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Friday, 9 May 2014

My Last Short Film - Ever!

The time has come to officially announce that my current animated short 'A Warning To All Kings' will be my last ever.

I've now completed 11 animated shorts - only three of them have been fully funded. My last 5 animated shorts have emerged (self-funded) from my 'cutbacks' internet series. Whilst the self-funded films have won prizes and have been very successful on the film festival circuit, they've cost me (and my family) an arm and a leg to produce and promote. I don't have the financial resources to continue this activity. As a very good friend says 'we gotta give up making short films, they're killing us'. Tony Donoghue describes 'a short film ghetto' from which escape is practically impossible. There's no money in this activity (there never was, I know) but the longer form (specifically tv) projects which I'd hoped would emerge from the success of my recent short film work have not materialised - funders are not interested. Schemes like Frameworks are fantastic, but they're getting harder and harder to access.

I now must concentrate on returning to tv production - the 'machines' series for RTE in 1999 was my last tv series. I don't care if my return to tv production takes years - it must be done. That's where the funding lies.

A Warning To All Kings - image

1991 - Arts Council Film and Video Award for ‘To Forget’ short film (stop motion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL-NLR3bpeA&list=UUT34LrcyJLGwiMF6CmyhPKA

2000 - Frameworks Award for ‘Florida War’ short film (CGI)
2002 ‘Forest’ short film (CGI)
2006 ‘Press p To Play’ short film (machinima)
2007 ‘biography (of DT Finn)’ short film (machinima)
2008 - Frameworks Award for ‘T’was a Terrible Hard Work’ short film (stop motion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APEMB_tDFWY&list=UUT34LrcyJLGwiMF6CmyhPKA

2010 'Mister Heaney - a wee portrait' (short film - stopmotion)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAtwCCtBOKo&list=UUT34LrcyJLGwiMF6CmyhPKA

2011 May 'leitronium' (short film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KFBR_hUV1s

2011 May 'rinkydink and the salmon of knowledge' (short film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7m7yJJm38w

2013 May 'Furniture, Murder and Love' (short film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msbQW2crEPk&list=UUT34LrcyJLGwiMF6CmyhPKA

2014 May 'A Warning To All Kings' (short film)

http://www.davidquin.ie/CV.html

IADT Technology Showcase Video

Excellent work by DL832 Animation 3rd year (soon to be 4th year) student Viki Katona on this IADT promo video! Great job! Showcase on the morning of May 14th!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzeieWraP38&feature=youtu.be

3rd Year DONE - Alan Holly - Anim Table Quiz

IADT DL041/DL832 Animation Stage 3 is DONE for this year - most of the exit tutorials done yesterday, on my return from Dusseldorf - well done to all! Then the final excellent IADT AnimSoc lecture, with IADT Animation graduate Alan Holly.

Key learnings from Alan... Keep pitching those projects - projects may be shot down by one panel, but funded by another. Pitch projects only when you're completely happy with them - but pitch documents CAN be simple and concise (the Frameworks proposal document for Alan's CODA was 5 pages of (beautiful, moody) concept images, a script, a budget, a schedule and director's and producer's treatment notes)...

Try to work out exactly what will end up onscreen and try to schedule the production accordingly - don't leave tracts of your film, unplanned and 'not nailed down'.

Other Alan learning... When your film is finished - keep applying for film festivals. Just because your film is rejected by one festival, doesn't mean it won't be accepted for the next festival - it might even WIN the next festival.

Once again - excellent lecture from Alan and thanks to Emily, Ross and the AnimSoc for organising it!

Next, it was upstairs to the Animation studio for a small 3rd year 'exhibition', AnimSoc pizzas and bottles of fizz... After that, an Animation exhibition fundraising table quiz in Bakers. Jazis - a long day, but a great day!

2014 Stage 3 exhibition...

Baker's - the table quiz...

Baker's - the table quiz... Checking them pesky answers...

Saturday, 5 April 2014

All Good Things!

Hugely talented (but impoverished) award year animation students from IADT Dun Laoghaire are holding an off-campus screening and event in Dublin's Lighthouse Cinema and Block T, in June 2014. The students are funding the project through cakesales and through crowfunding site Fundit! Please donate and become part of some great animation stories!

We are all IADT students, but ALL GOOD THINGS is not an IADT event, it's completely independent and self-generated. However, hosting an exhibition and screening, printing artwork, creating a zine and serving food & refreshments doesn't come cheap, so we've set up a FUND IT campaign to help cover a portion of the costs.

We'd appreciate any contribution you could make! In return we're offering a range of rewards, and you'd be investing in the night itself, our artwork, and our futures.

Check out our FUND IT page here: http://fundit.ie/project/all-good-things

https://www.facebook.com/IADTAnimation14?notif_t=fbpage_fan_invite

https://twitter.com/IADTAnimation14

Wednesday, 12 March 2014

Internet Research Methods - Submission 2 - blogpost

‘Has digital production and digital distribution (through Youtube etc) fundamentally altered animation?’

