The Pobal National Conference, ‘Life is for Learning, Learning is for Life’ takes place in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin on Thursday 21st January 2010.
Areaman Productions were commissioned by Pobal to make a 15 minute film on Irish people’s experiences of learning, that will be screened at the event. In making the film, we spoke to people of all ages and of varying backgrounds from across Ireland about their experiences of ‘lifelong learning’.
Lifelong Learner Smiling
The conference is being organised and delivered with the support of a large range of contributors and organisations. It is primarily focused at policy and decision makers/influencers, Directors, CEO’s, managers of organisations and academics. The closing address will be delivered by Mr. Fergus Finlay, CEO, Barnardos.
It was a certain Graham Linehan who first put us on to Shadowplay, the ultimate cineaste blog. Its author, DCairns, has forgotten more about niche cinema, B-movies and hidden gems than Martin Scorcese has ever known. The blog is as wide ranging as it is prolific with Cairns reserving particular love for early Hitchcock, Powell and Pressburger, Orson Welles and a seemingly endless parade of curiosities from 20’s and 30’s cinema pulled from some magical vault.
Of particular interest to Areaman was his recent post on David Lynch and his influences from the world of film. Lynch began his career as a painter and conceptual artist and was never formally trained in filmmaking. It is the director’s often stated claim that he is not influenced greatly by other movies which Cairns takes issue with in his post. He cites a series of noirs and mainstream titles (Yojimbo, Kiss Me Dealdly, The Wizard of Oz) which Lynch either borrows from or makes reference to across his own output.
With particular reference to Twin Peaks, Cairns details the show’s final episode and the likely influence of Tales of Hoffman, with nods to Fellini and The Prisoner.
We would humbly suggest that there is a more fundamental cinematic influence at play from the very beginning of the series which begins the morning after the death of Laura Palmer. Otto Preminger’s 1944 film “Laura”, is a fairly low rent noir starring nobody of note but perfectly serviceable for a rainy Saturday afternoon. The movie opens the morning after the death of Laura, who we never see, but whose character is revealed to us through the series of people who are giving evidence to the police investigating her death. As with Laura Palmer, this Laura seemed to have a different persona for everyone in her life. As with Twin Peaks, the Laura character is present in many of the scenes in the form of a large, dominant portrait hanging above the fireplace in her home where much of the film takes place. The obvious echo here is the prom queen photo of Laura Palmer which seems to permeate the entire first season of Twin Peaks. It is no co-incidence then that the detective played by Dana Andrews gets his first big break in the case through a dream.
Certainly worth a view for fans of Twin Peaks. Akin to watching L.A. Takedown after having seen HEAT.
Kavaleer Productions in association with Areaman Productions, recently completed work on an interactive game for South Dublin County Council. The game called ‘Jobot’s Access All Areas’, communicates an awareness of the importance of accessibility of buildings, for people with disabilities. The game was designed, storyboarded and developed by Kavaleer Productions, in response to a brief by South Dublin County Council and Areaman Productions.
In 2009, Areaman Productions produced a series of video access guides which outlined recent improvements in the accessibility of public buildings and services across South Dublin County. With the launch of ‘Jobot’s Access All Areas’, Areaman Productions and Kavaleer Productions have helped South Dublin County Council demonstrate their continuing commitment to improving access and service provision to disabled people in South Dublin County.
Kavaleer Productions developed the game concept to include a robot character called ‘Jobot’ to help make the game more informative and accessible for all users. ‘Jobot’ is a boxy maintenance robot who has been hired to do some repair work on a Heritage House in South Dublin. As he’s on wheels and is the width of a wheelchair, he’s finding it hard to get into the building to do his work. Players are asked to make accessibility improvements to the Heritage House that make the exterior and interior more accessible to everyone.
‘Jobot’s Access All areas’ will be available to enjoy soon from South Dublin County Council’s Disability Access Service website: http://accessible.southdublin.ie/
We live in interesting times. Early last year, Areaman started shooting with the Letus Extreme lens adaptor. In front of the Letus, we were able to mount our Nikon lenses, some of which date back to the 1970s, and behind the Letus sat our Sony PMW EX1. This marriage of a filmic aesthetic and a tapeless workflow was put into practice for our documentary ‘The Liberties’ which was filmed in 2008 and completed in 2009. Our film benefited hugely from these technologies born decades apart: sturdy, uncoated Nikon glass with apertures going all the way to f1.4, and HD 1080p at the back end recording onto 16GB SxS memory cards.
But of course, Stanley Kubrick did it first. As he was preparing to shoot Barry Lyndon, he was adamant that he would film on location using available light in so far as possible. This even extended to filming scenes by candlelight so as to be true to a recreation of a world in which there was no such thing as electrical light. His solution was to similarly match old and contemporary visual technologies, in his case, a Mitchell BNC camera and a Zeiss lens with a maximum aperture of f0.7.
The article below is a wonderfully unfussy account of how it all happened.
Following the premier of ‘140 Characters’ in Meeting House Square as part of Innovation Dublin, the Digital Hub Development Agency have invited Digital Hub companies to a screening of the film on November 25th in The Auditorium, in Digital Exchange from 1-2pm. The film (33 mins) will be introduced by Tom Burke and Shane Hogan. An audience Q&A will follow the screening.
To register for this event, please email exhibit@thedigitalhub.com with your name, email address and the company you work for and we will be in touch. For information on the film please see www.140characters.ie
South Dublin Libraries were recently nominated as finalists in the 4th European eGovernment Awards 2009. The nomination came for their highly innovative Digital Book Service, the first such service in Ireland and one of very few worldwide.
South Dublin Libraries chose to work with Areaman Productions to produce video content that would showcase the service. We produced, directed, shot & edited the video, which has now been completed & will be screened in Malmo later this month. It will also be available online as part of a series of Access Guides developed about South Dublin County.
The Digital Book Service was developed to ensure access for visually impaired people to a wide range of books in .mp3, .wma, .pdf & .ePub formats. Users can download eBooks and eAudio books for free to their MP3 players and portable devices using their library card for authentication. The service can be accessed at www.southdublinlibraries.ie
We generate images all the time, many of which we haven’t found time to share. These images were taken around Meath Street last year, while we were filming ‘The Liberties’. As you can see, we developed an obsession with the trollies that people use to carry their messages. ‘Meath Street is a unique place’ as Carmel says in her great gravelly voice in the documentary. We agree.
Areaman Productions are proud to announce that we have won a tender competition to produce creative content for Pobal. The work will be used as part of the EU funded project “Delivering Lifelong Learning in Disadvantaged Communities”.
Pobal is an intermediary that works on behalf of Government to support communities and local agencies toward achieving social inclusion, reconciliation and equality. Pobal is a not-for-profit company with charitable status that manages programmes on behalf of the Irish Government and the EU.
We look forward to working with Pobal to deliver compelling high quality content.
For further information on Pobal visit: www.pobal.ie
