Writing Blog

Things that interest or influence me.

As we go about our lives, at home, on the road or at work, just when we are wondering what to wear or absent-mindedly cleaning something or pensively gazing out the train window or humming in the shower, there are moments when the world that we were just so occupied with, suddenly fades. We enter a clearing whose boundaries we cannot see and where a different time prevails. Seconds become an eternity. Just as a scent can take us back to our childhood in a heartbeat, all of a sudden we sense again who we are, what the essence of our being is and what truly matters. At such moments, a long-lingering question may resurface, we are reminded of somebody we used to love very much and who we had long forgotten, a sudden worry flashes through our hearts, or we feel gently reminded to act finally upon something we intended to do for quite a while. It might even dawn on us that we’re being seen and loved unconditionally, just as we are. Our talents and tasks alike are now clear before our eyes. And before we know it, a car honks, a phone rings, we cross a street - and life goes on…

-Donata Wenders

I’m looking for an intensity of focus. It’s a bit like tuning a guitar string. You tighten and tighten and nothing really changes until you hit that tension and suddenly it’s there: you’ve got a note.

DOG YEARS - GOAL FOR JANUARY

To come up with fuller and more interesting characters by looking at each character’s (1.) characteristics, (2.) story, (3.) philosophy and (4.) question they are exploring OR is being explored through them.

I then hope to find a more interesting way of bringing them together once they have been better developed and thought out.

Two weeks and counting..

the worst thing in the world is unfulfilled potential

—bob, gleneely

For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It’s about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact.

Things Tames by Katie Armstrong

Are you responsible for the things you tame?

Niamh

Niamh is changeable: prone to inexplicable melancholy or urges that are often linked to an ability to foresee or anticipate events in the same way animals can feel changes in the weather. She acts without thought, makes decisions instinctively as if some external force moves her. Her eyes are like deep liquid pools incomprehensible, unfathomable. She can read people very well and cut through pretence or falsehood.


What she fears most is stagnation, restriction. She wants to keep moving, changing and re-inventing herself. Craves ‘newness’.


She sidesteps all impediments to her freedom such as the restraints of womanhood, local boy Liam’s desires to tame her, bend her to his will, and her parent’s battle for control of her both physically and emotionally as they go through a break-up.


She drowns out the noise of the world by swimming deep underwater, which she likens to the womb.

The climax of the film is when Liam sees Niamh go out for a swim by herself. She goes under and doesn’t emerge. He runs to the water and battles the waves to get out to her. He gets into trouble himself. When Niamh eventually emerges she sees Liam’s clothes tossed on the beach. She scans the beach but there is no sign of Liam. His body washes ashore, drowned. Liam will never age and the sea will never be the same for Niamh again.

Our idea, Flow, deals with the classical element of Water in three ways:

1. Our character, Niamh, has an astrological Water personality: Emotional and intuitive but can also be cold and irrational.

2. Story revolves around attributes of Water i.e. takes the path of least resistance, fluidity, changes state, purifies, cleanses, a primordial element from which life started and on which life depends.

3. Water features literally in the story; the sea, rain, bath, boiling kettle etc

Water is a feminine element associated with rebirth, the subconscious, creativity. We have named our main character after Niamh Chinn Óir, daughter of the sea-god Manannán Mac Lir.

An Dubhagán (The Depths)

An allegorical film that takes the classical element of Water (as in Earth, 

Water, Fire, Air) and explores it through the character traits, allusions and images.

This isn’t about now. This is about forever. This is a place where you come to sit in the low light and feel the eons rolling by to be taken towards the gates that open onto the thresholds of eternity, to feel the poignancy of our comings and our goings, our entrances and our exits, our births and our deaths; womb, tomb and everything in between. Can art every be more complete than this?

—The Power of Art by Simon Shama: Rothko http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHsDeiV-QAs