The second installment in the series begins with a little “Previously” sequence, although it’s more of an out-take sequence; seeing as none of the footage seen actually appears in the first episode. Over the course of the recording process the running joke in the studio (every time something went wrong or we were having a laugh) was for somebody to say “previously on South”. When it came to cutting the footage, instead of losing all of the funny bits I simply cut them into a little previously section.

Episode 2 begins by filling in the missing pieces from Episode 1; covering the guitar and bass recording for ‘Downpour’. The first episode could have given the impression that recording the song was quick and easy, I wanted to show that the process took a couple of days; as each instrument was recorded on a different day. As the song was slowly pieced together.

It’s also important to note that bassist (and ladie’s man) Ken Farrell says that ‘Downpour’ is “the last song on the album”; at the time of recording it was but having reviewed the finished tracks the lads from South decided to change the track listing and ‘Downpour’ is now track 9 but rest assured it’s still “got rain in it”!

This episode also shows a bit more of the difficulties faced by Producer/Engineer Alan Dawson as he tried to record himself playing the drums and some bass and guitar takes for different songs that appear on the album. Because of time-constraints I had to cut about 4 minutes off this episode; meaning quite a few takes and songs had to be cut.

Shooting without any script meant that when cutting it was difficult to keep whole conversations that ran too long. I had to chop bits and pieces of dialogue and sometimes cut it so people are actually having conversations with themselves over different days. So when trying to put some narrative structure to the whole thing and keep it at a good pace; I decided to cut back and forth between the scenes. Only showing what was necessary to piece it all together.

As with the previous episode (and the final one), this episode features a song that will appear on the upcoming album, in this case ‘Symmetry‘. This music video sequence was actually the third one I cut together, back when the plan was for four episodes, but once I chopped it down to three I decided to swap the music-video sequences around so that the final episode would finish with another brand new song.

By the time it came to cutting ‘Symmetry’, I had gotten a bit more adventurous with my cutting patterns; I had discovered that by layering the shots, I could show more going on at the same time. This is also used in Episode 3, but in an effort to keep similiar shots/set-ups fresh and make the videos separate to each other; with ‘Symmetry’ I tried alternating cutting patterns between the layers, cutting to the music so that most of the time what you see at that point is what you really hear when you listen to the song. I’m not sure if that will make sense when you read it but hopefully it will when you watch the video.

As always comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to everyone who watched the first episode; myself and the lads from South have been very happy with all the feedback. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this new episode just as much. Episode 3 goes online next Friday.

Episode 1 begins as the recording sessions began; back in April on the first day in the Mill Studio, as the lads from South set up their gear. The mood was giddy and as they got everything ready; Daw tried to get his head around the idea of recording himself playing the drums. The first few days of recording focused on the drums so when editing the footage it seemed natural for the first episode to go that way.

As with the two upcoming episodes; this episode pays particular attention to an individual song, in this case, the previously unheard track ‘Downpour’, which will appear on South’s upcoming debut (out July 31st). I don’t know how many times I’ve had to listen to this song, it doesn’t really matter because I don’t think I can get tired of it, but when cutting the music-video sequence together I kept it to a fairly basic cutting style in comparison to the episodes that follow. At this stage I must also point out that the music used is not the final mix of the song, you’ll have to wait until the album comes out on July 31st, but it’s an awesome sneak preview.

As my first completely solo-project, it was difficult to come to terms with trying to do a two camera shoot on my own. I had to constantly be thinking the cuts in my head; with the Canon XAH1 (recording on tape) set up on a tripod to capture my master shot of each instrument during each take (and using the manual focus to get some nice pick-up shots in between), whilst always moving around getting cut-to’s on the Canon HG10 (recording on hard drive) mounted on my steadycam. The result was a hell of a lot of coverage that needed to be synced and then chipped away at.

Now that it’s finally finished I’d like to say thanks to the people who helped along the way; firstly thanks to Thomas, Ken and Daw for the opportunity to join them and work on something together, our time together in the studio was so much fun. I know it can’t have been easy to constantly have a camera in your face but thanks for not pulling a Christian Bale every time I moved a light or a flash went off in your face!? Having watched all the episodes with the lads during the week; I’m delighted to say that they loved them and I’m looking forward to working on music videos and the tour in the coming weeks.

I also have to say a huge thank you to Alan Slattery; for providing me with equipment and constant technical advice throughout the entire process. From frantic phone calls because I thought I broke his camera on the first day; because there’s a stupid button on the side that appears to have the only function of: making a camera act broken!? To solving the problem of each camera recording in a different codec through tape & hard drive. Right through the endless questions: how do I do that? What’s that yoke? I pushed this and now what’s happened? How do I make it do that and then turn everything inside out!? Thank you Sla and thanks for the colour grading that made everything look awesome in the end!

