Making Films

" Making films is always a work in progress. As a filmmaker moves on to his or her next film project he or she will be eager to improve all aspects of the filmmaking technics learned from the first film. The expansion of knowledge is vital in order to try new ways of telling the story and keeping audiences interested. After my first attempt at making a film ' In Loving Memory ' I listed the areas in which I needed to improve my technics. But they had to be improved in a different environment because you’re never going to shoot your second film in the same way as your first film. The variables will always be different, location, lighting, camera settings, camera movements, actors etc. "

 

    For my second film project ' Lily ' my goal was to challenge the Filmwex crew in some new aspects of filming we hadn’t used before, natural light, multiple subject shots, close-up and medium over the shoulder body shots of five people sitting around a table. Not as easy as you may think.

 We filmed under a large skylight in  Wexford Book Centre and as the sun changed position and our day progressed the light also changed which meant the actors skin tones and the room colouring changed from bright to shadow and visa versa. 

Also we used two cameras so we had to plan our camera positions with the least amount of movement  between takes in order to keep the continuity of the shots which would hopefully make it easier to edit each shot together in post. Was the editing easy? the simple answer is no. When to cut , when not to cut. Nine years later I’m still learning the editing process, it’s always a work in progress. But, judge for yourselves if we’ve got away with it.

 

    My third film is an award winning film ‘ The Midnight Show ‘ . Technically I wanted the lighting to be as right as we could get it because this piece would involve very emotional atmospheric scenes.

I wanted more camera movements and facial close-ups, make-up effects and special effects, atmospheric music and most importantly I needed all of these filmmaking tools to help draw the viewer into a story which for many people is a horrible reality. 

This story requires the viewer to feel the characters pain. It’s an uncomfortable story that pulls no punches when highlighting the sometimes hard direct detail of the character’s situation.

I made a jib crane and a camera slider to help facilitate the camera movements I wanted. Don’t forget an indie filmmaker has next to no budget for anything certainly no budget to buy expensive film equipment so you improvise with whatever is at hand and you rely on the goodness of likeminded creative people. I’m talking about actors, musicians and make-up artists. 

We hired professional lighting for this shoot and we also hired some better quality lenses. This was a step up for us in terms of our story telling ability and our technical knowledge and a first for working with a younger actor.

 

 

" There comes a time as an indie filmmaker when you want to dabble in a different format of the medium. So it was inevitable ‘ the music video ‘ was going to feature somewhere along the line. "

Our sound recordist  Justin has a band called Frankenstein Bolts and they asked us to film a music video for them. The band were a duo at the time which Roberto and myself thought would be easier to film but no, these guys wanted something different.

They didn’t just want  camera’s filming them they also wanted special effects and anything that would make the visual experience different from other music video’s. Bearing in mind both Roberto and myself hadn’t made a music video before, we had to come up with something unusual. 

 I remember we hired a community hall and some scaffolding to get high overhead shots. We decided to film the guys playing from all sorts of camera angles in front of a green screen. A simple explanation of green screen is you have a green screen background behind your subject and then in post production with you’re editing software which in my case at that time was FCPX you put whatever image you want onto the green screen. 

You can then put multiple layers of other images over it and then place your subject anywhere you want within those layers. Did you get all that? if not take a look at our music video ' Up To The Root ' and all will become clear.

 

    ‘ A Momentary Lapse ‘ is a short film I made primarily as a home movie type of project. It was only to be viewed by my family. I wanted to make a short with my 6 year old grand daughter  Ruby and myself in front of the camera but it quickly escalated to having other family members involved along with my Filmwex family. 

It’s a screenplay with very little dialogue  so when we started shooting I wanted it shot in such a way that when I got it to the editing stage I had options as to how the finished piece would look. So we shot it in colour with full sound the whole way through but because there was very little dialogue I opted to format it as a black and white silent movie with dialogue cards popping up when words were spoken.

The music score was written by Frankenstein Bolts guitarist Dan Comerford who caught the mood of the piece perfectly. As I said before, music is so important to the mood of film and I’ve been very fortunate to have two very talented songwriters Justin and Dan involved in the Filmwex family. 

I suppose you could say this is the ultimate indie film in the sense that it’s all family members and very close friends who are making it happen.

This short has been shortlisted for awards in a number of film festivals around the world and is also an award winning film.

 

    ' An Ruán Beag '  is a story based on an idea by Pippy Firman. This is the only film where I didn’t have the original idea.

I storyboarded the idea and fortunately it was exactly what Pippy envisaged in his head. 

When a filmmaker makes a film based on somebody else’s idea the filmmaker has to have the freedom to visually take the story as close to the original idea as possible. Fortunately I had that freedom and the piece turned out really well.

With all of my film projects there’s been a first  time for doing something in one form or another.

The first for the Filmwex crew in this project was working with a butterfly.

 

   The documentary ' Lipsync'n To My Own Life ' is 2 hours long and we made it over a period of 6 years. It tells the story of Wexford singer songwriter Mick Egan. This project had a ton of firsts. A lot of research, a lot of interviews, a lot of old and new footage and photo's etc. and then putting all the relevant elements together to make a coherent story. As a filmmaker I had to be true to the facts, happy and sad whilst being emotionally sensitive to the feelings of the family involved. I believe I achieved these goals and the fact that Mick Egan gave his stamp of approval was good enough for me. With a dramatic narrative screenplay a filmmaker knows where he or she is going with it, a beginning a middle and an end but with a documentary it evolves as it goes along and you are not sure where it will take you. It's a different kind of filmmaking and one I'm glad to say was extremely fulfilling.

 

 

     My final word to those of you who have had a secret desire to make films. There are other people out there who have the same desire. Don’t be afraid to seek them out and if it’s only to share your vision of story telling through film in a conversation over a coffee, that can be the ignition needed to start you on a career path that can bring so much pleasure and joy both to you yourself and to the millions of people who love film as much as we do. Also, check out the many filmmaking courses that are available out there both hands on college courses and online courses.