Secondary School Years: (2020-2022)
I began my journey as a creative a while back in secondary school (roughly at the age of 16) through the means of content creation. This content creation I used as a creative outlet and taught me skills I carried right through to the present day, the basics of video editing. Some examples of this include YouTube videos of Airsoft, a sport popular within my friend group at the time. These videos were created with initially a cheap action camera (later upgraded to GoPro Hero 7 which I still use now) and edited together all on my iPhone using Lightbrick's Videoleap and Photofox apps.
This content creation introduced me to just one of my favourite aspects of creating, collaboration. "Minute Airsoft", is a man named Paddy who had reached out to me online after he came across some of my videos. Paddy, curious about video making had approached me with questions about my experience doing it, and not before long he was up and running himself. We ultimately only got to collaborate a handful of times with conflicting schedules and life being busy with school work but ultimately those few times wound up being, in my opinion, the most rewarding creatively.
The extra cogs in the creative machine added more moving parts but resulted in a more thorough and in-depth result, I wish we would have had more of an opportunity to collaborate! Here's an example of one of our short pieces, one of my last and favourite pieces made in my Airsoft journey.
The Friendliest Enemies in Airsoft (Urban Assault Airsoft)
Television and Film Production Course (2022-2023):
Moving on to formal education, next came my time in a year long post leaving cert course in Film and Television Production. I entered this in the year 2022, no coincidence shortly after I began my photography journey. This course expanded my pre-existing knowledge in video editing, and gave me a lot of new insights into the Film and Television Industry, teaching me practices, lingo and methods used in the creation of films/shows.
Additionally, from a bit of experimenting in my own time outside and in-class I picked up a solid introduction into much of the Adobe Suite; for example Lightroom CC, Premier Pro, Photoshop and Illustrator.
It taught me further lessons around my previously mentioned loved aspect of creation, collaboration. We were tasked with shooting a class-wide film at the end of the year, and to pass this each of us had to complete an edit of a film. This meant there was a one size fits all approach to the creation of the film, and frankly I am not sure how much sense the story made but given the criteria the class and I were adhering to, we gave it a good go. This short film is called Unspoken.
The long and short of the story is: a woman named Áine feels she is going crazy and attends therapy sessions, she feels she is going crazy fearing she is being watched and things in her house aren't as she left them, and her therapist is secretly obsessed with her and he is sneaking into her house moving objects around and wanting to be closer to her.
On shooting day the class broke into a Team A and a Team B where we would each film different parts of the story simultaneously to optimise time, one crew with the crazy therapist as he broke in and trespassed, and one with Áine as she came home discovered the mess in her house. I was largely in charge of camera for this production, and when creating my edit of it I tried to be creative with clips usage using bloopers/laughing outtakes as hallucinations. To experiment I also tried the ideas of incorporating chapters as opposed to simply allowing the story to flow.
Unspoken (2023)
Media Studies (Year One, 2023-2024)
When I think of the first year of Media Studies, the thumbnail mental image is our first year documentaries assignment, we were broken up into small 4-6 people sized groups and tasked with creating a documentary. Our idea, coined by my friend Joe was the history of the K Club and it's hosting of the famous Ryder Cup in 2006.
We conducted multiple interviews, one with the operations manager of the K Club Niall Molloy, and two with fans of the Ryder Cup and got all of their insights on the K Club and the Ryder Cup. Credits are very flexible in this project given the small team we had but myself and Maeve McCann were largely in charge of camera operating, Joseph Donovan was the presenter and Dan Byrne was the director as he was the golf fanatic among us (he also appeared as an interviewee.)
The making of this piece was a blast, four friends invited on-site of the K Club grounds left with a camera, fine weather and a golf cart to get around. What was there not to love? The K Club was day two of production and entailed us first recording our interview with Niall Molloy (Golf Operation Manager of the K Club), followed by the shooting of B Roll around the beautiful grounds. Day one was the shooting of interviews with the fans of the Ryder Cup at their house. Questions were kept the same for both fans and Niall Molloy and were all pieced together side by side.
The History of the K Club and Ryder Cup (2023)
Media Studies (Year Two, 2024-2025)
Year Two took us away from the comfort and safety net of "let's try that again!" when we delved into broadcast production. This took the form of one broadcast drama piece, and one live game show production (although our class definitely took creative liberty with the second one!)
