My First Kiss

Onwards and upwards

2009-11-09T15:55:00.002Z

For (the best of) family reasons, I can't attend the Filmstock Festival this weekend, which is a shame. But if I had been going, I wouldn't have been able to accept a last-minute offer of a space in a Feature Documentary Workshop. Hopefully it will give me the mojo to develop an idea I've been working on for a very Queer Feature Indeed.

Corona Cork Film Festival!

2009-10-20T11:48:00.005+01:00

The film continues to live! The lovely folk at The Corona Cork Film Festival 1st - 8th November, have selected "My First Kiss" to show as part of the Outlook Short Film Competition Programme.

In addition, the showing time for "My First Kiss" at the Filmstock Film Festival is confirmed. It is on Saturday 14th November at 4.45pm in Screen A, The Hat Factory, Luton. Full programme is in PDF form here.

My First Kiss: Filmstock! [del.icio.us]

2009-09-15T05:16:16-07:00

Filmstock!

2009-09-15T12:36:00.003+01:00

Well, there's life in our little film yet! We've just been accepted to show in Filmstock 09 in Luton in November. It's in its tenth year, and is a festival devoted to independent shorts, features and documentaries.

Galway Film Fleadh screening

2009-07-13T15:26:00.004+01:00

Well I had a lovely time in Galway, despite the atrocious weather. Had a few mini-heart attacks at the screening in Cinemobile though. First, they held up everything as there appeared to be a problem with the Digibeta tape of "My First Kiss", and they had to call for reinforcements to see what was wrong with it. It seemed to be stuck. Eventually they had to let the house in, and I was preparing for the possibility that they'd have to press on without it. Bizarrely, when someone else came in to see what was wrong, appeared that the only problem was that it was at the end of the tape and needed to be rewound.

Then, imagine my surprise as the house lights dimmed and the titles rolled for the main feature, not the short. So, by the end of the wonderful "Identities", which I've seen before and stands repeated viewing, so well is it made, they had to announce that they'd made a mistake and they were now going to show the short. People laughed, especially at Cathal's bit, and then it was over. Then there were Q&A's for Vittoria, the director of Identities, and then off to the Rowing Club.

And here it is!

2009-06-22T13:01:00.005+01:00

Well, here it is! We entered the Dublin Pride Film Shorts Awards, and came second! All nine short films are here.

Please rate it so we have a chance of winning the YouTube Choice award on Sunday!

Dublin Pride Film Shorts Awards shortlist!

2009-06-16T20:10:00.000+01:00

We've been shortlisted for the first Dublin Pride Film Shorts Awards! The ceremony is at 8pm, Sunday 21st June, 2009, in Pantibar. Hosted by the ever-talented Mark O'Halloran. See you there! Admission free.
A selection of films that entered the competition will be shown in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, on Monday 22nd June at 9pm, again free!

World Première!

2009-06-14T22:51:00.005+01:00

"My First Kiss" gets its world première on Saturday 11th July 2009 at 10pm, supporting the wonderful "Identities", in Cinemobile, at the Galway Film Fleadh. Can't wait!

My First Kiss: World Première! [del.icio.us]

2009-06-14T15:01:07-07:00

Michael's first kiss

2009-05-22T18:18:00.003+01:00

21st Galway Film Fleadh 2009

2009-05-18T17:04:00.002+01:00

We've been accepted for the "Out on Film" strand for the 21st Galway Film Fleadh 2009!

Keeping busy

2009-05-08T18:23:00.004+01:00

I hadn't realised how much work goes into promoting a film and submitting it to festivals. It takes a long, long time.

Withoutabox is a great idea - instead of filling out different application forms to all the film festivals out there, they have automated the process so you can instantly see whether or not your film meets the festival's criteria. The trouble is, in the beginning, it's a pain in the neck to get all the details filled out. Some of it is baffling, to those of us who are new to the business. Never mind. With a helping hand from Vanessa at Loopline, I managed to get something together. The public page for the film there is here.

It's a daunting prospect submitting to festivals. There's the feeling that it's only a short little student film, which I try to combat with the knowledge that it worked bloody well and I still smile when I see it. And so many people worked so hard on the project.

So, I have submitted the film to the following festivals.

1. Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Film Festival

2. Galway Film Fleadh. There is an "Out on Film" thread to the festival, and I sent the film to its programmer as well.

3. The Super Shorts Film Festival in London. Might as well see how it fares in a general short film festival on this side of the ocean.

