Stephen The Presenter;

This is a bit of different take on my video portraits. Stephen asked me to film some footage for his showreel so I decided to do a more upbeat video, showing his more playful side. 

What do you think? I’ve gotten quite a good response from this, people seem to like the upbeat nature. Hmmmm, it’s making to rethink what direction my video portraits should go in. I didn’t pay too much attention to it when I’d finished, I felt my editing was a bit sloppy, but the perfectionist in me doesn’t allow me to like my own work that much.

The Behind the Scenes video I shot and edited for RTÉ Comedy/Drama “Trouble Times Three”. The crew on this shoot are just so lovely and fun, I loved working with them all. I was the unit videographer on set. I even have a little credit on IMDb for it, how wonderful.

You can vote for the show here actually so we can make some more :)
http://youtu.be/7bVbN6ijsWg 

SO LATE - I do apologise. I posted the video but not the tumblr entry. Meep.

So last week..need to remember now!

Photoshoot time

- Assisted my friend Jass Foley [ www.jassfoley.com ] on two shoots! The first was a shoot with the Master in Advertising students in DIT who wanted done for their website. That was good fun, got to touch and molest lots of lights.

- The second was with Vanilla Ice in a tiny dressing room backstage in The Helix before he performed for the DCU Rag Ball. It was good fun, got my press passes and it was lovely and claustrophobic in the room. Those shoots are so short, about 2 minutes after maybe an hour of prep. 

- I must say, I do like working on photoshoots and shooting the behind the scenes footage!

RTÉ Free House!

We got through to the next stage and our show got the most votes out of all 4. So woop to that I must say.

Heading down to Wexford again this weekend to shoot episode 2. I believe I will be continuity/script supervisor once more. Better start practicing watching O_o

Films I watched!

• The Deerhunter - fantastic movie with a young Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro - it’s fabulous!
• The Snapper - an amazing Irish film with Colm Meeney, written by Roddy Doyle. Explores the urban voices of Irish life.

Green Screen: The Low Down

• Green and blue are most common colours used because they are furthest away from the colour of your skin tone. [so your face won’t be taken away!]
• Chroma Keying is the term - this is removing a certain colour from the image and replacing it with something else eg. the sky or black
• Lighting is very important - the green screen needs to be lit well for it recognise the colour it needs to remove.
• You can do this live using a vision mixer which can remove the colour and play a background while recording live.
• OR you can record onto a green background and remove the green in post-producion in Final Cut Pro and other editing software.

Eye Pleasure Time

Table 7 - a short piece beautifully and a great narrative.
http://www.vimeo.com/19237917

So last week I went into the newly done up TV Studio in my university to have a play around get to grips with some of the gear. I’d never had a chance to work in it before, so I was really keen to just dive right in and learn how to use everything.

It’s rather lovely; 

• 3 JVC HM700 Cameras [same as DCUtv’s camera]
• Control Room with a fancy vision mixer [the devil child, evil!!]
• Green Screen
• Sound Mixer, graphics and all that lark.

I also worked on a comedy/drama series for RTÉ Storyland, called Free House. where you create short episodes and they are voted online by viewers, to see if they want to see the next episode.

It may be too late now, I think I’m posting this an hour before the voting closes but check it out anyway, and vote if you so feel inclined so we can make another episode!

http://www.rte.ie/storyland

I was Contuinty / Script Supervisor. I’m in charge of making sure everything on set and being filmed remains exact and consistent so nothing silly happens during editing like the actor changes sex or something….I also kept all giraffes off the set. If you check it out, I can assure you, you won’t see any giraffes.  That’s all my doing.

We spent a weekend down in Wexford filming. It was intense. But it was great seeing all the equipment, steady cam and lights. I also froze. At one point I kept my hands warm with sausage roll.

It can be a thankless job. But if something goes wrong….continuity girl gets it. 

Films This Week

• Going to see The French Connection in the IFI tonight. They’re showing the Godfather next week!
• Watched Dylan Moran’s A Film with Me in It. I love this film, very funny, very typically Irish & self deprecating. 

Goals

• Producing Lounging with Leamy. Doing our run through in the studio today, fingers crossed!
• Will learn how to use the green screen effectively!
• Writing a short creative piece on Obsession. Hopefully will film it in the next month or so.

Links to lovely visual pleasure for the eyes and brain

• Gorgeous and sumptuous video on Synaesthesia 
  http://vimeo.com/5297531