This year to hone my skills as a Director I did a the MSc in Digital Feature Film Production run by Filmbase and Staffordshire University. I chose this course as it is one of the few courses in the world that offers it's students the chance to make a full feature film.
After a grueling pitching session in early January, I was selected to co-direct our film How To Be Happy along with Mark Gaster & Michael Rob Cosdine. We had a very talented crew made up from our highly trained class and a great cast lead by Brian Gleeson & Gemma-Leah Devereux. How To Be Happy is an indie comedy about a marriage counsellor named Cormac who becomes overly involved with his clients in a misguided pursuit of love and happiness. After a complaint is made against him he soon attracts the attention of a private investigator named Flor, who he soon finds himself falling for. Meanwhile his misguided cousin Al is determined to get Cormac and his x-wife Jenny back together, as he fails to see the demise of his own marriage. If that wasn't enough, one of the female clients who Cormac had a moment of weakness with is married to a notorious Dublin gangster, Larry 'the Mangler' Doyle. Larry has a good feeling about Cormac and believes him to be the man who can get him and his estranged wife back on track. Unfortunately for everyone, Cormac is probably the worst counsellor that ever existed. |
The story for How To Be Happy was written by Conor Horgan (One Hundred Mornings). It was produced by Richie Bolger and David Brady with a budget of €11,000 which was raised on fundit.ie and was shot it on a RED one camera by Director of Photography Richard Twomey. The film premiered in the Galway Film Fleadh 2013 with two sell out screenings and it currently has a run of other festivals ahead of it.
How it all started...
Back in 2001 while doing a Diploma in Media Production I started making movies at the weekends with my friends in addition to my course work. At the time it seemed like we were just having fun but the reality was that it gave me the foundations for telling visual stories. In 2004 while working as a runner in a post production facility in Dublin I met Paul Bushe. With similar interests in film we soon put our heads together and made our first short, A Taxing Night. A Taxing Night went on to win Best First Irish Short at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2005. Ever since then we have writen, produced and directed many shorts and sketches as well as writing several feature screenplays, including several drafts of Shrooms 3D, the sequel to Treasure Entertainment's 2007 hit horror movie Shrooms. It is currently still in development. Paul and I operate under the name Two Joker Films and currently have several feature projects at various stages of development on our slate.
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Our latest short film Who's There? Is about a paranoid conspiracy theorist Nick Ryan who on New Year's eve 2012 Nick gets a visit from his friend Jason, but Nick is not in the celebrating mood. He has something important to tell Jason, a dark truth that he must reveal to him and to the world. Who's There? went online on December 2012 and within a week found a world wide viewership with the help of a posting on aintitcool.com's Saturday Shorts program.
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Our 2011 short film Timeless Man is a fast paced witty comedy with overtures of iconic time travel classics. It follows the vain efforts of eccentric time traveller and music fan Benjamin Hewson as he tries to witness rock music history in the making.
Timeless Man was screened in festivals around the world and was part of the 2012 Cannes Court Métrage - Festival de Cannes. It also had internet success after it was posted on i09.com when it received over 10,000 views in just a few days. |
Timeless Man picked up two awards at the Underground Cinema Awards 2012. Lloyd Fitzgibbon picked up Best Actor and myself and my co-director/editor Paul Bushe received the Best Editor award. I also received a nomination for Best Screenplay.
Below is a playlist of just some of my work to date, starting a sizzle reel of my directing work on How To Be Happy. Next is the short film Who's There?, then Timeless Man and then The Making Of Timeless Man, featuring myself and my co-director Paul Bushe talking about making the ambitious sci-fi music comedy with no funding. Following that are several other fun pieces. |