Donal Foreman won 1st Prize at the festival for his film "The Unmentionable". Shot in Dublin with Dog Day Films, the film ran to 13 minutes in length. Donal discusses the struggles of leaving things to the last minute.

"The Unmentionable" By Donal Foreman

When the crew assembled for our first day of shooting, things weren't looking too good. We had exactly 2 weeks to complete our film before the deadline for the Limerick Fresh Film Festival. The Irish Schools Video Competition had been an outlet for our filmmaking for the previous three years. There was no leeway regarding the deadline since we had already been granted a week's extension.

We decided to scrap the overly ambitious and complicated project we had been developing for the past few weeks. We chose instead to attempt a short, snappy movie shot entirely in my house.

With that settled, we began to discuss what this new movie could be. A ground rule was established: we wanted to avoid the long, rambling 20 minutes plus kind of short film, that had become our specialty, and also our downfall in terms of our success at the festival. Instead we wanted to aim for something around the ten-minute mark that more resembled the structure of a joke (namely: build-up, punch line, the end) than the three acts of a feature film. Although, in the end, the film ended up having quite a distinct three act structure, this conscious attempt to avoid the excesses of length and indulgence that had marred our previous efforts was a significant step forward and proved fortuitous ultimately.

The "scriptwriting" process for the film consisted of all seven us standing around in a circle shouting out ideas, with my co-director Danny McMahon taking notes. You could tell things were progressing well when people were shouting over each other to try to make their idea known. As far as I can remember, Danny had the first idea that initiated the rest of the story - something about a group of friends holding a surprise birthday party for their other friend, only to find out his girlfriend has died. The basic story from beginning to end was then worked out collaboratively, to the extent that I honestly can't remember who came up with what.

The tight deadline led to a level of collaboration and participation that we hadn't experienced since the very first films we made in our early teens, which would be shot over one afternoon in my back garden. In these films, Danny and I directed, I did the camerawork and editing, and everyone was credited with writing and producing. But as the films had become more ambitious and complex, the stories and their realisation became increasingly the product of Danny and I. This resulted in a diminished sense of responsibility to the film for everyone else involved, which in turn led to greater problems in getting the film made for me as co-director. When we had returned to our original, more equal and complete collaboration, almost by default, was a pleasant surprise. The benefits of this method soon showed themselves, as everyone's involvement and commitment to the film skyrocketed in comparison to our previous effort.

Within an hour or two after starting from scratch, I was setting up the first shot. Since there was only one location, and more or less everyone was required for every scene, we shot the whole film chronologically from beginning to end. We decided to film until we dropped and by doing so it was necessary to consume a copious amount of coffee (along with the cost of the videotape and the general ravaging of my kitchen's food supplies, these were the only costs of making the film).

The next three nights of filming proceeded without any great obstacles, and to our own amazement, we entirely completed the film on the fourth night. We even had time and energy left to stay up and play charades.

I had no such luxuries in the editing of the film (done VCR to VCR - I can't afford computer editing), which I began immediately after filming wrapped. I had a maximum of two days to have the film completed, copied and sent off to Limerick to squeeze it in just before the deadline. Given our last production had taken a week and a half to edit and was less than twice the length of this film, I was not feeling optimistic. On my second day of editing, I started at 10 in the morning and finished at 8am the following day, making a total of 22 hours straight editing, with only food and bathroom breaks. I must attribute the awkward-sounding title of the film to my sleep-deprived state, as I was forced to invent it at the last minute before packing it in the envelope.

A month later, we were given 1st prize and the Audience Award at the Fresh, an outcome that was unimaginable to us when we first started the project. When we were filming we had joked to each other, "Imagine if we won with this" - a hurried, last minute, last resort, started two weeks before the deadline and shot in my kitchen; a 12-minute movie that took four days to film, two days to edit and an hour and a half to come up with. As it turned out, the simplicity, economy and brevity of the story all worked to our advantage, and contrary to what every teacher will tell you, sometimes the best work is done at the last minute.

The second prize went to Cian Gill for "The Anarchist". The six minute animated production was shot in Cork. Cian runs through the highs and lows of working with K'nex and clay.

"The Anarchist" By Cian Gill

I started animating because of my interest in movie special effects, particularly stop-motion. It's not a process used very often in movies these days, but I was always fascinated by it. From the 1920's on, animation was used to create monsters for films and TV shows, reaching its peak in the 1950's and 1960's, when these films became most popular. I still feel that stop-motion characters can have more character than the computer-generated creatures prevalent in today's cinema, despite the inherent limitations of the process.

Many years ago I borrowed a camera capable of stop-motion. I filmed non-stop for a weekend, producing about five minutes of usable footage, miniature clay monsters for the most part. What I really wanted to do (and still do) was to mix footage of my miniature creatures with live-action shots. This I eventually achieved (to some degree) by filming the stop-motion monsters in front of a green screen (actually a green sheet of paper). When mixed on the editing programme Adobe Premier, the results were encouraging. I created rampaging dinosaurs in my back garden, miniature tanks rolling down my street, and most complex of all, a dramatic swordfight between one of my friends carrying a 5-foot pole, and a model humanoid armed with a cocktail stick. This was a delicate manoeuvre, which required careful planning, and direction to ensure the two pieces of footage reacted correctly to each other. I still intend to one day direct a lengthy, properly scripted film combining the two mediums.

In the meantime, the work of Aardman and others like them persuaded me that there was a place in the world for all-animated productions. My most successful to date has been The Anarchist, a typically sci-fi themed short featuring a bleak world of factories, workers, and endless conveyor belts (okay, one conveyor belt but I thought it was quite an achievement at the time). In charge of this set- up is the System, who has slogans on every wall and guards on every corner. "The System watches you!" yells the loudspeaker, in an inspired piece of Orwellian dialogue.

