June ‘09 News

Been a long time, comrade. Anyway, not much news to report these past few weeks since most of us are either busy with exams, work and host of other misadventures. I’ve recently recieved an email from the Dingle Film Festival informing us that they haven’t selected True Love Leaves No Traces for the festival. This years festival is featuring Comedy as the main theme which is ironic given that I didn’t find the email funny at all.

The Undead Wore Red is still in production, editing has already started by the editing veteran James O’Sullivan who at the time of writing is parading through the streets of Cork declaring that today celebrates the 26th anniversary of the day he first displayed his naked bloody for the whole world to see what Corkonions are truly made of, placenta and all. Judging by the rumours it’s a proud tradition that he still practices every year. Happy Birthday James!

On other news I have gone back to editing Milton Murder Mystery Part 3 which is going well beyond the intended completion date of “End of  2008″ , I’m not going to come up with any estimates about when I’m going to get the third part done exactly but I can guarantee it won’t be tomorrow that’s for sure! What I can come up with are excuses and lots of them, like right now, I should be editing but I can’t. Why? Because I have work tomorrow and don’t even have to time to write stuff on the internet.

The final bit of news concerns the recent competition put out by the lads at Mutant Shorts , basically the competition runs like any other 24 / 48 hour competition, you’re given a theme and have a limited amount of time to make a film. In this case, for about a week. In the end we got nothing filmed, reason? Well my excuse is that I have to work on weekdays and I don’t even have the time to write stuff on the internet. The theme this year was “in between spaces”. Cethan took a stab at writing something but didn’t get it done till Saturday morning which at that point we pretty much  gave up on the whole idea of making it. His script ended up being called the Missing Milton Mystery , which I will now proudly post up on this blog with Cethan’s permission.

Missing Milton Mystery -  The First Draft

Man walks into his apartment. holding a tin of cat food. He hears meowing.

Man: Ah Milton, I have that Cat food we like.

He looks around. He can’t see Milton but he can hear him. Concerned, he looks around, calling Milton’s name. He checks each room. he open drawers, boxes, the fridge the works. All the while, Milton is heard. Suddenly he stops the search.

Man: Milton, Milton, Milton…

No Response

Man: Marco?

Milton: Meow!

Using Marco Polo, Man locates the cat to the radiator. He sees a tail.

Man: Milton! How did you get stuck between that space?

Milton: Meow!

Man: I told you, to leave that mouse alone. He did nothing to you.

Milton: Meow.

Man:Right, I’ll get you out…

Man leaves and returns with cooking tongs. He tries to reach in and grab Milton. Gets stuck and slides in.

Man: Mm Cat got my Tongs.

Man grabs phone book.

Man: mm do I ring a plumber or a vet?

Neighbour knocks on door. She is holding a glass of water.

Neighbour: Sir, Do you see this glass?

Man: You glassed the sea?

Neighbour: Look Smartbuttom, there is a cat hair in it. Your cat hair.

Man: Milton is in the pipes!

Man runs to tap and turns it on. It is blocked suddenly clunks. Milton in the sink.

Milton: Meow

Man: Oh Milton, There is no sinking feeling when you are around.

Fastnet Film Festival ‘09 Report

Well we came back empty handed but none of us came down to Scbull just to see if we could win anything, it was just curiousity that played a vital part. We managed to attend two talks given by Kirstin and Jim Sheridan, as well as attend the showings of some of the submissions but not all.

We were present for the showing of Trippers Through Time in the Cinemobile, the audience was quite small so it got a few chuckles. In contrast, True Love Leaves No Traces was shown later on in the evening to a much larger viewing group and according to several audience members that I spoke with after the event, it was very well received, unfortunately none of us that came down were there as we were distracted with cooking dinner. At least the meal was nice.

Undead Wear Red – Shooting Day 4

It’s the fourth shooting day, production proved a little bit difficult due to most of the cast being unavailable on that day so we filmed what we could, which was the starting scene. As ever when we’re shooting out on Pope’s Quay, we get a lot of strange looks from residents and passerbys, this time their reason to be scared was due to the amount of clothes that was being thrown out onto the street from the balcony, it was like the sky was falling. Footage looked pretty good in the end and our director seemed pleased.

Hayret seems well intent on getting the film done by July 1st which is the deadline for short entries into the Cork Film Festival. Although with filming on hold for a month due to College related activities that some of the cast and crew are encumbered by, this would only leave us with a week of May and the entire month of June to get the filming wrapped up and the post production finished in time for the deadline.

And we all love deadlines.

