Tag: Music

Chris Wilson – I See You

It must have been about a year ago that I met Chris Wilson, and his partner Áine Ní Loingsigh. They were playing together in St Stephen’s Green. Not busking, but just jamming on cello and guitar for the hell of it. I shot some footage with a gimbal I’d just picked up, and we shared emails.



A few months later Chris suggested we made a music video for his debut EP. I came up with a typically ambitious idea, and eventually, over herbal teas in Chris’s boho flat in the docklands he and Aine agreed to do it.

The resulting video is very much ‘stone soup filmmaking’, with a crew working largely for free and a shoestring budget. We shot in the house my great great grandfather built at the turn of the century in Carrigabruise Cavan.

The band (Chris and Áine) gave absolutely stunning performances as a rural couple struggling with poverty and the pain of a hard turn of the century life. Lee Murphy paints an incredibly moving portrait of their child.

The video was shot by Andy Flaherty, Ismael Diarra and myself, with invaluable production from Jimmy Galvin at Shoot Cut Grade. Most of the crew worked for free, and gave their hearts completely to the project. Dan Kelleher, Donal Kelleher, Lisa Murphy, Shona Murphy, Laura Keane, Aisling Lynch, and of course Nicole O’Connor were incredible as background artists. Costumes were provided by Ciaran Taylor of Carpet Theatre, who personally took us into his home to riddle through his haul of turn of the century garments. Thanks also to David Murphy of Smoke Stack Studios, who provided immense support to the production. Thanks also to my uncle and aunt Michael and Sheila Stack who let us use the old house, which was literally an irreplaceable setting for the video.

Credits

Written by Chris Wilson and Grahame Rolfe
Video by Gareth Stack
Director of Photographer – Andrew Flaherty
Camera Operator – Ismael Diarra
Producer – James Galvin, Shoot Cut Grade
Starring Chris Wilson, Áine Ní Loingsigh, Lee Murphy, Mike Timms.
Background Artists – Dan Kelleher, Aisling Lynch, Nicole O’Connor

Romances – The Late David Turpin

Irish writer, musician and filmmaker David Turpin asked me to pop by the photoshoot for new record ‘Romances’ several months back. I caught some footage of photographer Dorje De Burgh shooting for the book that accompanied the record. In hindsight we had enough for a very barebones video, a kind of no budget promo for the record’s title track.

4 Lights – Shy Mascot

I directed / edited and co-shot this video for Dublin band Shy Mascot. Previously we’d worked together on the video ‘Pardon Me‘.

4 Lights, the new single from Dublin band Shy Mascot. All the incredible moving shots were carried out by cameraman Sean Bond on his electric skateboard. The video stars the incredibly talented young actor, Lorcan Strain, who recently guested on Game of Thrones final episode.

The video was inspired by my experiences working as a delivery cyclist on the dangerous Dublin city roads during my masters degree.

Director – Gareth Stack
Starring – Lorcan Strain
Costume / Design – Francis Galligan 
Action Camera – Sean Bond
Camera – Gareth Stack
Lighting Assistants – Greg O’Reilly, Fearghal O’Mahoney
Producer – Stephen Dalton 
Late State Capitalist – Aidan O’Sullivan
Human Horse – Shane Conneely

Background artists – Nicole O’Connor, Greg Young, James Van De Waal, Dave Rowe, Kyle Cheldon Barnett, Niamh Reddin, Ellen Mee, Michael Marshall, Kevin gibbons.

Special Thanks – James Galvin, Cian Brennan

Pardon Me – Shy Mascot (Music Video)

There’s a long tradition of puppet music videos, from Gabriel Byrne’s cameo in the Rubber Bandits’ ‘Fellas’, to Ed Sheeran’s muppet of muppet. But as far as we know this is the first time someone’s remade ‘Smack My Bitch’ up with marionettes. Inspired by the tough guy lyrics of Shy Mascot’s new track ‘Pardon Me’, we imaged a puppet on an odyssey through Dublin, leaving a trail of mayhem and broken hearts behind him. An off the wall idea turned into six months of preproduction, as special effects guru Frances Galligan created uncanny wood and plaster replicas of Shy Mascot’s Jamel Franklin and Fia Gregg. We shot these diminutive rebels everywhere from sex shops to jewellery stores, Dublin buses to cat sanctuaries.
A tiny crew headed up by writer / director Gareth Stack and DOP Siobhan Madden combined storyboarded action sequences with improvised guerrilla shooting. Whenever a location lent itself to leprechaun scale hijinks we found a way to take advantage. Volunteer performers mixed with season pros to seduce and battle lil’ Jamel’s bad ass homunculus. Probably the most ambitious scene features a bloody dustup between Dublin based performance poet Raven (playing a cassocked street preacher) and Jamel’s balsa wood hard nut. We shot in the crumbling remains of O’Devaney gardens while dozens of local kids milled around and cars pulled donuts between abandoned tower blocks. We fought everything from tangled strings to reluctant sex shop proprietors to get this video made. Our action packed finale even had to be reshot when a memory cannibalised itself This happened after we’d snapped off one of lil’ Jamel’s feet and broken his back flinging him through the air first time around! Fortunately, after a short operation this little legend soldiered on.
Our favourite scene features a date between marionette Jamel and our moonlighting DOP Siobhan, shot in Dublin’s only barcade ‘Token’. To sex up this smokey seduction, we used the golden-age Hollywood technique of stretching cotton stockings over the lens for a poor mans glamour filter. All in all, the shoot took nine days, and the edit another three weeks. But the memories – bench pressing Ireland’s largest sex aid, laying half naked on the floor of the Glimmerman’s ladies while a marionette vomited, fighting allergies to give a puppet a chance to visit a cat sanctuary were absolutely worth it!
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Ray Brown – Summer of Hate (Music Video)

Two years back I was visiting New York, and didn’t have anywhere to stay. I put “friends who live in New York City” into facebook, and messaged everyone who came up, asking for a couch. Ray Brown, a guy who I’d met for thirty minutes at a yard party years before, said he couldn’t put me up but offered to take me out on the town. That night we visited the legendary Sidewalk cafe, the East Village anti-folk bar where Ray has been a regular for over thirty years. Ray introduced me to a cute girl and I fell head over heels in love.

Ever since, Ray and I have been friends, and on his most recent trip to Ireland (where I live) to record a record, I did some shooting in the studio, thinking to one day make a documentary about his extraordinary life. Only afterwards, with the album already in pre-production did it occur to me that this footage might make a cool music video. So I’ve been hacking away at this for the past week or so. It’s shot on my humble Panasonic G85, with the Sigma 18 – 35, just in whatever light we had in Alfionn studio – a tiny independent space in Dublin; and graded in DaVinci with Red Giant Universe.

Recorded at Alfionn Studios, May / June / August 2018.

Performing – Ray Brown, Myles Manley, Nick Boon, Chris Barry, Brandon Perdomo, and Ali Byrne.

Producer – Chris Barry.