The Irish Ballad

Happy St Paddy's Day ...

2007-03-17T17:12:00.000-04:00

While "The Irish Ballad" is about as authentically Irish as a Shamrock Shake, I thought I'd say a happy hello to all those celebrating today. I raise a pint o' Guinness to y'all.

Just thought I'd ask ...

2007-03-05T13:17:00.000-05:00

Anyone looking to work on this film

-- in Toronto --

is encouraged, nay, ordered to send their resumés, portfolios or reels to irishballadeer@gmail.com.

Happy Birthday Rudy

2006-12-06T09:21:00.000-05:00

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the release of the Rankin Bass Holiday Classic,

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This movie is one of my earliest childhood memories, and is partly to blame for my love of animation.

Check out Rick Goldschmidt's "official" Rankin Bass site. His book on the making of the television special is a must read for Rudolph fans.

Gerry O'Kane Live at the Wellington

2006-08-06T15:44:00.000-04:00

A special treat for Gerry O'Kane fans!!

I've had a number of people contact me who were also looking for Gerry -- all of them reminiscing about nights at the Wellington and singing along with him. While I still haven't been able to track him down, I did manage to find an old cassette he gave me.

With a little fiddling, I converted it to an MP3.

The quality isn't great...

BUT!

I think it's the only place anyone can find a

LIVE

recording of Mr O'Kane

and the bunch of drunken louts who frequented the best damned pub in Kingston.

The recording is from 1992.

If you were a regular then, you're probably in the crowd.

I've only converted one side of the tape -- here is the set list:

The Irish Ballad

The Black Velvet Band

And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Mary's Wedding

The Mary Ellen Carter

Farewell to Nova Scotia

Seven Drunken Nights

The Old Dunn Cow

The Ballad of Willie McBride (only the last few verses)

Dirty Old Town

The Wild Rover

The track is 44 minutes long and includes all of Gerry's banter with the crowd in the pub, as well as their shouts in all the right places:

"HEY WIFE!!" -- seven drunken nights

"MACINTYRE!!!" -- the old dunn cow

"RIGHT UP YER KILT!!" -- the wild rover

"AND SHE WAS!!" -- the black velvet band

I am going to ask some pals of mine with audio recording experience -- and ProTools set-ups to do a proper conversion of the entire tape. I'll put up a link to it when it's done. You won't want to miss the other side -- it has Finnegan's Wake, The Rocky Road To Dublin, Johnny Be Fair, and the crowd favourite, Barrett's Privateers.

In the mean time -- to download the 5 meg file

right-click here

and "save target as"

I hope you all enjoy it!

SIX MONTHS LATER.......

2006-08-06T10:52:00.000-04:00

An update:

With everything else on the go, this project has spent the last 6 months on the back burner.

The good news is ...

the

Ottawa International Animation Festival

is coming up.

A great place for more inspiration.

Will get me working on the film again -- in the 15 minutes of spare time I have each day.

Sweet

2006-02-10T18:26:00.000-05:00

A wonderful bit of stop-motion -- and a documentary on how they did it to boot

Found on:

http://www.transbuddha.com/index.php/buddha/C132/

Letters From Lehrer

2006-01-15T17:10:00.000-05:00

This week marks the opening of a stage production in Toronto entitled Letters from Lehrer. The show is playing at CanStage Berkely Theatre. Ticket and performance information can be found here.

An article in today's Toronto Star talks about the impact Tom Lehrer's tunes have had on the lives and careers of 3 individuals. I'd like to add my name to that roster. It was the animated tunes of Tom Lehrer that appeared on the Electric Company that stuck in my head as a kid. Who can forget "silent e" or "-ly"?

Years later when I heard "The Irish Ballad" I knew I wanted to make an animated version of it -- long before I knew I wanted to be an animator.

I'm glad to see a resurgence in the interest in Mr. Lehrer. The planets are alligning again.
Hopefully, it'll help spur on the completion of my film.

Gerry O'Kane

2005-12-19T19:03:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to track down Gerry O'Kane. He's the wonderful voice you can hear on the soundtrack if you click the play button in my banner.

He used to perform at the Wellington in Kingston, Ontario -- but I have lost track of him. Many Google searches and directory queries have turned up nothing.

If anyone knows his whereabouts, please drop me a line.

I'd like to fill him in on the progress of the film.

*** UPDATE *** I have an MP3 of Gerry singing live at the Welli' -- not very good quality, but you can check it out here.

DISNEY RARITIES

2005-12-13T21:15:00.000-05:00

Just got the new DVD "Disney Rarities" with a nice gem of stop motion on it. Here's a quote I got from another site.

"Noah's Ark" - Disney's first attempt at stop-motion animation (and last until some guy named Tim Burton made "Vincent" in 1982), this re-telling of the famous Bible story bustles with energy and creativity (as everything is made from mundane household products).

