RED Workshop

On Saturday I did a Red workshop with a very friendly group of artists at the Fire Station Studios in Dublin. We went through all the basics of the camera, and then shot some footage and brought it through a basic post workflow.

We tried out some low light stuff, and were lucky enough to have the Rugby fans from the Ireland-South Africa match walking by outside. With the crowd as a subject, and the misty freezing night as a backdrop, we managed to get a couple of nice atmospheric shots.

Here's the footage. Shot on a 50mm f1.8 and an 85 f2 Nikon. Music is by the great Peter Broderick.

Shoot Report - Working at the Zoo

Shooting a documentary at the moment, and we were in the zoo on Wednesday. There's loads of cool things to film in the zoo:

Both shot on the Red using Nikon lenses. The wolves are a bit grainy as we shot them at twilight on a f3.5 lens, so I had to push them in post.

The Silver Bow - RTE2, 23.30, tonight...

A quick note to say that a film that I shot, The Silver Bow, will be screening on RTE2 tonight at half eleven.

It's a great short, and well worth a look. Here's a short extract:

Cat

I used to turn off the shredder when it wasn't being used, in case the cat's tail somehow got jammed in there.

Photographer 1 - Todd Hido

Firstly, I can't avoid mentioning how utterly devastating it was to watch a great Irish football team lose a World Cup qualifier on the basis of an incredibly obvious foul.

That aside, perhaps we can today relate to the photography of Todd Hido, a recent discovery of mine, whose distant, empty frames seem like the perfect representation of the current Irish mood. Ok, perhaps I'm trying to link that in too much, but yeah, he's a really nice photographer:

To me he's like Crewdson without the excess and complication. Somewhere between there and Nan Goldin- but much more towards Goldin. Extremely simple shots, and all the more powerful because of it. I think it's more of a skill to find beauty in the mundane than force beauty into it. And I always think it's extra-impressive to find beauty in the urban landscape.

I recommend looking at all the shots on his site - http://www.toddhido.com/ . It's well worth it.

Hungry Hungry Hippo

From The Guardian

Electro Maniac

This guy is cool:


Courtesy of Wired.com.

William & Leslie

Good article in the Guardian about Vilmos Zsigmond and László Kovács, two Hungarian friends who escaped their country when the Soviet army invaded, and went on to become two of the top cinematographers in Hollywood.

Kovács shot the beautiful McCabe & Mrs. Miller, while Zsigmond shot one of my favorites - Five Easy Pieces.

Click here.

And here's a great scene from Five Easy Pieces:

Fire Practice Theatre

An installation piece that I shot with the artist Susan Thomson will be showing at thisisnotashop gallery on Benburb St in Dublin for the next few days. The opening is tomorrow evening at 6pm.

If you're in town you might be interested in dropping by and checking it out.

There are two separate screens, showing footage shot on the Red. One screen uses Zeiss SuperSpeeds and one Nikons, so it's a good comparison of stills vs. cine lenses.

More info here.

YouTube Discovery #3

Two YouTube discoveries today. You can tell that I'm a little bored.

This is wonderful though:

Thanks to Roger Ebert for this one. Unsurprisingly, it's all linked back to Kubrick.

YouTube Discovery #2

Nature does everything better.

Cork Shorts

Two films that I shot will be screening in the Cork Opera House next Saturday, as part of the Cork Film Festival 2009.

Both 'Away', directed by Ruairi McKenna, and 'Coffee', directed by Robert Manson, are showing in the Irish Shorts - Programme 4 section. Click here for more info.

Saturday 7th November @ 11.00am.  If you're in the area do stop by.

To see clips of both films check out the drama section of my website.

Coffee (top) and Away

'School House' Promo Stills

Last week I shot a promo for Paul Walker's 'Storyland' submission. Here are some screen grabs:

Best of luck to Paul and producer Alan Keane with their submission.

Director: Paul Walker

Producer: Alan Keane

DoP: Piers McGrail

Editing: Declan Lynch

VFX: Declan Dowling
Grading: Piers McGrail

IBC Fin-al-ly

Ok, so I've eventually got around to putting up some pics and info from the IBC  broadcast show in Amsterdam. It's a long enough piece, so click 'read more' to check it out.