4. The Chicago International Reel Shorts Festival. It has a short documentary section, and has low-cost fees.

5. Reeling: The Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival - It's free for international submissions.

6. San Francisco International Festival of Short Films - this seems to be the biggest of them this season, and with a gay theme and Irish accents it might get accepted!

7. The Corona Cork Film Festival

8. The Kerry Film Festival

9. Being a newbie, I submitted it to the IFFI Film Festival in Galway on Withoutabox, thinking it was the Film Fleadh. Never mind.

10. The Dublin Pride Film Shorts Competition

Production stills slideshow

2009-05-05T13:43:00.003+01:00

Production stills by Hannah Reid. Click on "HQ" for best results! Thanks a million, Hannah!

Well, they laughed!

2009-04-24T12:11:00.003+01:00

Had a blast last night, a great crowd turned up and wine was flowing and then before we knew it both films were over! I really liked "The Club" - lovely camera shots, and the gentle quirky tone of the film was just right, I thought. And it was funny. When it came to "My First Kiss" I was planking it, but happily people laughed at the right spots and I'm delighted. Great to see people from BelongTo turn up, and so many of our interviewees, although poor Tony was ill with a chest infection and couldn't make it up from Tipp.

So, next week, I'll be sorting out the screeners to send to festivals, and get the withoutabox details sorted out for the film.

First Screening

2009-04-20T16:52:00.003+01:00

Please come along to the screening of "My First Kiss" and "The Club" (our sister documentary) on Thursday 23rd April 2009, downstairs in Filmbase, Curved Street, Dublin 2. It's at 7pm. Considering both films are five minutes long, it's going to be a short evening! But no doubt we shall decamp to some hostelry or other afterwards, as we can't promise to provide everyone with a glass of wine at the screening. We are students, after all!

The Edit

2009-04-17T20:59:00.005+01:00

Spent all day at Loopline, doing the edit. Greatly impressed with the skills of our editor, Genevieve Murphy, who constantly dazzled me with her speed and sheer "knack" of knowing when to cut.

We started off by putting together the first rough cut that I had worked out on iMovie over last weekend, and immediately I could see how easier it is to use Final Cut Pro when precision is necessary. That took till lunch, and it seemed to me to be something solid to work with, although I knew it wasn't right.

Then after lunch, Sé came in and gave his overview, which made sense. I was dreading him telling me that we had to lose something I valued. But he was clear on when the narrative didn't work, how strange it was to go from getting people's first kiss stories to then focus on one man's story. It didn't make sense. So he suggested a few structural changes that really worked.

A lot was snipped out, sometimes amazingly cleverly, and as a result it became funnier. Tony's story became clearer, with, I think, nothing lost in the cuts. He's still outrageous, but is also moving. And amazingly we've lost nearly three minutes in the edit, and it still works.

I'm dying to see it again, having slept on it. But on a one-day edit, that's it. Changes made, story told, and the mistakes covered up beautifully!

So, we are showing next Thursday, 23rd April, at 7pm, downstairs in Filmbase, Curved Street, Dublin 2. We are showing with our sister documentary, Bus Club. It'll all be over in ten minutes, so don't be late!

Tony

2009-04-15T20:51:00.003+01:00

Hannah has done some gorgeous photos! Here's Tony!

The paper edit

2009-04-14T15:18:00.005+01:00

To anyone who is doing the Documentary course again at Filmbase, and ends up doing the logging, transcribing and preparing for the paper edit: my sympathies. It's a complete headwreck. I've spent all this Easter weekend trying to get my head around it.

The nearest thing I can think of to explain it is that you're standing in a field on a huge piece of patterned cloth. Somewhere in that piece of cloth is the makings of a suit, and you have to find the right pieces to make it, and then cut and sew them together. But you can't take an aerial view and then choose the right pieces to cut, you have to stumble around on the cloth itself and see what makes sense on ground level.

Editors are, I take it, good at imagining aerial views.

I've tried to master my new iMac and put the rushes in iMovie. This had me, in the early stages, drowning in despair, as I could get nothing to fit together that looked remotely coherent in the first couple of days.

It is only at the editing stage that you really know what makes a good cutaway, and we really didn't do that many, despite our best efforts. I thought we did, but it's only now that I know what's required, and we really didn't do enough bland, neutral, gentle, ambling shots from interesting angles to serve as the visual backdrop to the interviews. It's what they told us in class - but you'll see what I mean when you see the shots, why so many of them do not work. Ah well, it's why they call it a course. Massive learning.

