Eamonn O Neill - IADT AnimSoc

Congratulations to Emily Lynch and Ross Ryder of the IADT Animation Society for following up their success with Louise Bagnall's recent fantastic talk with a one hundred and fifty minute epic talk and presentation by Eamonn O Neill! Entitled 'things I thought and things I think...'

Key Eamonn O Neill learnings from the evening...

99.9% of engineers do NOT make guitar pedals...
Be transparent (be open and honest with people)... (this actually comes from Eimhin)
It HAS to be human!
Make rules, set boundaries and start thinking about your work... Rules shouldn't be arbitrary, they should be based on the emotional intent of your film...
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should... Be economic.
Have BALLS - be scared - safe is boring.

Personal is universal! The more personal it is, the more universal it is.

Make work and show people. (get it out there, you don't know who's watching)

from eamonnoneill.ie

You get the work that you DO!
BAD experiences are STILL experiences.
There's politics and bullshit EVERYWHERE!
The grass is not always greener.
Reach out, ask questions, be a sponge.
You make your own luck (good luck follows hard work, work hard and get lucky)...
Learn always, because skills are brillz...
GO for stuff, you have nothing to lose!
It's okay NOT to know!
Don't plateau (just keep moving forward, keep trying to progress)
Say thanks - don't be a dick to people, there's enough dickheads EVERYWHERE!

Inspirational stuff! A joy to hear!

www.eamonnoneill.ie

'Furniture - Murder and Love' marches on...

The 'cutbacks' short film 'Furniture - Murder and Love' will be screened at the 2013 Dublin International short Film and Music Festival DISFMF (quite a mouthful). Doesn't appear to be in competition though...

http://www.disfmf.ie/

Lab Grown Burger

Jazis, the latest wonder of science is a lab-grown beef burger, a Frankenburger, funded by Sergey Bryn, co-founder of Google. All the problems in the world and science grows us more fast food. What next? Cloned Kentucky Fried Chicken?

Bankers Snowden and Egypt

'cutbacks' returns after weeks of silence... It took some courage to face an animation studio on the hottest day since volcanoes dominated the Irish landscape... Survived the shoot. Rehydration, rehydration, rehydration...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC4BLkfgydo

Fastnet - The Art of Animation Window

This window features models from 'Jack O' Metti', one of David Quin's many incomplete short films. The window also features stopmotion characters from 'This Terrible Visitation', yet another abandoned project about The Famine. Something of the chaos of the stopmotion workshop is suggested by the recreated workbench - a mishmash of wire, acrylic paint, models, cardboard, tools, postcards, cigarette packets, sketches and drawings.

Jack O' Metti

Jack O' Metti - the Studio

Fastnet - 'To Forget' Window

'To Forget' was David Quin's first stopmotion short film, produced in 1991 on 16mm film. The film was 15 minutes long and received an Arts Council Film and Video Award.

 

To Forget - The Fool and Rosa

 

The film told the story of a fool who wandered the world in his unhappy attempts to forget the love of his life, the beautiful Rosa. This film was heavily influenced by the 1991 Gulf War. This window also features some of David Quin’s sculptures, three figurative works and an abstract ‘Tall Tower’.

 

To Forget - A Death of The Fool

 

To Forget - War Machines

Fastnet - Dunin and Circus Window

In the late 1990's RTE decided to replace the perennial 'Bosco' series with a new pre-school series called 'The Morbegs'. David Quin produced three series of inserts for The Morbegs 'Dúnín', 'Circus' and 'Machines'.

 

This window features sets from 'Dunin', as well as stopmotion characters from 'Circus' and 'Dúnín, including the largest stopmotion character we ever built, the giant Deirdre.

Dunin - Deirdre The Giant

 

Dunin - Gruigeach

 

Dunin - Queen Minnie

 

Dunin - Luchin the magical mouse

 

 

 

 

Quote Of The Century!

We're Animators! We Don't Have Lives!

Sarah-Stage 3-DL041 - Thank You Sarah

Youtube Video Views culled!

The dreaded day has come! Video views on the 'cutbacks' channel on Youtube have been slashed back to October 2011 figures, from 373,000 to 158,000. How could this happen? Well, channel video views now only counts views from what Youtube term 'active' videos. Naively, in the past, I used to delete videos from the channel, to 'freshen it up'. How wrong was I!

