Battery Test.

Busy as ever. We still haven't started our scripts yet, it's getting close to the deadline! But we'll get there. We're doing a small film for a mobile phone company, one minute long sketch, just for fun and will be played on mobile phones as a battery test. More on that later and hopefully the clip too.

I had the pleasure of seeing the nearly locked picture of Darren Thorton's new film "Frankie" last night. It's great. Congratualtions Darren. I won't tell you what it's about yet, but I will tell you that it's an excellent short. When he's done and it's out there I'll put up a link to more info. But I'm sure it's going to do some business on the festival circuit in the coming year.

That's all for now, more news soon and hopefully a new clip. Keep coming back to the website, it will be updated soon with more pics, news and clips and feel free to leave comments in the guestbook, whether it be about Emily's Song, the other projects or on other peoples comments, get to know each other, so far everyone on there are my friends and all good people.

By for now.

Red Eye!

I've been busy since we've got back from Germany. I spent a couple of days entering more festivals and getting presskits and screeners together and sent off. We've been invited to a couple of festivals in Korea, the 1st Seoul Family Film Fest. and the 9th Seoul Youth Film Festival. We've also been accepted for competition to the Showcomtion Youth Film Fest in Shefield England, where we're up the UNICEF UK Award, so that's great news.

Things are heating up and time is slipping through our fingers as we race toward the Short Cuts Deadline with the Film Board next month. We have three scripts going in now, originally two, but we decided that seeing as we're trying to get a cycling feature film made it might be wise to get some practise in and make a ten minute short about a race, just to show them what we have in mind. Here's hoping they like the script! Next sunday we're going out to shoot some cycling footage for two minute clip to give them an idea of what we want to do, so that should be fun.

I'm very excited about this little piece of kit that's just come out. A new digital camera called RED... It looks pretty frickin snazy, I wont rattle on about it hear, just go to www.red.com and behold. It is a sexy piece of machinary!

Special Mention at Prestigious Festival

Emily's Song recieved a speicial mention at this years Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.

It's great news for us, we couldn't be happier.

‘Emily’s Song’ competed in the Children's and Youth Film Competition. The jury stated “The film is funny, spritely and entertaining and came very close to the winning film of this year's Festival. It shows that there is also a soft side to an insane boy and that family ties are also important. The film both moved us and made us laugh. The special mention goes to Frank Kelly and Thomas Kennedy from Ireland for their film Emily's Song.”

The 53rd edition of the prestigious Oberhausen Festival ran from the 3 – 8 May. 147 short films were selected from 43 countries to compete at the festival, chosen from over 6,500 entries received.

It was a great festival, very relaxed but well organised and there was an amazing standard of film. Thomas and I had our work cut out for us trying to get to see as many as we could. The competition was strong and the films were excellent. We met some talented film makers and over all it was a very inspirational week.

The overall winner in our section was Schnabi, from Switzerland, which was excellent, about sexual curiousity at the precipice of puberty but told in a very innocent, charming and funny way. Schnabi mean "Willy" by the way!

We were also delighted at the fact that another Irish film won the principal prize in the International Competition, Methamorphasis by Clare Langan, which happened to be my favourite film of the festival. It was absolutely breathtaking a true work of cinematic art. Stunning landscapes and beautiful imagery it was about the harsh and raw destructive power of nature. Seek this film out.

Clare also has installations based on her films which include huge images taken from her films. I'm going to the next one, I would strongly recommend that anyone reading this go find it too. go to www.clarelangan.com to chesk out her work. She told me her website needs updating, at the moment it's a year old, but keep checking back.

Well that's all from me for the moment. I'm off to get the next film moving. We have two short scripts to get ready over the next three weeks, so we've a lot of work to do. Hopefully one of them will break some ground and we can get back to Oberhausen some day. It was a great festival.

Me outside our hotel in Oberhausen.