That said, by 3am this morning I kludged something together that (a) tells a story and (b) is tolerable to watch. It's too long, by 90 seconds, however, but I'm just glad I made anything work from it at all. It'll be a good place to start fro.

I don't think we've got that many options. The transition from the Budda Bag people to Tony was something I couldn't get my head around for ages.

What I've come up with is this:

Young people answering the question to My First Kiss, one after the other. Funny and individual. (One of them out of focus, but hey.)
The last one is Tony's answer.
Then we have the Title: My First Kiss.
Then we see Tony walking to the statue, and we hear him tell us a bit about his life on the farm. His early sexual adventuring. He moves to Dublin, we see his photographs. He talks about shame and guilt and living a double life. While he's talking we see him chatting to people around the statue. Then he talks about how things are for young people now, how wonderful it is, and we see cutaways of them kissing, one after the other. Then he says he loves life, and then we end with the group shot of everyone trying to kiss him.

Then we have the most amazing credits roll in, thanks to the brilliant Mr Clifford Parrott. They work a dream.

And that's it.

Doesn't sound much? It's too long. Wait till you see it. And, as hard as I can, I can't see how another narrative structure can work.

All I wanted to do was see if I could make something meaningful out of the material we shot. I'm fully prepared, and indeed anxiously awaiting, a professional editor's approach to the material, but at least she'll have something to work with.

What a rush

2009-04-08T22:19:00.003+01:00

The rushes. What a rollercoaster ride. At times I felt like hiding behind a sofa, at times I was whooping with delight. Sometimes I was squirming, sometimes I was laughing.

I was so nervous beforehand - viewing the rushes is a rush, because it's the moment you see whether or not the idea you had in your head works at all in practice. Ruth and I were warned by Vanessa from Loopline that it would be difficult for us, and she was right.

The strong points: Tony, Tony, Tony. What a gem of a man. We certainly have enough footage to do him justice. The young people lit up the screen with exactly the sort of energy I was hoping for, Harry and James's joint interview in particular.

However, at times the framing of Tony's face was less than ideal, and the Oscar Wilde book on the shelf behind him dominated the close-ups far more than I intended, it's the nature of print. Lesson learnt. And the blue vase deserves a credit. Also, even though I'd asked him to repeat my questions in his answers, quite a few times he didn't, and I worry about how that will work in editing.

The Oscar statue scenes are less successful, but they were always intended to be cutaways, and will work as such. Some of the kisses were just cringeworthy! No escaping it. And we could have done a lot more with them, shot them differently, but we were on the 58th minute of the day's tape at the time. But the fun shot of everyone kissing Tony worked very well as an end shot, I think.

The young folk on Sunday on the Budda Bag were fantastic, but we had a focus problem with one of our interviewees, which is disappointing, and I realise I had not communicated properly to John at one stage, and we failed to get cutaways for him. Oh well. He himself wasn't happy with what he said.

We certainly got at least three fantastic responses to the kisses question. And little snippets of how gay life was in Tony's time and how it is now, both good and not so good, give us enough to flesh out the story, add a layer or two.

Although there's a lot of good material there, I think we've got it about right for a five-minute film, (and a really good one at that) because the wonderful thing about what we saw is that Tony's story is very strong, and we can build something good around it.

We get the DVD tomorrow, and I have at least three options. Stick with the original proposal. Make it all about Tony. Or come up with something that fits around Tony's story using the other footage to support it in a different way.

Day Two of the shoot

2009-04-05T16:37:00.003+01:00

Again I'm pleased with today, and I think we got a lot of good stuff.

We made a compromise during the week, for reasons of cost, to start an hour later this morning in Outhouse, and to be honest, in retrospect, I'd rather have paid the money. We had a complicated series of setups to do that took ages, dressing the set, configuring the lighting for each interview. Knowing we had to clear out of the venue by 3pm meant that there was no luxury to get everything perfect. Never mind. A few shots that were planned I decided not to go for in the heat of the moment, and I don't think we'll mourn their loss.

I think we've actually got a lot of great stuff "in the can" and the challenge will be now to prioritise which good shots to use in the final cut. It's actually a great situation to be in, far more comfortable than the opposite!

Such lovely interviewees today. Fresh and interesting and different, and I think they all looked great. I hope they won't be disappointed that their actual presence in the final film will be so short.