CorpseBride Premiere

2005-12-04T11:57:00.000-05:00

Back in September I attended the North American premiere of Tim Burton's CorpseBride.

You can see photos of the whole event here. To be honest, I don't remember much about the film. The spectacle of the night took over and I was more jazzed about meeting Burton and Depp than anything else.

I totally understand the press junket screenings now. It must be tough to give a bad review when you're loaded with free booze and swag.

Designs

2005-12-04T11:47:00.000-05:00

Oner the past 13 years the designs have gone through many changes. I'm revisiting them now to see what will translate well to stop-motion.

Stop-Motion Magic

2005-12-04T10:25:00.000-05:00

Hoping to get "The Irish Ballad" completed in time for next year's festival circuit I've been doing some research into the world of stop motion's costs and production details.

Through a series of very fortunate events, connections and cosmic allignments, I was lucky enough to get a tour of a stop-motion studio in Toronto known as "the Orphanage". They are currently producing Brad Peyton's soon-to-be seen series, "What It's Like being Alone". It will be on the CBC next year.

I have never been as inspired or as excited about animation as I was when I walked through their building.

We started the hour-long tour in storage rooms filled with sets and characters. There were façades as far as the eye could see, and shelf after shelf of minature props.

The workshops were busy with artists crafting all sorts of buildings and fine tuning characters. In one section, two guys were putting the finishing touches on a large forced-perspective sculpture of the Great Wall of China that we were told was built for one 10-second gag.

From the workshop we went to the stages where the filming was taking place. In order to produce the amount of animation need for the series, 10 stages are working simultaneously. This means that multiple versions of each character and set are needed. We wandered around from set to set, each one seperated from the other with huge black drapes. Tacked on the walls were hundreds of storyboard panels and page after page of shot lists.

Every stage had a different facet of the process to show us -- and each one was surprising and enlightening. If it wasn't the huge infinity wall with projected clouds -- it was the green-screen and wires that amazed us. We saw how cigars were lit, water was faked, and buckets of blood ran down walls. It was terrific.

We got a quick peek at the filming process and the computers used to composite the shots, then got a brief tour of editing.

The whole visit was incredibly inspiring. I can't wait to get "The Irish Ballad" into production -- and hopefully with these folks.

Santa Found

2005-12-04T10:12:00.000-05:00

Long believed lost or tossed out, some original Rankin-Bass puppets have been found. Read all about it here.

These guys are the reason the Irish Ballad is going to be stop-motion.

The Story So Far ...

2005-11-08T20:12:00.000-05:00

About 18 years ago I wandered into the Wellington Pub in Kingston, Ontario for an evening of Irish and Maritime tunes sung by Gerry O'Kane. The Wellington quickly became my weekly hangout and the sound of Gerry's tenor voice and Irish bodhrán became a big part of my 20-somethings. There weren't too many Friday or Saturday nights where I couldn't be found at a table in the Welli' with a few pints of Guinness under my belt and my ears ringing from numerous coruses of "Right up yer kilt!".

One of my favourite tunes that Gerry sang was "The Irish Ballad" -- a wonderful song by the great Tom Lehrer. The story it told always got laughs and every time I heard it I envisioned a film version of it. Being a big fan of animated shorts, I pictured it as a "Cat Came Back" type of film and believed it would be successful on the festival circuit.

A few years later, when I was at Sheridan College for animation I naturally thought of making "The Irish Ballad" a reality. So back to Kingston I went, talked with Gerry about the project. Then I tracked down Tom Leherer and he graciously gave me permission to use the song. (More about that in a later post.)

Gerry recorded a rich version of the tune for me and I began storyboarding before I even returned to start my 3rd year of school. Well-intentioned or not -- my lack of ability and a shortage of time meant that I couldn't pull off the cinematic masterpiece I envisioned. The final result was a 3-minute roughly drawn animatic with about 40 seconds of actual animation. (It was enough to graduate though -- and people who saw it in the final screening all those years ago remember it as being finished -- a good sign??)

The film sat on my shelf for years as I chased work around Toronto, vowing to get back to it one day. Every so often I would revisit it, revising designs, changing media, trying to find a way to breathe life into it again. Now it looks like the time has come. And this time the media is stop-motion.

With the help of my friend and business partner Todd Kauffman, "The Irish Ballad" will hopefully begin production some time in the new year. The dust is being blown off of old scene folders, grant money is being applied for, and research into the wonderful world of stop-motion has begun.

I'm using this blog to compile old drawings, post research into stop-motion and upload as much inspirational stuff as I can find. And once things really get going I'll hopefully be disciplined enough to keep a production journal.

So here's an open invitation to anyone who stumbles across this blog and happens to know a bit about stop-motion --- drop me a line and tell me who you are and how you can help.

"Rickety-Tickety-Tin"