The first programme is on itison.tv officially as of 22nd of December 2007 at 06:08 UTC (Winter Solstice). It is called “Tara Saga” (now the third working title for this documentary project!) and is a project to tell the story of Tara from circa 3,000 BC to the present day.
There are still a few glitches to sort out with the site but it is up and running now and I wil fix it and build upon it along the way. The last few months since June of this year has been an amazing journey for me because of taking on this project. I’ve been relatively quite about it on the blog here as it has been taking up a lot of my time and energy. I didn’t want to start the online documentation of the documentary (and that’s what it is, and more) until I was prepared to do so. I been looking for some way to fund this project but nothing in the usual official ways works out for a variety of reasons. So now take the project back to the internet where my interest in the current issues surrounding the preservation of our heritage and culture and better future which have been highlighted by the controversial decision by the Irish Government to build a motorway through the Tara-Skryne (Gabhra) Valley.
So the site is open and the idea being that it is an open media channel. You can participate in the dialogue by uploading video responses to the site or my comment in audio and/or video via your computer’s mic and/or camera.
At present the technology behind the this is not working and it will hopefully be fixed soon. But you can still use Revver to upload pre-recorded pieces from your computer when you log-in to the site.
Here’s the first Revver video I put up which was made in the small hours before the Winter Solstice and the launch of the site.
Please participate in the Tara Saga. The site will be unmoderated for the first few weeks so you can register straight away and collaborate with this new media.
Four posts last month and feck all at all this month. Right, well I’m gonna to have to fix that. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I gotta do more of this blogging thing. There’s been too many distractions and I’ve been holding back on posting stuff here for a few reasons.
The first is the documentary I am making. It is about the ongoing disgrace that is the M3 motorway being build through the Gabhra Valley which is the ancient capital of Ireland known as Tara. I will be putting the making of the documentary online on the sister site ITISON.TV. Lot more to come there too. Well I guess I’m in a state of limbo with so much things on and I’ve knocked on practically every door looking for funding for this before I unleash it. But it’s not that easy and maybe because it’s current affairs. Well, I don’t want this to be a piece of trivia so I want to get it out there and engage the public in it in a unique way while the destruction of our heritage is ongoing. There, now I’ve shown my cards. Some would think that to be a mistake but I don’t care. I am looking for all sides to tell this story and there absence will speak volumes more. So many doors have been closed on me already with this and I have to overcome brick wall after brick wall. Well I must be doing something right. I won’t go into too much detail here. I will save that for another post. But I will say this - that so many people have wasted my time on this and stuck spanners in the works. And this is just with the production of this project. Collaborators have turned out to be quite the opposite. I thrive for collaborations, it makes for much better work and to back out of these opportunities after agreements are made with new agendas is just plain wrong in my book. Maybe I give unfamiliar people too much kudos. But my intuition is always acute and I need to go with it more. Sometimes I test it though until I know I am right about it. This is when people make slip ups, and the ones I am looking for to prove myself right. Moving on. I have immersed myself in a massive amount of research on the subject since June and have shot approximately fifty hours of footage so far. But there is still much more to do (I nearly used a Bertie phrase there!). I know it’s important and I won’t stop now or cut my losses as I have been advised. This project has changed a lot of things for me and I will continue with it. Anyway, I will talk about this more in a future post, I just had to write something on it here.
The second reason I have not blogged as much as I would have liked to and related to this is because ITISON is my business, I did not want to get too personal on this, in case it were to scare off potential investors. I am at a crucial stage in the development of that and the Tara project has side tracked me a little but it ultimately represents the kind of work I intend to do with ITISON. But I’ve change my mind on that a bit. I’m not going to censor myself. From here on in its no holds barred. This blog will continue to feature what it already has, but if also now start to become the independent media voice it has alway intended to be.
And the third, well, Facebook is such a distraction dammit!! But it’s a very useful tool. Say goodbye to email! Well not really, but it does have amazing potential and is by far the best social network available today. Opening the platform up to third party developers was the best thing they could have done. I’m excited to see where it will go and the overall impact it will have on the web.
So here we go. Expect more from ITISON in the blogosphere. IT IS ON ….
“….dude,…. it is on”
Picnic Network is a creative media festival which takes place in Amsterdam. I was fortunate to be an invited guest of DivX / Stage6 at the festival last week. On Wednesday I was on a panel entitled “Digital Video - The New Creative Process” as part of a day long session regarding “Transforming Media”. I got to meet lots of very interesting people with like minds starting with the good folks from DivX / Stage 6 ; Genevieve, Ben, Jim, Melissa, James and Jordan. The panel discussions were very stimulating as it represented a good cross section of people with new ideas for the creation and distribution of quality digital media. The following people participated alongside myself:
> M dot Strange - We Are The Strange - fantastic animator of a strange and extraordinary piece of work.
> Gabriel McIntyre - Xolo.tv - founding member of a forward thinking organisation of vloggers and a whole lot more.
> Jamie King - Steal This Film - director of the film about piracy online featuring The Pirate Bay as a case study.
> Henrik Moltke - Good Copy / Bad Copy - director of this excellent film, see my review of this from a while back
> Wendy Bernfeld - Rights Stuff - founder of advisory group for media companies
> Steven Lee - Star Wreck Studios - CEO of groundbreaking Finnish film company which explores space and beyond on a shoestring.
> Ton Roosendaal - Blender - Founder of groundbreaking animation solution, Blender.
And this was just the first day! - a great way to kick off an exciting week of new discoveries.
Continue reading ‘Picnic ‘07′
I have put up a rough promo for the documentary currently in production about the debate surrounding the Tara valley and the M3 motorway. For more information see the campaign site Save Tara.
Watch it in full quality with DivX here.
{EDIT : I have taken down the Flash version from Dailymotion while production is in process. You can still use the link above which will take you to where all the Tara project information and media will live}
Well, I have a backlog of blog entries to put in over the past few weeks. I’m gonna back date them so the blog at least appears to be kept up to date. I guess that’s cheating, but what the heck, it keeps it neat and logical and it’s better than omitting these entries altogether. So, below in a while you should see my Electric Picnic review as well as my 1st trip to Amsterdam this month to IBC. I will be back there next week for the Picnic Network. Watch this space.
So, I haven’t had much of a chance to update this as I have taken on a big documentary project which examines the debate surrounding Tara and the M3 motorway. I won’t say more about it here for the moment as I am in the thick of it. I will be soon opening a dedicated site for it. Stay tuned.
So in the meantime, here’s a little video treat. On the new Myspace TV there is a cool little channel called the 10 Minute Theater. I came across this summary of one of my favourite films “Dark Star”. If you’ve not already seen the film I don’t recommend watching this, because it ruins it of course. But that’s the point and it’s a funny review of it. “Dark Star” is a very low budget film from the beginning of John Carpenter’s career. You’ll either love it or hate it. It is quite ridiculous and that’s why I like it! It’s got talking bombs, need I say more! So here it is, summed up, in ten minutes. I also found the script for the original short film version here.
Enjoy.
10 MINUTE THEATER Episode 12: Dark Star
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