ammonite 3Speak Podcast: Recent Episodes
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Listen and watch the latest videos from ammonite. Hosted by 3Speak.tv. The free speech video platform on the HIVE blockchain.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/tapafxqv
I made a post about this one before but wanted to revisit, it to keep it in sequence with the others I've been posting about lately of sculptures I made in my friend's garden.
He asked me back just before Easter in 2010 to make a themed sculpture for his children and at the same time I was asked by another friend, Jordan to collaborate on a pilot for a web series he wanted to make and to see if we could make it an entry in a video competition which had just been announced by a company called Baby Skip.
The idea for the competition was to make a video about what you could do with their product the Baby Skip. It is a large bag that you can buy and fill with rubbish and they would then come along and take your rubbish away. Getting rid of rubbish can be expensive and so this company wanted to try and make it affordable. The skip itself is just a 1-tonne strong bag with handles that can be lifted by their truck when full.
The pilot idea was to have different professionals in one field try their hand with the tools of another. Think of what a brain surgeon could do with a 3D printer. I have always thought about this in my work as a sculptor. I don't like to get too attached to my tools as I think sometimes it is nice to change them up to see what other ideas new ones would bring.
So, I figured I could kill three birds with one stone and join them all together. Make a sculpture using the BabySkip bag and Jordan would film the whole thing with me as the star of the show.
We got a beautiful actress, Aishling Bodkin to act as the host of our show.
The making of the sculpture was simple enough I used the bag as a form to compact the sand into and I will admit it was a good idea as it is something that could be used instead of the normal big heavy forms I usually use. It is light and strong and makes for easy cleanup.
I set up my DIY solar-powered timelapse camera to shoot the proceeding and then had Ashling and Jordan back at the end to film the outro.
Jordan edited the competition entry and sent it in. We thought we were in for a fair shot compared to the other entries which all seemed to be just jokes. The outcome of the competition would be whose video got the most views on YouTube. We were off to a good start as we asked all of our contacts to watch it. Then we noticed something strange. One of the entries which wasn't getting many views at all started to climb very fast and it was crap. Doing a bit of research we discovered how easy it was to hack the game with a simple plugin in your browser that would just keep clicking on the video. Set up several computers doing the same with multiple browser windows and you could have all the plays you wanted. This is what that video maker was doing.
Of course, we were tempted to do the same and win by outdoing the cheaters but we wanted fairness and that is all so we contacted BabySkip with our proof and said how the present judging criteria were being gamed. Unfortunately, that was the last we heard about the competition as the whole thing was canceled and every evidence of its existence disappeared from the internet.
We never got to do more with the pilot idea as we both moved on to other things. Jordan got a job with Buzzfeed and then moved on to the BBC. Ashling is still acting I think, I saw her in the movie Death of a Superhero.
At the end of the day, I still got my sculpture finished and a story to tell. I still like the BabySkip and will use it again although will probably not use one of their bags as I get sand delivered to the same kind of thing all the time for smaller jobs.
I also think the video worked out nicely, have used this post as an opportunity to try out some AI video upscaling to remaster it in full HD.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/cvptwhqf
Here's a little something different from me. A video of the making of a moss painting. I am doing quite a lot of these lately as they are quite popular with clients and although not high art they do bring a certain something to a blank wall.
I would like to start sharing more of my workshop projects with the Buildit community and am still trying to discover the best format to present them in.
A few months back I discovered a really good video camera in a charity shop for €50. It is a Canon HG20. It records Full HD and uses a hard disk for
storage, allowing you to shoot 22 hours of video without changing the tape. It is a perfect little camera for blogging and a steal at twice the price. It was also, like, brand new in the box with manuals and everything. I figured that this would be a fun little project to document and give my new camera a run for its money.
Anyone in the maker community should know Jimmy Diresta and I decided to emulate his style of just recording everything and then speeding it up on the computer to reduce the edit time and give an overall sense of what is happening without too much description.
I won't write any more and instead, just let the video do the talking. Let me know if you want to see more of this type of stuff and of course if you have any questions about the process.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/caozsrfu
As promised in my last blog post. Here is a little video of the making of my cement sculpture called
The Three Norns.
The video should be looked on as a documentary with all the rough edges that entails.
I am missing the first day of rushes and my sound is not the best at times but I still think it gives a good telling
of the tale. Read the post about it Here
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/emytqvkv
Sand sculpture collapse. Sandburg, Oberhausen, Germany 2016.
Recored and donated by anonmous passer by
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/euimyifr
Drone fotoage of sand sculpture collapse in Sandburg Oberhausen, Germany 2006.
Video fotoage provided by an annonomous person
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/rlcxubbe
A little video I put together to explain my absence. Life sometimes goes pear shaped and you just have to keep on going one day at a time.
Soon I will continue documenting my art but I just needed a restart.
@ammonite
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/qasvumgy
I'm back with the final video from the 2021 Dublin castle sand sculpture exhibition. I delayed posting this till news of what is going on has reached all my family and friends. The video will probably make it obvious why I have not been around much, as you can tell I have had a lot on my mind.
The exhibition went really well in the end and I must say I am quite proud of it. The Castle also seemed to be very happy and let it be extened for over 1 month. The sculpture still looked good even with the bad weather we were having and the audience seemed to really get what I was trying to say with the sculptures and theme. I will do a proper blog post on them when the time is right with photos and my usual rambling..
