Here’s a picture I took with my Canon 350D… ah what a lovely calf, isn’t it? …it’s a bit soft but sure you’ll have all that…
Here another picture I took… a rubbish bin
It’s pouring rain at the moment so can’t take anymore for a while… I’ll put up a gallery when I really get going.
Two weeks after I bought the camera I might finally get to use it. A Courier just called and dropped of my compact flash card… (The right one this time I hope).
The weather isn’t great at the moment so won’t be great for taking pictures. Anyway I will post up some of the results I get from the camera.
Also I see Mike over at Darksats Blog bought himself a Nikon F55, interesting to see what he can come up it aswell…
I finally got some writing done last night and finished up with the first draft to a 4-5 minute short which I’ve given a working title of “Open the Gate There Will Ya”.
Its about a guy who wakes up on a up river stone beach and everything around him seems out of place and not normal. As he walks along the beach he encounters even more bizarre situations.
I did cheat a bit in that this was an idea I had a few months back, I came across it last night as I was trying to refresh my mind during a brainstorming session. So while I have completed a first draft by the end of the month it is not an entirely new idea.
Therefore I will try to come up with a completely new idea that would only have been conceived since I set myself the task.
With the weekend that was in it I got very little done (not a thing) with regard the writing a short script. I set a deadline for the end of the month, which now means I have 12 days to come up with the first draft.
I have a few ideas they just need a bit of beefing out. Hopefully tonight I will manage to get something constructive done.
Before Christmas I had set myself a brief to write a few shorts but the production of ‘Turn’ put an end to that.
I’ve been meaning to start writing something with the last few weeks but have never got around to it, I get as far as turning on the computer and then go of doing something else…
The brief is simple as I will probably fund the productions myself, hopefully costing somewhere between €00.00 and €00.01. With that in mind there will be no fancy stuff.
All Exterior locations. Locations kept to a minimum, preferably just 1 location 2 at most.
Little or no live sound.
As little talent as possible, just 1 would be ideal but 2 to 3 would be ok too.
Always keeping in mind that you’re writing with a no budget production in mind.
Now I might as well set myself a deadline for a first draft as I’m at this… we’ll say the end of this month.
We’ll see how I get on…
I’ll jump back a week to the Oscars and how it was great to see an Irish Film pick up an Oscar. Playwright Martin McDonagh’s debut film “Six Shooter” picked up the Oscar for Best Live Action Short.
I saw Six Shooter a few months ago and was very impressed with it. The performances of Brenden Gleeson and Rúaidhí Conroy were top notch. Gleeson seems to be in just about every film these days and Conroy has grown up a good bit from his role as Tato in “In to the West”.
Six Shooter is an excellent black and bloody comedy about a sad train journey home through rural Ireland, an older man (Gleeson), whose wife has just died that morning, encounters an strange and possibly psychotic, young oddball (Conroy). His outlandish words and actions set in motion a chain of events that lead inexorably to the tale’s dark and dangerous conclusion.
The dialogue is truly excellent and flows superbly through the 27 minute short.
McDonagh’s first venture into film has picked up several festival awards and was nominated for a BAFTA following its first transmission on Channel 4.
SIX SHOOTER, was produced by Missing in Action Films, Funny Farm Film & Television and Fantastic Films and co-funded by Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board and Film Four Lab. International sales are being handled by The Works.
This coupled with Ken Wardrops’ highly acclaimed and multi award winning shorts including his exceptional “Undressing My Mother” has shown the world what great short films Ireland can produce.
The bar has undoubtedly been set for the rest of us.
For anyone that would like to see Six Shooter you can view from the Channel 4 website
http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=154712
I wrote my first feature length script when I was around 15/16. It took a long time to complete it but I got there eventually. I had looked up the Internet to get information on writing a screenplay and I was fairly happy with the format.
I sent it on to a few people and the feedback was always positive. My head swelled. Looking back now these people wouldn’t have been experts on screenwriting. TV producers maybe.
To the untrained eye it looked very much like a script. I signed up to a screenplay review site and uploaded the script for some more feedback. I didn’t get much before it was dumped, not because it was necessarily a bad script but because of formatting issues.
I was disgusted with them, what did they know anyway? “the script was constantly going in and out of past tense” one person said.
Fast-forward a couple a years and completion of a filmmaking course as well as writing a few shorts and reading tons. I had lost interest in the feature script so didn’t really touch it in a few years.
One thing that pains me is reading a script that isn’t formatted correctly, sometimes you put yourself through the pain to give the writer some feedback on the story. It’s Lazy, if you want someone to read your script, learn how to format correctly. Don’t give them a reason to hate your script after two lines!