Here's the rather formal message from our friends in Youtube...

The view count shown on your YouTube channel now includes only views from public videos. To include views from private or unlisted videos, change them to 'public'. YouTube Analytics channel view counts will continue to include views from all videos that were public at the time the view occurred even if the videos are now private, unlisted, or deleted.
It still feels like a 'loss' of 215,000 honestly earned video views. Wow, these internet video platforms sure have a way of demoralising content producers and creatives... Don't they know how paranoid, tired and vulnerable we are? I don't take these issues to heart...

Ming Supports Cutbacks!

Ming Flanagan tweets a link to my 'Ming Corrupt Gardai and Clare Daly Drink Driving' video. Jazis! I'm finally making an impression here? Well spotted avid 'cutbacks' fan killbotone.

 

'Stop motion version of Vincent Browne Show re Garda Corruption' tweets Ming! Thank you!

https://twitter.com/lukeming

The Sequel - Folk Furniture Name Change!

Tony Donoghue, still reeling from his Sundance win, has requested that I change the name on my first 'Folk Furniture' video, where battered wardrobes and dressers discuss dryrot, woodworm and big screws. Tony says that people, searching for his film on Youtube, were finding mine. Apologies! These are the perils of internet Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)! Though my cutbacks video views seem to be relatively flat, the cutbacks series remains relatively prominent on search engines. No Problem - I've renamed my video 'The Sequel - Folk Furniture'.

Tony's request to makes changes to my video also points to the need for some form of 'video update' feature on Youtube. In this instance, there was no way to change the title on the video itself, except by using the rather unsatisfactory annotations-label function (which is not designed for retitling videos). The Youtube Video Editor can do text but it won't blur off an area of the screen to obcure the original titles.

We need occasional access to a Youtube video update feature.

Here's the second Folk Furniture instalment, in which a dresser shows her drawers... Barry O' Donoghue says that they seem to be 'floating in space' - my mistake (messing with the greenscreen)...

 

 

Twitter Hacked!

As 250,000 Twitter accounts are hacked by 'China-based hackers', Google chairman Eric Schmidt calls China "an internet menace", "the world's most active and enthusiastic filterer of information" and "the most sophisticated and prolific" hacker of foreign companies!
The New York Times quotes Schmidt's new book 'The New Digital Age' - "The disparity between American and Chinese firms and their tactics will put both the government and the companies of the United States as a distinct disadvantage." Never mind the United States! The entire world will lose this cyberwar against the massed Chinese hackers if things stay as they are! Who's teaching the next generation of western internet hackers? Where are our government-sponsored hacker training programmes?

China dismisses such hacking accusations as "groundless" and "totally irresponsible".
Meanwhile, Rinky revels in The Twitter hack! Every cloud has a silver lining!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21304049

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21307212

500th Cutbacks Episode!

Jazis! I've just noticed that yesterday's video 'More Folk Furniture' is marked as the 500th episode of cutbacks! 500 episodes since September 2009... I feel it!

Irish Folk Furniture - The Sequel

With apologies to Tony Donoghue, (and continued congratulations on his Sundance win), I present as a cutbacks homage, 'Irish Folk Furniture - The Sequel'! Wardrobes and dressers discussing woodworm, dryrot, loose knobs and big screws...

Lovingly made over five hours on a Sunday, using cardboard and masking tape...

Jazis, the threeamazingmen point out that 'it seems a little Sminky inspired'... True enough, the wardrobe does sound a bit Sminky...

 

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/01/irish-folk-furniture-wins-at-sundance.html

 

http://cutbacks2010.blogspot.ie/2013/01/irish-folk-furniture.html

SEO links

Below are links to three very handy SEO (Search Engine Optimization) links. I'm posting them here as an aide memoire (for myself)... Before starting today's studio activity, I'm typing my potential subject into the keyword search tools, aligning my content more with what Google and Youtube audiences are looking for... It's not about the money! I'm trying to better understand the internal mechanisms of our internet video platforms. The internet video experiment continues. Videos watching people...

Check the links - compelling.tv has numerous SEO help articles and blogs. The other two links are for youtube and adwords search tools...

http://compelling.tv/blog/post/why-doing-viral-video-is-a-complete-waste-of-time-and-what-to-do-instead

https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool

https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none

Meanwhile, Rinky has a stab at internet Search Engine Optimization...