Next step: seeing the rushes on Wednesday evening. Then I'll take the DVD home, transcribe everything, log the shots, and then when I have a handle on things I'll invite everyone over for a meal and we can discuss the rushes between us, before we go into the edit.

Thanks again, everyone, it all went swimmingly.

Day One of the shoot

2009-04-04T18:32:00.002+01:00

Well that was a lot of fun. Tony was an absolute dreamboat, engaging, warm, fully present, and funny. Everyone of the couples who said they'd turn up in Merrion Square did so, and more! They entered into the fun of it, and even couples like those San Francisco boys turning up were lovely to see.

I must say everyone on the crew was an absolute pleasure to work with, I feel very lucky indeed. There wasn't a wasted minute, really. We were ahead of schedule twice today! 58 minutes of tape recorded.

Technicals, technicals, oh dear. Hearing late this afternoon that there was a sound mixer waiting for us all the time on a shelf somewhere in Filmbase was a bit frustrating. For some reason we were told yesterday, categorically, that we weren't to have one. It meant that we had to fly on the seat of our pants this morning. Our rifle mike didn't work with the V1 camera we were given, we had to use its own mike, and there was no live camera sound feed to monitor things. In the afternoon the radio mike was distorting - I only hope it wasn't distorting in the morning! Anyway, apparently it sounded good in the end, Martin was happy, which is of course the main thing.

The lighting in the morning shoot in the library looked great, and although I waffled enormously in my questions, Tony is a trooper. I hope my giggling didn't interfere too much. The energy and spontaneity of the afternoon shoot, even though I was completely lax about shouting "Action" when I should have, should, I hope, provide us with a nice few shots to go under Tony's voiceover.

I loved, loved his answer to the "My First Kiss" question! And even though John asked me to ask it of him again as the shot was a bit too far away, everyone seemed happy by the end of it. Certainly, if this film is about character and heart, Tony supplied it in spades.

On my way home, I kicked myself for not asking the couples in Merrion Square about their first kiss. But then, I would have had to say goodbye to James and Harry and send them on their way, first, so as not to detract from their interview tomorrow morning, and that would have been weird. And I didn't trust the background noise in the square, it really was very noisy. Fine for what we shot, but not for such an intimate question, really.

But I can see this film being more about Tony's story than the others', now, and the young people are the context, the backdrop, rather than the other way around. Which is as I hoped it would be.

Camera Change

2009-04-03T19:52:00.000+01:00

The camera we ended up getting from filmbase wasn't a Z1 after all. We've got the smaller V1 instead.
I've been checking the beast out and familiarising myself with all the controls. I also dug out the manual: Manual for the V1
. There's quite a bit of difference and some of the controls are plain awkward.

This should be interesting!

2 days to go

2009-04-02T13:32:00.002+01:00

Greatly relieved the 50-minute-only taping rule has been eased. I quite see why they insisted on it in the first place, it meant we had to think very clearly about our shots and not just record a whole weekend's worth of stuff. But it had got to the stage of inventing code-words to start rolling in the middle of interviews, to preserve tape, which was unnecessarily stressful and a recipe for disaster, really.

Sé was helpful and constructive, and reminded me of my original idea of the photographs, which had somehow dropped off my radar in the rewriting. Tony says he has great photographs of him with curly hair.

The work will really be about setting up the lights in time, which of course is the main time-consuming thing of all indoor shoots. Hopefully we can get into the building early on Saturday and Sunday to give us a relaxed amount of time to get it right.

Lighting wise for Saturday morning, we now have an extra little challenge: to set up a shot where we can capture Tony looking at his photographs. We will also ask Hannah to photograph every one with her camera, just so each one is digitized.

I am going to write out the shooting script in 3 sections, for everyone to have in their hot little hands, one for Library, Oscar, and Budda Bag.

Weather forecast is looking better for Saturday afternoon. Rain in the morning giving way to better weather in the afternoon.

Soundtrack by Mark Ward

2009-03-31T23:19:00.002+01:00

Mark has done us a huge favour by supplying us with some instrumental tracks to play around with in the editing suite. I like four little pieces in particular, two up and chirpy, two slower. This is one called "Curl".