If your reading this then, please take 10 minutes to sit back and watch South - ‘The Making Of Insula’ Episode 1. As always comments would be greatly appreciated and don’t forget Episode 2 goes online next week and if you’re on Twitter then don’t forget to follow South for updates and news (and let them know what you think of ‘Downpour’).

Once myself and the Chief had captured the videos of the Round 6 contestants last weekend, we made our way to Rothe House for the Shakespeare in the House Festival; whilst Ken made his way backstage to get into costume, I caught the second half of Dreamstuff Youth Theatre’s version of ‘Romeo & Juliet’. Not a bad performance from the large group of young actors but I couldn’t help have the feeling that it was merely the calm before the storm (theatre wise anyway)

The sun was shining brightly over the courtyard stage when the Devious Theatre crew let fly with their mixed bag of ‘Shakespeare in Bits’; billed as “a crash course in Shakespeare for the ADD generation”, it certainly didn’t disappoint.

Highlights of the show for me: pretty much most of the performance from Niamh Moroney, John Doran and Stephen Colfer as they pummeled through four of Shakespeare’s plays (one in world record breaking time).

Other highlights included Devious newcomer Scott Barriscale as William Shakespeare (who for some reason reminded me of Young Einstein), and who could forget Kevin Mooney in tights and a Shakespearean rap battle to finish the show off. Kudos to all the Devious crew, their performance was hilarious, creative and endlessly energetic.

Whilst there were several other photographers there on the day, it meant the event was heavily covered, so in an effort to provide shots that were a little different I spent some time working on mine. Using textures to add a bit more of a feel to them. I’m not exactly sure how to make a photo look Shakespearean but I gave it a shot.

You can see all my photos from the Shakespeare in the House Festival including Dreamstuff Youth Theatre’s ‘Romeo & Juliet‘ and Devious Theatre’s ‘Shakespeare in Bits‘ on my flickr along with two of my favourite shots on the Oss237.com homepage.

If anybody has any comments or feedback then please stand under my balcony and shout it up at me.

Today, I sat down to begin the final cuts; separating footage in to the three episodes. I really thought this would take longer than it did, given that I would have to trim off over 20 minutes to get the episodes under 10 minutes each, but I’m delighted to say that as of this evening; the editing process is almost complete. I’ve just got to add the titles and credits.

The first episode was the easiest to cut together, this was probably due to the way I started editing the project in the beginning and the way the start of the Insula recording process worked. Episode 2 got a little trickier as the recording process became more scattered; different instruments playing different songs on different days.

The third and final episode was a nightmare; running about 12 minutes over, it meant I had to cut quite a lot of perfectly good footage. It’s always difficult to cut out something good but it had to be done. Unfortunately, even though the stuff that was being cut out was long enough to make up a fourth episode, it was just lacking the structure it needed to stand alone.

Tomorrow, I’ll add the titles and credits. During the week the lads from South will be the first to watch the completed episodes and if there’s no major problems; episode 1 will go online next weekend followed by an episode a week. After 13 weeks (from shooting to editing), I’m really excited to see what people think.

On another note, I’d like to say thanks to everyone for all their feedback on ‘The Game‘, when I put the short online two days ago I wasn’t expecting the response it got. Cheers to everyone for their comments and feedback on YouTube and here on my blog. I’ve even had a couple of emails and phone calls about it!? Oh and thanks to Anthony and Ken for posting it on their blogs.

One thing I would like to point out; with most video posts I always ask viewers to watch it in HD for best results. However, I’m annoyed to find that when watching it in HD on Youtube, the full results of the muzzle flash are lost. I’m not sure if this is to do with the frame rate that the videos play in HD but the frame with the actual flash isn’t there!? So, if you haven’t watched it yet then for best results please just watch it as normal.

The response and feedback have been very encouraging and that was only a test, hopefully everything that’s to follow will be as well received.

South - ‘The Making Of Insula’ Episode 1 will go online next weekend!

The reason being that I have a lot of ideas for scripts, particularly some action movie style shorts, but I wasn’t sure I could pull them off, given that they would require certain effects. I wanted to do some test shoots, the first of which resulted in the above improvised short film of sorts; ‘The Game‘.

Over the course of the past month; I’ve slowly taken over a corner in our kitchen, gathering bottles and containers, funnels, hoses and lots of red food dye. Most recipes for fake blood require corn syrup and as of yet I still can’t find a place that sells it. So I did a few experiments and despite a couple of failed attempts, I finally made a batch that looked realistic enough, at least for a quick head-shot which is one of the first things I wanted to test out.