Fabien Sweeney as the quicktalking detective Tom Havenbrook

True Love Leaves No Traces – Extended Scenes

Recently I decided to dust off my old editing material I worked with for last year’s True Love Leaves No Traces and decided to rework the soundtrack to include the music of dead artists to avoid any copyright troubles when it comes to submitting it to the Corona Fastnet Film Festival. Although the recordings used in the new version may or may not be in the public domain, suffice to say it’s difficult to notice copyright infringement from classical recordings than it is from music that’s made by artists who are still alive or have died within the last 70 years or so. You can watch that version from this link. I’ve made some minor visual tweaks to the film as a result that Black and White scene looks a lot better.

I also took the liberty of extracting some extended scenes from the raw footage. To keep things short and sweet I only took three scenes labelled “It’s like an orgasm in a cup”, “Relish?” and “Have you seen that video?”. One of them had to be shortened because of the subject matter and another just for pacing reasons. Without further ado here are the three extended scenes some of which contains foul language … my word.

We tend to make up the strangest lines when we don’t use scripts.

Milton Murder Mystery Part 2 is up!

Yes you heard me! It’s up at last, it’s been a month or so since Part 1 was uploaded so it’s about bloody time too. Slightly shorter in length then Part 1, I decided to stop at a certain point to keep the pacing of the third part consistant, it could be several weeks before I get the third and final part done and maybe another month will be needed to complete the 30 minute version. As I said before, I welcome any type of feedback of Part 2 since the film is still being worked on. Just so you know I’m already aware of some of the audio issues

Not much else to say really aside from looking forward to getting Part 3 finished, this is where you’ll get to see some of  Cethan’s finest acting. Not to give too much away but what he can do with a plastic bag is simply awe inspiring stuff.

Here’s a small clip

And the link to Part 2 can be accessed from here.

Corona Fastnet Film Festival ‘09

This years Fastnet Film Festival will be held in Schull between the 14th and 17th of May, it’s kind of exciting for us because three of the accepted submissions were films that all of us had some involvement in. First being “The Bottle”, co-directed by Hayret Abdula, written by Gemma McCarthy and Fiona Riordan, and edited by James Sullivan, the film is a simple tale about lost love and found bottles. The second film to be accepted is “True Love Leaves No Traces” directed by me, the role of the main titular male lead is also played by me, written and edited by me, the voice of Milton provided by me, I suppose the film was chosen because they liked me, they really really liked me. The third but not least, “Trippers Through Time“, the film that propelled Cethan Leahy into the limelight and sealed his fate in the film industry, it was directed by him, he also starred, written and even narrated it, so they must have liked him too. “Trippers Through Time” was already shown in the Bangor Film Festival ‘08 but sadly did not bring back anything to Ireland, the winning Bangor films can be viewed from this link.

Details about the festival can be found here.

As for prizes we can try win can be found here. It would be nice to win something for once

The Undead Wore Red – Production Shots #1

Unfortunately they invariably end up in the cutting room floor due to the fact that they have utterly nothing to do with the film whatsoever or end up heavily edited down for the sake of keeping the integrity of the film. We literally have hours of footage cumulated over the past year and a half since we kick started this hobby back in ‘07. It would seem such a shame to simply throw them away and forget about them.

Fret not! For there is another way to display these clips. What you’re about to see is a simple collection of two outtakes from The Undead Wore Red which features one of those classic Hayret moments when she’s behind camera. This will hopefully start off a new series of short clips that have captured the random goings on of your typical Gifted Babies production that both our viewers ( hi Mum! )  have missed out on upon earlier viewings.

Gold.

The Undead Wore Red goes into production and other news …

Filming started yesterday, 21st of March in the convenient apartment location which has made an appearance in less than 5 films already, luckily this time it will only be featured in the first 2 minutes of the short film. Shooting started shortly at half 3 and wrapped it up at 6, plenty of photos were taken at the scene of the crime and hopefully we’ll have them up soon. Filming commenced today ( 22nd March ) starting from 2 and finishing shortly after 6, fewer photos taken this time but at least we filmed it at Hodrum’s residence much to the behest of his dogs who weren’t used to such “ruff” treatment. So far we are approximately 3 – 4 minutes into the film, I reckon we have half of it done and that’s discounting possible ( or probable )  re-shoots, cutaways and inserts. But overall it’s been a fairly productive process, with an expanded film crew,  a set of new toys ( shotgun mic, boom poles and a portable digital recorder ) and Cethan’s newfound ability to pretend to act in front of the camera,  it should be a step up from the previous Gifted Babies production, Cork Christmas Carol and that other film.

Speaking of that other film, Milton Murder Mystery Part 2 is currently in the works and hopefully will be released by the end of the week once I find the will to finish it, it’s only unfortunate that I misplaced that somewhere in a field in Millstreet.

And speaking of time traveling houses, a new Cethan Leahy story titled “The House That Tripped Through Time” has entered preproduction, borrowing some of the good  elements of an imaginary John Carpenter film about time travelling houses, this will be guaranteed to be Cethan’s second Magnum Opus, or just plain chocolate icecream if not.

Watch this space for more news and info … ruff