Have You Met Janine Drew Yet?

Filming for Vultures episode four here in Kilkenny, The Case Of The Poisoned Dates, is almost complete and in advance of the episode’s release, the Mycrofilms bunch recently released a new promo for the episode.

As far back as she can remember, Janine Drew always wanted to be a private detective. And now that she’s in Transition Year, there’s only one place she wants to go on work experience: Vulture Private Investigations. And no one’s going to stop her: not Mrs. Curtin, not her parents and especially not the detectives of V.P.I. Janine Drew is all about ambition. She is smart, focused, highly intelligent and can actually smoke and chew gum at the same time.

What she isn’t however is discreet. It can be easily deduced that Janine is what is known as a ‘chav.’ She likes to wear lots of pink, is fond of her bling, is loud and gossipy and adorns her feet with those monstrosities known as UGG boots. She is Dan McGrain’s worst nightmare come to life: an obnoxiously modern female. And she will break your face if you keep staring at her.

For more on the episode, check here, or play the trailer above.

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Watch Now: The Mystery Of The Night Time Refuse

On Saturday night I went along to the premiere screening of The Mystery Of The Night Time Refuse, the latest episode in the current series of Vultures. I almost laughed my ass off in parts (seriously) and the lads have done another great job in producing this episode, something which couldn’t be done without the terrific assistance from the Kilkenny County Council Arts Office who also support the activities of The Devious Theatre Company and KilkennyMusic.com.

While I’ve been cast to appear in episode six there’s a possibility I’ll be making a third cameo in four episodes when shooting resumes for episode four later this month.

Filmed and produced entirely on location in Kilkenny (well, sort-of, for this episode), you can now watch or download the third episode for free online. Visit VulturesPI.com or start playing the video above.

Another Helping Of Online Comedy From Vultures

VULTURES, the online sitcom produced here in Kilkenny sees its third episode premiered this coming Saturday in the back room in Ryan’s on Friary Street for 8pm.

Vultures is a comedy about three private detectives who run a moderately successful private investigation agency called Vulture Private Investigations. They specialise in divorce cases, fraud, missing persons, animals or plants and occasionally, just occasionally, they’ll be served up something that approximates a mystery. Written, produced and directed by Mycrofilms here in Kilkenny, The Mystery Of The Night Time Refuse (the third episode) will also be available online at VulturesPI.com from this Sunday, November 9th.

The story sees the gentlemen detectives of V.P.I procuring new offices, only to find that someone is illegally dumping rubbish outside. When ball busting rubbish warden Ned Savage (John Doran) shows them evidence that the rubbish is theirs and issues them a fine, Tennyson, Vultour and McGrain realise that someone is trying to push them out of business. But what fiend would do such a thing? And is it safe to inspect manky bags of rubbish in a contained area? And what does Eddie Hobbs have to do with all this?

The fourth episode is currently in filming in Kilkenny with a view to being released before the end of the year (or I would hope anyway).

Production on the entire series will have concluded by next summer.

Keep an eye on VulturesPI.com for the latest installment this weekend.

I’m Going To Destroy Kilkenny And Carlow

photo credit: fdecomite

As Damien mentioned earlier this morning and I blurted out on Twitter yesterday, I’ve finally been able to announce my current project, albeit almost a week past my original October 1st deadline.

Myself and a few of the other deviants are taking on HG Wells’ sci-fi classic ‘The War Of The Worlds’ in a production to be broadcast between 9pm and 10pm, Thursday October 30th this year on KCLR 96FM. While we won’t be doing an actual live performance, we’re taking on all the production (as usual), both pre and post for the show. Just when I thought my evenings were coming back to me and all…

If you want to listen in online, you’ll be able to do so by visiting the KCLR 96FM website. For those who miss the live broadcast, we’re going to look at making a podcast series out of the production (perhaps four mini chapters as well as a full-length release) for release from DeviousTheatre.com in the day or two after broadcast.

I did manage to squeeze off a QIK of the announcement yesterday, in doing show highlighting the new DeviousTheatre.com (relaunched) along with matching top and pants for the MySpace and Bebo.

So why destroy Kilkenny and Carlow? Well, we figured the station Orson Welles so gracefully attacked back in 1938 has already been done and given we’re getting nice airtime on local radio, we thought we’d localise the production, also coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the original broadcast that rocked the US at the time of its release.

Castlecomer will fall, Kilkenny City will lay in ruins and poor Carlow just won’t know what hit it.

Is this a first for Irish theatre as well? Podcasting productions in that manner? I’d like to think it is but should really do a bit more looking into the subject.

That’s enough coming up for air… back to the real world for my Tuesday evening.