With everything ready to go for the effect, all I needed was a victim and with nothing better to do on a Sunday evening, I asked Daw if he wanted to drive me out to Jenkinstown Woods and get shot in the head!? How could he refuse!? We drove to Jenkinstown, picked a suitable location and spent the next two hours being devoured by flies!

I wanted to try out some other effects as well, namely shooting ‘day for night’ but unfortunately I picked the longest day of the year to give it a try. The sun was shining late into the evening meaning the effect wouldn’t work properly, and the darker I made it in post production the more I lost my head-shot effect, which was the primary goal of the test shoot.

Instead of just shooting the effects, I wanted to piece it together into some sort of short film, not just a static shot with blood flying. The fun part was that it was only a test shoot, it didn’t have to make any sense whatsoever and there was no point in going for more than one take.

So we started with some running shots, I also wanted to try a sort of visual delay effect but it didn’t quite work out for me so I scrapped it in this case, it needs more planning. Shooting on a Canon HG10 on a miniDv steadycam, we shot the running stuff; the long grass proved quite tricky to run through, if I wasn’t falling over then Daw was, or something as simple as a long blade of grass could push the counter-weight and ruin the shot. Once the two of us were truly sick of running we moved onto the dialogue.

Given that there was no script, we quickly made up two lines of dialogue to help explain the preceding effects; not that they make any sense but that was kind of the point of them in the first place!? I shot Daw’s closeup and then he shot my closeup. For the two shot I simply put the camera on a tripod. Then we shot the C/U of my hand as the gun, I did bring a fake gun but thought it was funnier if we didn’t use it. And finally we shot the head-shot effect.

With the camera on the tripod and Daw in position, I hit record then moved in place kneeling just out of frame beside Daw; counting “3,2,1,BANG”; he let his head fly back and I sprayed the fake blood onto the tree behind him. After reviewing the shot, we didn’t even bother going for a second take, I had what I needed.

Once I had the footage roughly assembled in Final Cut Express 4, I added three pre-generated digital effects; the muzzle flash from my “handgun”, a burst of blood from Daw’s forehead for the initial impact just before his brains ejected out the back of his head onto the tree and if you look really close at my fingers after the headshot you’ll see some whisps of smoke before I throw the weapon away.

With the effects in place, the next step was colour correction; given that I spent no time worrying about lighting during the shoot there was some noticeable differences in shots, beams of sun light were constantly coming and going through the trees. I cleaned it up as best I could then transferred the rough cut to my editing mentor Alan Slattery; who showed me the wonders of Magic Bullet; general post production techniques & colour grading.

Losing the idea of “day-for-night” and instead playing with the levels of green in the footage for a “House Of Flying Daggers” style of colour grading. To top it off and give it a more film like feeling, we added letterboxing to 2:35 and changed the frame rate from progressive to inter-lacing.

Following that, I found suitable music, using the royalty-free jingles that come with iLife and before I knew it the test shoot was looking more like a short film than I ever expected it to. It’s my first successful SpecialFx test shoot and given that this was shot on a budget of say… maybe €20 for blood ingredients and materials, it certainly won’t be my last. I get the feeling things are going to get very gorey over the next few months.

As usual comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated.

For best results watch ‘The Game‘ in HD.

Round 6 saw the return of Pete to the Market Lane (he’s been in every round so far but has yet to win the public’s vote). He was joined by Shane in the ButterSlip (making his 3rd appearance) and Liam outside the Bank of Ireland on Parliament Street (making his second appearance). Pierre (above) makes his debut into the competition (making it our 2nd Harp on the streets for the competition).

As always one of these buskers will walk away with €200 so don’t forget to cast your vote. The videos are now online and open to PUBLIC VOTING on Busker2009.com.

If you think you could do better then why not register for the competition which runs until September, there’s a further €1000 up for grabs in the final. You can watch the videos from Round 6, cast your vote or register for the competition on www.Busker2009.com.

The official launch of The Battle Of The Bands 2009 is also underway, registration is now open with this years competition taking place throughout July and August. The competition will run for four weeks, including the showcase final performance from last years winners South on Sunday August 16th.

As with the previous two years, I’ll be providing photographic (and possibly video) coverage of the competition, along with sponsoring a photography package to this years winners. Full details of prizes will be announced in the coming days.

Full details about registration for the competition can be found on BattleOfTheBands.ie.

NOTE: For best results view the above video in HD.

Personally I can’t wait to have it finished; my first real solo-project has taken quite a lot of work but even at this stage I’m really happy with the results. Every single aspect of the project; from operating the two camera shoot by myself to cutting the episodes together has been an awesome way of “learning by doing” and I can’t wait to see what people think.

