More Online TV From Kilkenny

We’re a talented bunch of people in Kilkenny. That said - Kilkenny people are quite talented. “The Creative Capital of Ireland” it has been called in the past. I’m also lucky and consider myself privileged to travel in quite a number of creative circles, one of those would be an association with Mycrofilms.

Though not directly involved with Mycrofilms, I’ve spent a few days on set with them in the past and there’s a crosspolination of bodies involved with The Devious Theatre Company and KilkennyMusic.com, both of which I head up.

So as the music calendar heads into the latter part of the year and our theatre programme takes a bit of a breather, I’m delighted to see that Mycrofilms (who are filming this week) have just released the trailer for Episode 3, due for full release later in the year.

You can watch episode one ‘The Kris Kringle Konundrum’ and the second episode ‘The Scarlet Lady Vanishes’ right here. If you’re in Kilkenny this week then keep an eye out of the Myrcrofilms crew this week. Rumour has they were spotted in the Castle Park vicinity…

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The Scarlet Lady Vanishes

On Saturday night I made my way to the premiere of Vultures epsiode 2: The Scarlet Lady Vanishes held in my home away from home of Cleere’s Theatre in Kilkenny.

Vultures is the flagship production of fledgling film company, Mycrofilms, based in Kilkenny and engineered by three great friends of mine. Like ourselves at KilkennyMusic.com, Mycrofilms have just received some arts office funding for 2008 which will enable them to complete the series, production wrapping on the sixth episode by next summer.

While I enjoyed the first episode immensely, the guys have raised the bar for the second episode which was extremely well received on the night. Even if it’s just for the music video montage early in the show, do, give The Scarlet Lady Vanishes a look.

Running time on this one is a bit shorter at around the half hour mark (compared to the TV hour of the first episode).

For more on the show, check out VulturesPI.com.

The Scarlet Lady Vanishes, This Weekend

Close friends of mine and advocates for internet film, the Mycrofilms crew are set to debut the second of six planned webispodes of Vultures this Sunday.

For those who attended CreativeCamp in Kilkenny earlier this year, we held a lunchtime screening of the first episode, the Kris Kringle Konundrum. The second episode was filmed over late March / early April and after a small technical hitch is now ready for public viewing. Having spent a day on set of both productions so far, I’ll be attending the cast and crew screening in Cleere’s Theatre in Kilkenny this Saturday night.

Vultures, written & directed by John Morton & Paddy Dunne (who are also part of The Devious Theatre Company fold, the theatre company I established with John over two years ago), is the story of three private detectives who run a small scale private investigation agency in small town Ireland. The moderately successful business is called Vulture Private Investigations and specialises in dealing with divorce cases, fraud, missing persons, animals and plants and occasionally, just occasionally, they’ll be served up something that approximates a mystery.

The trio of Mycrofilms, The Devious Theatre Company and KilkennyMusic.com were all successful in securing funding from Kilkenny County Council’s Arts Office earlier this month. With funding set to be released around the start of June, there’s going to be a flurry of film, theatre and music activity in Kilkenny over the summer months.

The Scarlet Lady Vanishes will be available from VulturesPi.com, iTunes, Blip.tv and a number of other online sources from Sunday morning, May 18th.

Stage6 Shuts Its Doors On Thursday

So Stage6 is shutting its doors or so last night’s newsletter announced. After failing to find any alternative to keep the service going “either as its own private entity or by selling it to another company”, DivX have announced the plug will be pulled on Stage6.com com Thursday February 28th.

Since its launch Stage6 rapidly became one of my favourite destinations for online video, not just because you could find the odd episode of Lost or Prison Break on it (if you were quick enough to find it), but because of the high quality of video delivered and the fact you could find some decent original content.

Relatively unrestricted by both length and filesize, Stage6 houses a massive range of original online shows, interviews, documentaries, old movies, foreign movies, film trailers, music videos and much more.

In terms of local use, one example of quality content to be found on Stage6 is that of ‘Vultures’, a web based sitcom produced by friends of mine at Mycrofilms, a new independent film company based in Kilkenny. Before Vultures hits iTunes and starts looking for a new home online, check out the first episode while you can by visiting the Vultures channel. If you prefer to wait, we’re also planning a screening of Vultures (running time approx 40 minutes) during lunch in one of the rooms at CreativeCamp on March 8th.

It’s just a pity the overall Stage6 service couldn’t be maintained.