Acknowledgements and Credits

2009-03-31T15:11:00.019+01:00

Special thanks to:

Tony FitzPatrick

Felipe Alcantara - Michael Barron - Lisa Connell - T.J. Durkin - Adam Duxbury - Harry Hutchinson - Cathal Kavanagh - James Kavanagh - Conor Mahon - Jaime Nanci McEleney - Gregory Rimell - Sadie Ryan - Maria Stokes

Camera Supervisor
Denise Woods

Sound Supervisor
Brian Keegan

BelongTo
Gillian Brien - John Duffy - Glenn Keating

Outhouse
Fiona Armstrong - Tiffany Fitzgerald Brosnan - Eddie Parsons - Hannah Reid

Budda Bag supplied by
Budda Bag

Stills Photography
Hannah Reid

Animation
Clifford Parrott

Music
Mark Ward, Where Is This

Sound
Martin O'Donoghue

Camera
Declan Buckley
John White

Edited by
Genevieve Murphy

Produced by
Tatjana Morelli

Directed by
Dermod Moore

Image Tests

2009-03-30T22:23:00.022+01:00

Bringing a camera along to the recce at Merrion Square and Outhouse gave me a better idea of what would be possible and what to look out for over the weekend.

I had a quick look at the very rough footage we shot and imported it into Premiere and After Effects to explore further.

It gives a good idea of what we need to look out for in terms of composition (subject placement, colour/tone and depth of field). Our efforts here are obviously rough. Also, because the pixel aspect ratio for video/screens and computer monitors are different, the images look stretched so ignore that! (The stretching appears greater as the image size increases so click on the thumbnails for a closer look).

Here are the main points I'd like to mention:

We didn't white balance so there was a distinct colour shift in the footage.The camera was set to the preset indoor/outdoor setting on the camera. Bad move - as Dermod's knowing smile (and ruddy good looks) demonstrate.
Using just the Outhouse house lights, we got an adequate exposure to examine shots but the image tone is quite dark, in my opinion. There are coloured gels on the background but I would query whether the dark "dungeon" effect matches our intention.
Due to the size of the space (and the widest angle on my lens), the widest shot we can achieve (without getting a wide angle lens) is quite limited. I'm concerned about the shadows in the fireplace arch (it cuts through the interviewee) and Dermod is aware of the black holes made by the recesses. Also the floor must not be at a right angle to the wall. Dermod looks perpendicular but the background is slanting. Better watch that one!
A closer shot on the down the lens/straight to camera shot:
We need to take our time setting up the lights and with getting accurate colour balance so we can ensure that our images are "true colour". It's the skintones that we want to be accurate. I crudely shifted the colours in After Effects for the next image (and some others) while the second image below is from the original footage for comparison.
The library shot presents different challenges. There was natural daylight coming in from left of screen. If it is a cloudy day, that's fine but sunshine and we'll be getting inconsistent light as the sun moves/clouds appear etc. Blocking the windows will create another dark space (although it might actually work better for the content of these shots).
In my opinion, the lamps don't look so great when you can't see any of the shades. Also, the shelves are cutting through the victims head. Books need sorting. I'd be inclined to remove books that are visible in our close ups (except possibly the strategically placed Oscar Wilde book.)
Our exterior shot at Oscar Wilde's statue presents different problems. The side views of the statue are the best but looking from it's left, we are looking at a rather ugly shed (albeit a Georgian one!).
The view from the right is nicer but note the hotspots in the background as the sun reflects on the building. Is this a problem? (ranted it was an abnormally bright afternoon!)
We also had issues about how prominent or featured the statue should be. An even more side profile image was this one. There's a similar issue as previously with the hotspots background and without a true subject in this shot it looks awful. (Incidentally, it's the foreground bushes and Oscar's rock that should be in focus!)
Here's a wider angle - although I was concerned about combination of the bushes and the old man looking at younger gays kissing being possibly "unfortunate". Even Martin looks like he's up to no good here!

Camera recce

2009-03-30T20:38:00.004+01:00

Had a very constructive camera and lighting recce at Outhouse today. Took plenty of time to look at both locations, discuss the shots we're going to aim for, the possible problems we will have, and the effect we're aiming for. It was great to get such clear questions from Declan and John, it really helped to crystallize what I am looking for.

Hannah from Outhouse is going to do our production stills, which is great news, as she is a photographer, and will also be doing the in-house lighting in the downstairs location as well, on the Sunday.

Now, having worked things out with the camera team, I have to write a full shot list for everyone.

Loopline Film [del.icio.us]

2009-03-05T03:51:52-08:00

Filmbase Training [del.icio.us]

2009-03-05T03:37:02-08:00

YouTube Playlist: Kisses [del.icio.us]

2009-03-04T18:23:18-08:00

BeLonGTo! [del.icio.us]

2009-03-04T17:57:12-08:00