles. On the Foreignness of Film' edited by Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour. The book is a series of articles and interviews dealing with the use of subtitles in film. Contains some interesting ideas for how text could be used in an interactive film to convey internal meaning, unspoken by characters and perhaps to help make interactivity immersive.
Created an Awards page with links from the Index and Menu pages. Had meeting with NCAD supervisors Dr. Paul O'Brien and Kevin Atherton regarding progress on the PhD.
12th February 2006
Excellent visuals for the Concern ad came in from John at Screenscene. The green screen has been expertly keyed and the digital atmospherics really lift it. The CGI backgrounds are of similar composition, this supports the equality theme. The CGI brain is now only just visible during the transition. The audio will be reworked to match the timing of the piece. Esther's voice needs to be re-recorded. Village sounds will be added to shanty town section. Might add heartbeat or breathing to the whole thing. The audio mix will be done at NMTC. Final sync will be done back at Screenscene.
New book quotes have been uploaded to Research Notes for 'Adventures in the Screen Trade' by William Goldman, 'Narrative Comprehension & Film' by Edward Branigan and 'Pause and Effect. The Art of Interactive Narrative' by Mark Stephen Meadows.
8th February 2006
The Concern ad has a new deadline of Wed 15th Feb. 3D compositing of the shanty town is nearly complete and the original green screen footage on DV has been recaptured at Screenscene for sharper image quality. Apparently the codecs in the capture machine make a real difference in terms of quality. The capture we did was a bit soft.
The split screen film 'Last Night' has started pre-production. The students at NMTC and Lusofona University are casting and scouting locations. Principle photography is due to take place in mid-March. I am planning to 'live' shoot the sequences where characters in Dublin and Lisbon talk to each other on mobiles. Both crews will shoot the scenes at the same time and the actors will actually be on the phone to each other. This will be an interesting production experiment, it should result in a more dynamic performance from the central characters, and it will resolve any potential sync problems. One of the Interactive Media production students is going to build a basic web site to allow both crews to share cast images, test footage etc.
I have reformatted the scripts for 'The Last Hurrah' using Final Draft 7. This script editing software will make future edits much simpler. The scripts are now available as PDFs instead of HTML docs. This is much more suitable for documents which will need to be downloaded and printed.
The image below right won the Best Digital Image Award at the Digital Media Awards 2006 last night. The awards were held in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin.
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26th January 2006
Several more titles have been added to Research Notes. These include 'Contemporary Problems in Perception' edited by A.T. Welford and L. Houssiadas, ' Time Passing. Modernity and Nostalgia' by Sylviane Agacinski, 'Music in Film. Soundtracks and Synergy' by Pauline Reay and 'Narratology' by Mieke Bal.
24th January 2006
Notes and quotes from several new titles have been added to Research Notes. These include 'Poetics' by Aristotle, 'The Technique of Film Editing' by Karel Reisz and Gavin Millar, and 'Morphology of the Folktale' by Vladimir Propp.
23rd January 2006
The Photography gallery has a new photo essay titled 'Kitchen'. The gallery has been reduced to just 3 photo essays and the rest have been moved to the Photo Archive. This will allow the main gallery to be kept current while still keeping all the other photo essays online.
18th January 2006
New Concern ad images just in from John O'Connell at Screenscene. They are working on a CGI version of the shanty town and John has re-worked the composition of the town to match the previous library shot (see Blog 20th December 2005). The first image is the basic CGI model. The second image is the the same model with image textures applied to surfaces.
17th January 2006
The following images received Silver and Bronze awards at the Irish Professional Photographers Association judging session on 16th January. The first image was taken in Arigna, Co. Sligo. The second was taken in Lisbon, Portugal.
Bronze AwardSilver Award
11th January 2006
The images below have been nominated in the Best Digital Image category of the Digital Media Awards 2006. The first image was taken in Sorrento, Italy. The second image was taken near Yosemitie National Park, California.
The short film 'At Debt's Door' has been shortlisted in the Film category of the Digital Media Awards 2006. You can view the complete shortlist here. You can view the film here.
2nd January 2006
New titles have been added to the Research/Texts section of the site. Some more Research Notes will also be added this week. Casting for 'The Last Hurrah' is progressing steadily and the Lusofona University co-production 'Last Night' will begin pre-production this month.
Happy New Year!
