Irish Elk at Stormont
This was the first day of filming for the second programme in our Blueprint natural history series. Carole O'Kane is producing Programme 2, with Jim Creagh taking over as cameraman. Brian was back on sound and Peter, our community service volunteer, was out on the road with us.
This programme deals with the colonisation of Ireland by animals and plants. We started the day at Stormont -- in search of some of the images of the Irish Elk that adorn Parliament Buildings; then moved to Portaferry to film two sequences about the effects of the ice age. When the setting up continued outside Parliament Buildings, I stole away to the Stormont canteen for a coffee and met Conor Bradford at the coffee machine, taking a break from his preparations for Stormont Live. He seemed a little bemused at the idea that our crew was there to film Irish Elk in the grounds of Stormont; I didn't have time to give him the full story. The motif of the Irish Elk is everywhere to be seen in the architecture of Stormont and provides an interesting backdrop for a piece to camera linking our sequence telling the story of our famous great deer.
Anyone driving along the Portaferry Road near Greyabbey at about noon today would have seen me standing on the huge boulder (an "erratic", as Carole never tires to telling me!) on the shore. This was once part of Scrabo Hill and was picked up and brought there by a glacier.
The first day of shooting is always a challenge for me -- perhaps it is for everyone. We've spent weeks writing and re-writing the script, and each shot has been planned in carefully chosen locations; but the task of turning all of that into a film is another thing altogether. And part of that story is developing a common focus, uniting various personalities in the task at hand, getting to know one another's styles -- and all of this under the unavoidable pressures of limited time. These pressures are always present particularly on the first day, even when working with a director as accomplished as Carole and a cameraman as brilliant as Jim. All of which I mention here partly to rationalise my extremely unimpressive series of fluffs on the shoreline this afternoon -- requiring no less than seven takes. I wish I could plead the distracting presence of a passing elk in the distance. In any case, all's well that end up in the can.
Tomorrow, the shoot moves to verious locations in Belfast city centre.
Comments
What about the Stormont dinosaurs William, did you spot them?
The dinosaurs were probably all down at the local pubs at happy hour eating a liquid lunch which for them is probably from about 11AM to 3PM. It may be the only practical way they can stand each other in the same room with the new government arrangement.