So… recently I decided I’d edit my feature script and maybe give it to a few contacts I had made over the years for some more feedback.
OH MY GOD! IT”S TORTURE!!!
On the first page alone I must have made up to 10 corrections! The whole bloody thing looks like it’s in past tense, and the spelling and grammar mistakes! SAVE ME!
I haven’t got round to finishing the re edit yet and boy it won’t be fun!
So one bit of advise. Learn how to format correctly. Proper spelling, it’s you’re NOT your. And write in present tense! (I’m learning that the hard way)
Well…. all that rant yesterday wasn’t really worth it afterall. My memory card came today and guess what? Fool here ordered the wrong bloody one!
I blame credit cards, they make it way too easy to buy things online. There is no worrying handing over the cash over the counter no chance to check if the product is right (well you could research before hand or even go to a brick and mortar store to check out for yourself).
Apple have even taken it a step further with their one click thingy. Select an item, click a button and your credit card is charged. Great? Well maybe but what happens when you select an item and then up comes “Other people that have bought this product have also purchased the following”. And you think to yourself “ya could do with one of those and one of them”
Click the one click button and instead to paying out €79.99 or whatever you pay out €799.99. Good for apple bad for your credit.
I bought a Canon 350D (Digital Rebel XT in the US) online from England last week and it arrived Tuesday but I hadn’t got around to ordering a memory card for when it arrived.
So I went onto Viking Direct to order my card as well as a new flash drive and a USB cable around 7 o’clock Tuesday evening. They say that you have delivery next day if you order before 8pm, so I did that.
Wednesday came and went without any sign of my delivery, but I though well it was almost 8 before I finished my order and it had to come from Dublin (afaik) down to Cork, so I said I’d let it pass and wait until the following day.
So today at around 3:30 and with no sign of my delivery I said I’d ring them up and find out what the story is. I rang up and someone answered yet said there was no one to take my call. I left my name and number and she said someone would get back to me. Never heard anything back.
I’ve been ordering through Viking for a while now for the company I work for and always receive the order the following day. Then when I open an account with Viking back in January I ordered some furniture (as they had some good deals) and some office stationary.
The stationary arrived the following day but say allow 14 days for furniture. 21 days on I had received no furniture so I called them up. Apparently they didn’t know where it went to. After numerous calls it finally arrived about 2 weeks ago minus 1 item.
Tuesday I was a bit wary ordering from them as I was still awaiting an item I had ordered on January 11th. But as it as only a memory card, a flash drive and USB cable and they always seem to deliver that kind of stuff the following day and I wanted to start taking pictures on my new Digital SLR straight away I went ahead with the order. Hmm still my camera awaits to be tested.
If nothing arrives tomorrow I pity the person I get onto in customer service….
Since every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to doing this blogging thing I though I might as well have a crack at it too, see what all this fuss is about.
…Well to be honest this is about the second time I’ve had a pop at it… last one I only made two entries and sort of forgot I had so I give it another go…
This is primarily going to be about filmmaking and my attempts to make a career in the film industry.
Last May I finished a three course on film, TV and video production. During the three years my main roles in the student films were in the Camera Lighting Departments and I didn’t really get a chance to try my hand at directing (well I did but it was crap so we’ll say I didn’t).
So when I finished I wanted to keep at it and get a short film made that I had written. My attempts during the summer failed as I couldn’t assemble a crew that could get time of work and work for free so I left it go for the time being and started to concentrate on developing other projects.
During the tenth anniversary of the course I did, I got talking to the head of the course and she said how she had liked my script. I had pitched it during the year for the 3rd year 16mm shoots but failed to make it as there was only three made and about 17 pitched. The top three were voted by all the students in the three years and as far as I know I came in about fifth.
Anyway she said how she liked the script and that I should go ahead and make it and use the first year students through their work experience as crew. Plus I would have access to the college equipment.
So I went ahead with the production and got a few people that I went to college with to man the EOD’s but I would have liked to get a few more as there was a lot of set dressing needed and I failed to get a production designer.
Production started at the start of December with a crew of only ten. A hectic four days of shooting finished late on a Friday night with only three of the crew remaining as we got through the last of the scenes with the main actor which myself doubling as Boom Op.
It was shot on HDV and so I was able to start editing once I had added the extra 2GB to my computer.
However I haven’t yet finished the edit, as there are some lighting and sound issues which need sorting.
…I’m bored now so I think I’ll go over and stand over there…