As I cut through all the footage one of the hardest things was having to let go of something good; cutting footage out for one reason or another, usually time constraints.The overall structure follows South in the Mill Studio throughout the recording process for Insula, but it will pay particular attention to some songs more than others.

I made this decision from the start for several reasons, mainly due to the sheer volume of footage I would have shot over a two week period, on two cameras covering guitar, bass, drums, vocals and all the in-between stuff. At present I just wouldn’t have the ability to edit it all. We’ve also got lots of plans and ideas for videos for certain songs so there’s no point in saturating everything with too much coverage.

In the case of previously unheard (and awesomely titled) South track ‘Zombie Attack’ which will feature on their debut album; I only had one single take during the recording of the song (it wasn’t on my list). That being said, the song is awesome and I really wanted it to feature somewhere in the whole thing and so I’ve cut together a second trailer (above).

The new trailer offers a sneak preview of what ‘Zombie Attack’ sounds like, direct from the mixing room in the Mill Studios. Featuring Alan Dawson on drums, Thomas Donoghue on guitar and Ken “For the ladies” Farrell on bass as the lads from South were laying down a rough version of the song before tackling each individual instrument. This is the only time you’ll hear any preview of ‘Zombie Attack’ before the album gets released as even the above footage won’t appear in any of the episodes.

You can also check out my brand new promo shot here on the Oss237.com homepage. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts; the entire shoot was also my first real attempts working with off-camera flash triggers and the new shot is another addition to what I’m being told is “my style”. The usual camera display type thing with focus thrown on the background and sharp on the monitor (on a Canon XHA1), shot on my 50mm with my SB800 positioned across the room, full power directed at Ken’s hands as he plays the bass. I’ve add some textures afterwards in the same style as the first promo image. Check it out here.

As always any feedback or criticism would be greatly appreciated. Plenty more coming soon!

Please watch the above video in HD for best results.

Both bands have just released a list of gig dates; which includes performances in Kilkenny, Dublin (Whelan’s), Cork (Fred Zeppelin’s), Carlow (The Tavern), Waterford (Twister Vicks) and you can rest assured there’s even more dates to follow.

Having spent most of June sitting in front of a computer, I’m really looking forward to getting out and touring with both bands as they push their debut albums nationwide.

I already have plans and ideas for plenty of on the road photo & video content which will keep me busy throughout the Summer.

But first things first, I have to finish the videos and photos I’m currently working on, all of which will be appearing online very soon.

Make sure you don’t miss out this Summer; check gig listings for The Lions Mane on MySpace & Bebo and gig listings for South on MySpace & Bebo.

Further information and announcements will be made through MyMusic.ie later this week.

The full length assembly proved to be a bit of a nightmare; the songs (that are being featured) were cut together first, then it was a matter of assembling the rest of the footage and putting it in some sort of order and structure. Given that there was no script, it was like trying to put a huge jigsaw together without knowing what the picture looked like!?

Different instruments playing different songs were recorded on different days throughout the two week process, it meant having to bounce around the time-line quite a bit to keep it all together.

After watching the full length rough cut last night, I’m very happy with how everything is looking so far. I’ve made plenty of notes; mostly footage that can be shaved down or cut completely, but overall it’s starting to take shape. For the fine cut, I’ll be looking to cut the running time severely; at least for the online version.

My initial hopes were for four online episodes but I met a couple of problems along the way and at present; the plan is to separate the current cut into 3X10minute episodes to be released online. Which means I’ll be cutting about 20 minutes off the web version; I will be editing a full length version but I’m not quite sure what will happen with it, if anything!? We have a couple of ideas floating around but there’s no need to go into them yet.

Tomorrow, I’m getting a crash course in colour-correction and after effects, the plan is to clean up the full cut before separating the footage into the episodes. There’s also the sound mix! I’m not entirely sure how long all of this will take but I’m happy that it’s moving along on schedule.

Last night, I cut together a new trailer and pending a meeting with the lads from South this weekend; that should hopefully appear online in the next few days.

Four new videos are up online now, so don’t forget to cast your vote for your favourite busker.

Round 5 saw the return of Pete in the Market Lane. He was joined by three new contestants; Adam (above) outside the Kilkenny People office on High Street, Neil in the Butterslip and the first band of the competition; Chaser down beside the Bank of Ireland.

As always one of the buskers will also walk away with €200 so don’t forget to cast your vote. The videos are now online and open to PUBLIC VOTING on Busker2009.com.

And, if you think you could do better then why not register for the competition which runs until September, there’s a further €1000 up for grabs in the final.

Watch the videos from Round 5, cast your vote or register for the competition on www.Busker2009.com.

NOTE: For best results view the videos in HD.