Hopefully I will get to do it next year and maybe even make it bigger. My hope is that by then things won't be so shitty for me or my loved ones and that I can really give it my all.
Thanks for following along and sorry about the technical difficulties I had along the way with sound and video.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/kkcgvhkm
My sculptures are just about complete. All I need to do is a quick few details and then a bit of clean up. I am a tired happy sculptor.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/xgijqmih
Getting near the end now. It was a long slog but I am happy with how things are coming together against all odds.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/hnchwpnt
I am doing ok with my second sculpture and have a bit of a tired spring in my step. Sorry again for the wind noise, I have tried to filter it out but it is the kind of noise that is very difficult to fix in post.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/jfucuidr
Finally, finished one sculpture and on to the next. My lack of posts will be revealed.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/vxdzrzqp
The shitstorm continues as I try to pull together my sand sculpture exhibition. A guest carver arrives and is already out passing me.
Sorry about the audio wind noise. I had all these recorded before I discovered the problem.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/zpuqhurx
Here I am again with my inconsostant vlog of the making of my sand sculpture in Dublin castle. This time i hae two days in one just to speed things up a bit.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/tzrdljos
More rain on my sand sculpture but I think it is starting to reveal itself.
Sorry if you have been expecting a more complete blog on this project but there has been a lot of stuff happening which I will go into in another post. For now I just want to post what I have filmed.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/tqlcogqs
It is day two of sculpting and the rain is starting. Still trying to find the big lines in the sand but I am feeling a bit more confident in the composition.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/nootsgrq
Day one complete and I am starting to know what I am going to make and what I am trying to say with the sculpture.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/ywunfdpu
I've made a start but the weather is not playing nice. Still getting used to be back on camera. Follow along for the trials and tridulations of making sand sculpture.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/pwprgkdx
Here I am setting the stage for what will become the sand sculpture exhibition in Dublin Castles upper courtyard.
I had hopes to have a more constant flow of videos to show the progress but everything has gone a bit pear shaped
and I am now just trying to manager to get everything done. For me it is funny to look back on this video knowing the
character (me) has no clue about all the shit that is going tocome flying his way..
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/vvgehxmd
I have not been posting the last while as I have been running around like a blue assed fly trying to put this exhibition together in the upper courtyard of Dublin castle.
For the next few weeks I will create a video vlog showing the progress. I'm so happy to be back carving after the pause due to covid. The castle has awarded me a grant to make this happen and I better spend their money well.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/ahjoskqh
Well as Epic as a clickbaity title could be.
This is just a little video I put together from clips I found on my hard drive from the 2013 Iglu-Dorf project in Davos. Rather than just let it sit there I thought it might give someone a giggle.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=ammonite/dfhxqwsw
Here's a strange little movie I made in 2013 as part of a community I was involved with called The Attic Studios. It was a group of actors, directors, writer and filmmakers that got together once a week to network and have a laugh in the pub after workshops and performances.
Each year we had a short movie contest where some scripts would be chosen and then we would break into groups to make them. I wasn't very interested in getting involved that year because I was so busy with my sculpture work but when this script was chosen and nobody wanted to direct it, I was asked would I accept the challenge.
To be honest I didn't like the script as it made no sense to me and the humour was not... how would you call it? Funny. But to do my part for the community I said yes. It might be fun and a good learning experience.
I love the film making process but I always find it becomes a bigger and bigger undertaking the further you get into it.
Shot by shot For the car scenes, I shot them in a half-finished housing estate close to my house. There was a closed road that I could, guerilla-style, set up a jib I had built to get that quite professional opening shot. I had my friend Mia Mularkey on hand as a camera operator for when I had to act as key grip and everything else behind the camera.
My favourite scenes in the whole movie are the ones with the ballet dancer and scientist. When reading the script first I wondered where the hell would I shot these. Flying the cast and crew to Russia sounded a bit expensive based on a budget of nothing so I had to think creatively. I was thinking of doing it blue screen but with my amateur set up and no budget, this was not a goer. Finally, I decided to not even try to do a location and instead get the actors to work their magic. I hung up a black cloth on my living room wall and went minimal. I really enjoyed directing these scenes, like a film within the film. The Ballet dancer, Aoife Moore is actually a professional dancer and was great fun to work with to get the comic panto timing. Scientist Hilary Cotter also really got into the roll and all together with Clodagh and myself behind the camera, we had a great evening of creativity which for me, at least, made the whole film worth making. It was great collaborating with these guys.
What's the motivation I don't think any of the actors actually understood the point of the script but did their best to bring it to life. For Clodagh as the pregnant woman, she knows it was not her best performance and Pagraig as the taxi man, he was just playing along. Handy that he is a taxi driver when not acting. Yvonne usher as the dreamer was pretty good in her role and also got the producer role.
After editing, which helped in forcing me to learn some new skills like motion tracking the title at the start we presented it to the jury. The whole process to about 1 week to put together between all the other things I had going on.
and the Oscar goes to The night of the prize-giving was a pretend star-studded affair where everyone dressed up for the red carpet. I think that was the closest most of us would ever get to the real thing. Happily, for all our team our film got Best Picture and to top it all I got the Best Director award. It was a nice surprise.
I am not putting this out there as my best work but just thought I should document it as I finish up my other posts from 2013