In the film, all this is represented by only a handful of characters (and some clever editing). No more than two sets were built, but each had removable walls, for shooting at different angles. Furniture was re-arranged between takes to break up the shape of the sets and to distort the viewer's sense of the room. I was deliberately trying to break away from a beginner's mistake (you know, those animations where everything takes place in one box). The factory scenes particularly, look much bigger than they really were. I cut a door in the back wall of the set and had this one character walk in and out carrying boxes, just to give the impression that it was a large building, and there was more going on than you could see. To give the factory scene more atmosphere, I lit it with blue plastic taped to the lamp. This gave the scene a creepy feel. Without it, the factory looked like the cut-up architects board stuck together with pins that it was.

I did make a little use of the green-screen technique in this film. When the (un-named) dictator character is in his office, both the window he looks out and the screen he uses to spy on the workers are (you guessed it) green sheets of paper. I had a hard time keeping those on the walls! You can see the un-processed green screen in one of the shots. And by the way, the view out his office window is oddly similar to the view out of my bedroom window!

The Anarchist is full of gimmicks, most of which weren't actually intended to be funny. The laughter this film sometimes gets at screenings has always mystified me. In the scene where the dictator is revealed to be a robot, he is decapitated whereupon his head proceeds to walk around on the floor on little robot legs. Other gimmicks are the boxes that fall from an unseen source onto the conveyor belt, the carnivorous plant that lives on the desk and eats rats, and the elevator arrow that seems to move around of its own accord. This is one of those unforeseen hazards of animation that make it so unpredictable. Aside from the two main sets, the elevator had to be built separately. The two doors were placed behind the front of the elevator and fastened by a strand of board at the top. The board kept the doors in place, but they could still be moved in out. I think the little 'control panel' on the elevator was something found on a street. It looks like a zipper, anyway.

Lastly, the figures used in the film were K'nex (it's a building material, similar to Lego Technic) as it was the closest thing to a proper armature I could get. An armature is a metal skeleton with ball-and-socket joints, and it's what the pro's use to make characters. They're also very expensive and only available on import from America. The K'nex figures I used were plastic, light, and had joints in all the right places. In all my years of animating I've never found a better alternative. The figures had tiny clothes sewn for them by my mother (slowly and painfully) and their heads and hands were clay. The clay hands as well as facial features often wore out and had to be replaced during filming. However, the faces were quite detailed and I didn't have to build bigger heads for close-ups as I have done in the past. There was about 6 figures made, and I made economical use of only 2 guards throughout the entire film!

Animation is an extremely slow and time-consuming process, and it's sometimes difficult to keep yourself motivated. Working spasmodically, I completed this film in about 6 months. Had I worked full-tilt, that time might have been halved. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be many young people taking animation too seriously in this country. I had to do most of it myself, with some help from my family making the sets, and composing the musical score. The Anarchist is a film where the charm and gimmicks of animation combine with a simple but effective script (much reduced from a bloated original draft) and old-fashioned story about being an individual.

Christian Craughwell's, "Time and Time Again" was awarded with the second Highly Commended film. This category awards filmmakers with strong elements in their films.

"Time and Time Again" By Christian Craughwell

The original idea actually came from my brother, who is also in the film. I said to him "my next movie is gonna be a mocumentary, but I don't know what about" I had several different ideas spinning through my head at the time. Then he blurted out, Time Travel! - without giving it any thought really. I said yeah maybe, but the more I thought about it, more and more ideas were developing in my head and started to think it could really work.

I then set about writing a script. The basic script was written in about an hour, which is quite fast really. I knew from the offset I wanted to create a mocumentary film about something completely madcap. The film is presented in a very serious documentary
format which placed against the subject matter creates a lot of subtle humour - this is exactly what I was trying to achieve.

The film is about a young man who believes he has accidentally travelled back through time via the closet in his house. His family think he's gone completely mad and send him to a psychiatrist. Even when he produces physical evidence of his journey through time he is still dismissed. The film kind of teases the audience "is this for real or what?"

In retrospect the film actually resembles K-Pax, one of my favourite movies, although Kevin Spacey actually is an alien a lot of people were like "well is he or isn't he?" This similarity was accidental, not a rip off, probably a subconscious decision.

I play the lead in the film; I'm also playing myself. I didn't bother making up a silly fake name for myself. In fact everyone in the film more or less plays themselves, were not actors, but were not camera shy either. The film includes all you'd expect from a documentary: interviews, reconstruction's etc.

Another passion of mine is photography and in this film I really indulged. I took great care with each shot and if you look at the film I think you'll agree there is some very pretty visuals - particularly in the final montage sequence and time travel reconstructions. The film is full of idiosyncratic picture work, this was partly intentional and partly something that just came together in the editing process. Some people find it hard to believe when I tell them that the whole thing was put together with iMovie, the film has a very linear path, and so it worked fine. Special FX and filters that were used, again was a decision made in the edit, probably one of the most creative processing in filmmaking.

The bulk of the film was shot within a one-week period; a second week was needed for pick-ups and things like that. The speed and ease at which the film was shoot was due to the fact that I was shooting, for the most part, in and around my own home with people I
know well. A third week was needed for editing. All in all, three weeks for a 16-minute film is fairly fast. The last film I made was 10 mins and took nearly four months due to a whole variety of different problems and the one before that, The Mummy which received
third prize at the Fresh Film Festival in 2001 took three months and was half an hour.

Technologically the film was great for me because it was the first time I had shot using DV and digital editing, which is absolutely brilliant when your used to analogue. The movie was a solo project and bit of a blast really, I had a lot of fun. I'm currently shooting a new movie which is gonna be really big.