Slow Down, Go Further, Share A Car?

photo credit: thingermejig

I met Paul Brennan, the man behind Future Proof Kilkenny some months ago and I always meant to slip a note into the blog about the events Future Proof run here in town.

This week, coinciding with EU Mobility Week, Future Proof Kilkenny are hosting a seminar on Sustainable Transport. While some of the talks will look at Kilkenny’s plans for cycling, the future of city motoring and more, one of the talks will come from Mike Newham of GoCar, a new pay-as-you-go car-sharing business launching in Cork this Friday.

I’m particularly interested myself in how GoCar will do in Cork and if there’s a possibility we’ll see something like it happen elsewhere in the country (as opposed to something like DublinTraffic.ie).

Following a light lunch there will also be a demo of the REVA electric car in Butler House carpark. The event (half day) takes place in Butler House, is priced €15 and you can grab all the details here.

Note: Trying the Photo Dropper plugin for Wordpress 2.5+ to grab Creative Commons licensed images for the blog posts. Another thing I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time.

Wifi Breakfast Gives Food For Thought

For the last six weeks or so, maybe a little more, I’ve been making more time to get out of the office when it comes to planning on projects, dealing with client emails or any of the music and theatre related activities.

I’ll either pencil a morning in at home or I’ll take to a coffee shop in Kilkenny. During the recent Smitten run with The Devious Theatre Company I spent some time working from a corner of ‘The Barn’ (theatre venue), Crotty’s coffee shop on Kieran Street, The Field on High Street (great grub) and now the Kilkenny Cafe at Market Cross.

While the O2 broadband connection in my bag here beside me will allow me to work online from relatively anywhere in Kilkenny, the Kilkenny Cafe (as I mentioned in this video this morning) offer a ‘Meeting Room’ facility, having changed the upper level of the cafe to provide free wifi access (you don’t need a card or key) and powerpoints for your laptop / mobile phone.

So twice in two weeks I’ve found myself sitting here, breakfast on one side, laptop on the other, plenty of food for thought.

When you spend as long in the office as I tend to do, it does good get out of there every now and again and take the work with me.

Plus, the tea isn’t too bad either.

Note: The Asus EEE PC above isn’t mine, but I did have the joy of setting it up and getting to tinker around with it for a while. Works well in a wire-free environment.

PodCamp Ireland Set For September 27th 2008

As the dust settles on 3DCamp in Limerick and bulk orders for sun cream, mustard, burgers and sausages start hitting the shops in Terryglass ahead of OpenCoffee Club BBQ in July, myself, Bernie Goldbach and Krishna De (at present) are putting the wheels in motion behind the second PodCamp Ireland.

What we can tell you at this early stage is that the day will be bigger than last year, it will be held in Kilkenny again, and PodCamp Ireland will take place on Saturday September 27th (same weekend as last year).

For the first themed BarCamp event of it’s type (towards podcasting and new media), we enjoyed a successful day in Kilkenny last September, opening the unconference doors to a host of new faces from the world of the arts, music, design and more.

Bolstering content on the day through new areas of discussion and development in audio, video, podcasting, blogging and catering for complete newcomers to experienced hands, we’ll be hoping to repeat the success of last year’s inaugural event.

If you are interested in getting involved in steering the day, lending ahead at any possible point, do get in touch with any of us. Blogging should resume on PodCampIreland.com over the coming days and weeks as we rejig the 2007 signup process to fall in line with the current system enjoyed by 3DCamp and CreativeCamp (i.e. there will be no wiki signup process as there was last year).

You can track PodCamp Ireland developments on Jaiku by visiting the PodCamp Ireland channel, or over on Twitter track the #pci tag.

Blogging For (Creative) Beginners

I’ll be giving a half day beginner blogging course in Kilkenny in May under the ArtLinks banner. With details being finalised just before the weekend and rolling out with the new ArtLinks business courses being promoted for the summer, I’ll have to say I’m looking forward to giving the course and working with more creative types in Kilkenny.

That said, the course will be promoted to creative practitioners working within Kilkenny, Carlow, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow and should attract a good blend of visual artists, musicians, writers and the likes. This will be the second course I’ve been involved in putting together for ArtLinks, having facilitated a “Getting Ahead In The Music Industry” day (my 90 minute talk focusing on effective use of the web for musicians) in Wicklow last November.

For musicians who are new to blogging and don’t want to wait until May for a chat, have a gander of Kyra Reed’s recent blog post for TuneCore on Why Every Artist Needs A Blog.

It is also nice to see that the Kilkenny Arts Office have also started the ball blogging about their Artist In Residence programme at the gallery at 72 John Street.