The world wide web is 25 years old today. Huge internet platforms – Facebook, Youtube and Google are now dominating the lives of millions. This presents enormous challenges for creatives, especially for media creatives like animators. Since the earliest days over 100 years ago, ours has been a broadcast model – we make animations in order to screen them (in cinemas or through tv) to broader audiences. As broadcasters, we spoke (through our films) and the audiences passively viewed. We rarely met or interacted with our audiences. The mechanism of commissioning and funding of our productions was usually professionally based, highly selective – even elitist.

Now, with digital production, we can make animations using cheap laptops, shareware software. Through the internet, we can distribute our videos instantaneously across the globe, reaching millions of viewers – if the videos prove popular (that popularity being determined by their success in (apparently) impartial search engines) … And our audience can respond immediately, messaging us directly with comments (good, bad and ugly). Even when our audience doesn’t contact us, their digital trails are gathered and fed back to us through Youtube Analytics, telling us who they are, where they were from, how long they watched, what device they were watching from – the data generated is endless.

But wait! 6 years old children can create videos (even animations) for the internet. Crazy Jihadists on a mountain in Yemen can create video for the internet (and can gain millions of followers too).

But has all of this digital and internet opportunity fundamentally changed animation? In conducting my first interviews with animation professionals, the consensus seems to be ‘no’. Animator Steve Woods is adamant that the practice of animation remains unaltered…

My stock answer is, the practice hasn’t changed at all. What I’m saying is that ehm, when a piece of technology is invented, or a new format is preferred, it tends to make other formats and technologies redundant, but that wouldn’t be the case in animation.

Steve’s argument, is that the craft of animation – even with the pervasion and cultural dominance of digital media and the internet – maintains a continuity. New technology and new digital or internet opportunities or challenges merely add to what Steve terms ‘the animation storehouse’…

And all the other technologies which were invented, like cutout animation, which is a very primitive form of puppet animation, and sand animation, or any other technologies which have come along, all add to the treasure house. You know, they don’t make the currency redundant, the previous currency redundant, it’s just more eh, treasure being added to the treasure chest that is animation.

There’s another danger too… As professional creatives, we imagine that it’s important that we bring our vision, often our very personal vision of the world to audiences and that we do this (if possible) over a sustained life-long career. Too much internet video is one-off, amateur, chancy, almost random. Internet creatives who pride themselves on search engine manipulation and the generation of multiple viral videos tend to manipulatively and slavishly play to established audiences. As creatives, we still cling to creative freedom, to the right to make statements which we want to make and which will find, surprise, entertain or move new audiences. There’s still a lot of work to be done, even if it’s merely adding to Steve Wood’s ‘treasure chest that is animation’.

BBC article on Tim Berners Lee and the 25^th anniversary of the world wide web…

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-26540635

Thursday, 26 September 2013

Postgraduate Diploma in Learning, Teaching and Assessment

The day has arrived - after a seeming lifetime (3 years) through my Teaching and Learning study journey, and following successful completion of my AIT Capstone module (Reflection, Action and Analysis), I have now completed my LIN Postgraduate Diploma in Learning, Teaching and Assessment! A postgraduate qualification! As Mick Mc Grath says 'we are now PGDippers!'

Thanks to all my T+L learning network - especially Marion Palmer, Mary Anne O' Carroll, Laura Venables, Cliona Flood, Muiris O' Grady, Thelma Chambers, Barry O' Donoghue, Mick Mc Grath, John Ryan, Fiona Fulham, Eloise Tan, Anne Spencer, Nuala Harding, Miriam O' Connor, Sean Moore, Sarah Moore, Teemu Auersalo, Keith Foran, Damian Byrne, Ron Hamilton, Shirley Casey, Sherra Murphy, Elaine Sissons, Mark Riordan, Rebecca Roper, Ian Ginn, John Parry, Geert Vergauwe, Hannah Barton, Donald Taylor Black, Andrew Power, Jim Devine, Cormac O' Kane, Annie Doona, Joan Mannion, Anne Marie O' Brien, Kevin O Rourke, Leonie Sharrock, Frances Boylan and all the 'elss girls', the IADT Academic Council and the IADT T+L Committee. I know I've forgotten to mention crucial, obvious people here (I've already updated this list eight times) - apologies and thanks to you too!

Thanks most of all to Katy, Sophie, Thomas and Daniel and to my DL041 Animation students - for teaching me everything. Love to all! My learning continues.

Tuesday, 9 July 2013

DRHEA elss 2013 - video projects - 27th June

For my sins, I was walked into doing a workshop for the 2013 DRHEA ELearning Summer School. Thanks especially to Kevin O' Rourke and the elss crew for the invite! What I thought might be a simple hour-long presentation for a few participants turned into a frenzied 2-hour, 5 group, hands-on workshop for 50 lecturers - at the very edges of constructivist learning! Thanks also to Muiris O' Grady for hands-on assistance on the day!