Production number one, the live drama piece "One Last Drink" follows criminal Declan (played by Jamie Reilly) and his two accomplices Kevin and Sarah (played by Robert Hickey and Oliva King) in the aftermath of a robbery gone wrong, where Declan's brother Francis, a Guard confronts him for his lapse in judgement.
This production was recorded with a three point camera set up, all of which were stationary besides panning and zooming in accordance to the shooting script giving on the day, I was in charge of camera three for the duration.
Declan (Jamie Shields) discussing and disputing his grim circumstances with his brother Francis.
Production two "After Hours with Joe and Scott" was written (by Rian Farrell) to be an interview and gameshow gone wrong. It threads the line of scripted and unplanned where some scripted segments are carried out by hosts and actors faking an interview for the show, whilst also incorporating unplanned and unscripted interviews and games too. The crash and burn out of Joe (Joseph Donovan) towards the end steals the show with his anger sparked with the news that the show had been cancelled.
For this production I was in charge of camera one, which doesn't actually appear in the clip shown below, but we all faced the same new challenges, positioning. Cameras in this production were under a bit more pressure than in the previous production, moving around between three sets: the main stage, the side stage and "Joe's Hot Topics" corner. This meant a lot more crabbing and tracking in addition to previous responsibilities.
Joe's fake crash and burn after a long show (Clip from live production two "After Hours with Joe and Scott")
Media Studies (Year Three, 2025-2026)
And much to my dismay and surprise, college didn't last forever. Our final year arrived and this is where the fun began. We finally arrived at short film production. In this year we had the freedom of shooting two short films, one three minute film which had to have a "twist in the tale", and one ten minute film in semester two where we were given more freedom regarding story, plot and approach.
Project One - HOME EARLY
Project one was "HOME EARLY". We had a script for the shooting day, and that was about it. All of us in the crew were admittedly drowning in other college course work at this point and the stars aligned in just the wrong way in the lead up to it. We had sorted our cast and our script (written by Harry Prendergast) and that was about it. The day of the shoot Harry and I met on campus early to collect camera equipment and spit ball ideas of a shot list, but we couldn't get too far as we were never at the house we were shooting in before. This got the barebones out of the way and at least had us on a similar page walking in.
Not before long we met the rest of the crew and our talents about an hour prior to shooting on campus; we had discussed a prop that was needed earlier that morning, a photo frame of the man who owned the home (the reoccurring face of Joseph Donovan). Joe brought a frame and I took a photo on my phone got it printed on campus and with that, we were off to shoot.
We arrived at the house where we chatted a bit more, had a cup of tea and got down to shooting. Minimal artificial lighting was used as thankfully the living room we were shooting in was good and bright. We shot chunk of dialogue by chunk of dialogue and I was coming up with framing and potential shots as we were going at Harry and Ruaidhrí's direction. Within four hours we got the shots we were after for the house parts of the film, next came the office scenes.
The office scenes were shot within the Maynooth University Media Area we learned everything else over the years, Kairos Communications. This was an extremely quick and brief visit as the building was busy with other happenings at the time. All indoor scenes were shot in three minutes flat!
Not before long we met the rest of the crew and our talents about an hour prior to shooting on campus; we had discussed a prop that was needed earlier that morning, a photo frame of the man who owned the home (the reoccurring face of Joseph Donovan). Joe brought a frame and I took a photo on my phone got it printed on campus and with that, we were off to shoot.
We arrived at the house where we chatted a bit more, had a cup of tea and got down to shooting. Minimal artificial lighting was used as thankfully the living room we were shooting in was good and bright. We shot chunk of dialogue by chunk of dialogue and I was coming up with framing and potential shots as we were going at Harry and Ruaidhrí's direction. Within four hours we got the shots we were after for the house parts of the film, next came the office scenes.
The office scenes were shot within the Maynooth University Media Area we learned everything else over the years, Kairos Communications. This was an extremely quick and brief visit as the building was busy with other happenings at the time. All indoor scenes were shot in three minutes flat!
I took care of editing for this project too, it was completed in Adobe Premier Pro, the original cut (which I unfortunately did not keep a copy of) was around four and a half minutes in length and spent more time on Home Owner's journey home.
HOME EARLY (2025)
Project Two - Last Measure (write up coming soon)