Microfilms & The Kris Kringle Konundrum

Tomorrow morning I’ll be making a cameo appearance with Microfilms, a new production company established in Kilkenny by some good friends of mine. If you’re in Kilkenny tomorrow morning, I’ll be the one freezing in a Santa suit on Kieran street, making a quick appearance as a decoy Santa before hitting the office for my day’s work.

It is great to see more of the creative talents in Kilkenny hard at work.

Microfilms are, as their MySpace suggests

… a filmmaking collective in Kilkenny operating with the intention to create new short films, music videos, animation, features (fingers crossed). We want to utilise the talents of many of our local filmmaking brethren and create top quality entertainment produce geared towards internet distribution.

Because sometimes, just sometimes, Irish films don’t need to be about men chasing cows around fields to fiddle music.

Our first production is VULTURES and it’s currently into it’s second week of shooting. It’s a web based sitcom following a hapless trio of private detectives as they run a humdrum business in a small Irish town. Our first online episode is entitled THE KRIS KRINGLE KONUNDRUM and will be aired around Christmas 2007. It’s preceded by a promotional trailer for Vulture Private Investigations which can be viewed above.

I’m sure that discussing the development of ‘webisodes’ and the video production sequence for the online market would be a welcome addition to the billing at CreativeCamp in Kilkenny come March.

Young Irish Film Makers Go YouTube

I’ve been distracting myself with other blogs, client launches, giving talks in Wicklow, a chest infection, an ingrown toenail (which got sorted yesterday) and so many other things that I’ve missed a few posts here over the last few days. Today too is the first time my laptop has been switched on since Sunday.

That much aside though I should say that one of the things I was working on towards the end of last week was getting Young Irish Film Makers on YouTube and sorting out some kind of online direction for them for 2008.

While some of the members have been posting to Google Video or YouTube under their individual accounts, there was nothing centralised to view the works produced by members, those involved in outreach activities and more. At present they’ve posted the second trailer for upcoming 2008 feature release ‘Suckers’ along with a clip from 2006 release ‘Stealaway’.

I’ve been assured there will be several clips added to the YIFM YouTube channel a week so if you’re interested in following the works produced by members (aged 10 upwards) then keep an eye on it.

Related link: YIFM.com

Pixenate On Intruders.tv

Intruders.tv have an interview with Walter Higgins of Pixenate online this morning.

Keep em coming.

Pixenate will be on display at DemoBar this coming Thursday.

YouTube Screening Process To ‘Recognise Infringing Videos’

Interesting one this, Google announced over the weekend (or at least I read over the weekend) that they are due to introduce a new screening technology into the YouTube realm which will ‘recognize infringing videos’. Google has been getting it in the neck and everywhere else from Viacom of late in relation to copyright infringement and the uploading by YouTube users of copyright protected video footage to the video sharing website.

“We hope to have the testing completed and technology available by sometime in the Fall,” a Google rep added in an e-mail to Sandoval. “But this is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken, and as always with cutting-edge technologies, it’s difficult to forecast specific launch dates.”

The story appeared in the New York Times online edition (via AP) on Saturday morning. While the Google and YouTube family hope that the move to introduce the screening will “hopefully eliminate such disputes in the future” and a lawyer for Viacom states that they would be “very grateful” for the introduction of the technology to eliminate copyright infringing videos appearing on YouTube, I can’t see it do anything to quell the existing lawsuit or actions planned by the likes of Viacom, the Premier League

Note: You won’t find any copyright infringing footage on the KilkennyMusic.com YouTube channel (yes, we’ve a long way to go yet…)

YouTube Mobile Launched

One of the problems of my recent RSS diet is that I miss out on certain news stories - this one in particular from Saturday when it was announced that the Verizon exclusive control over YouTube Mobile (m.youtube.com) has passed and the service is now open to the public. Of course, if you flick open the address in your mobile you’re likely to be greeted by

YouTube Mobile is a data intensive application. We highly recommend that you upgrade to an unlimited data plan with your mobile service provider to avoid additional charges.

but in saying that, if you’re on a flat-rate data plan or mobile wifi service then you’ll be pretty happy. Although I mention it here I’ve yet to try the mobile service - 1) having only discovered this morning that it is gone live and 2) I’m making an effort to cut down my mobile bill, not increase it. Good news for mobile users though is that handset support is pretty extensive with all videos for YouTube Mobile encoded in the 3GP format.

At present there’s only a small portion of YouTube’s current content available on the mobile service but if you’re a YouTube junkie then there’s more than enough to get you started.

Video: Blog Awards On The Telly

Courtesy of redmum

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