I came across this odd but delightful short video on Vimeo the other day and thought I’d share it out here.

And when I say short, I really mean short – at 8 seconds you don’t have to hang around too long to take it in.

The Off-Button on Vimeo

Date Added: June 21st, 2009 | Leave a comment!

I’ve been thinking over the last while that I might need to somewhat alter the way I have things set up here. Over the past number of years I’ve been getting more and more involved in composition and sound design for film and recently had to update my CV for a potential sound-design job. As I was adding the more recent film work I noticed that I’ve now worked on 11 films since around 2004, varying from sound design, to sound editing, to composition, to all of the above. On top of this I’ve done a number of mixing and mastering jobs on music releases as well as a variety of theatre productions and one exhibition.

It has been occurring to me that it might actually be time to set up a dedicated portfolio detailing this work and really there is no better place for this than this domain, alex.leonard.ie.

I have no fear of this blog coming across badly in the eyes of a prospective director/producer but at the same time it feels as though I should (once again) attempt to separate work from play. Initially I started a blog over on Vox just because it seemed like something I should be doing.

After running the Pixelapes blog for a while it felt quite nice to be able to speak a little more frankly on my personal blog without feeling that I would give the wrong impression of our business (utterly professional it is too, if I may say so). Often the lines blur between what is more suitable for which website, and a number of the blog posts I’ve written here could very easily have been slightly adapted and published over on Pixelapes.

Now I’m faced with a different question, the answer to which could leave me with a veritable dirth of websites. There are a few approaches I could take.

1. Continue my personal blog here, but alter the site to be more focussed on my film portfolio and maintain the blog as it’s own small section.
2. Move this blog wholesale to another domain name and set up a simple portfolio site on this domain.
3. Move this blog as above, but start a new portfolio site along with yet another blog, but one which is wholesale concentrated on matters relating to the film industry in Ireland and beyond, with some intention of actually assisting my search engine results.

Option 1 is certainly appealing from the point of view that I would only need to maintain one WordPress install and could update both portfolio in blog from the one place. However there are certain drawbacks to this option. Firstly I think I’d desire to do a complete redesign, on top of which there’d be some major restructuring of how this site is laid out. Also, I would probably still feel that I would be a somwhat restricted in what I could say on the blog section as I would need to keep in mind that potential employers might be looking over the site. You know, nothing beats a good rant every once in a while, but it might not convey exactly the impression I’d desire to give.

Option 2 is quite doable. I already know what domain I’d be buying and it’s relatively straightforward to wholesale move this site to another domain (just a few find and replace operations on the database and some quick file moving). However this also results in another new design being created just for my portfolio (although could be nice to play around with some PHP coding, unless I install WordPress – which I probably would do).

Option 3 means that I’d be committing to attempting to maintain content creation on yet another blog/site and would bring the number up to 4 websites actively in need of maintenance: pixelapes.com. ebauche.net, alex.leonard.ie, and mysterynewdomain.com

Whilst anything that increased my potential exposure as a composer and sound designer would be good, I’m not sure that I could really afford to look at a film portfolio as anything other than a handy reference guide for potential employers which might allow them to get a better idea of the work I’ve done – basically an online CV.

Slowing the decision

I would think that the main thing that is slowing me down from making a decision is the fact that I barely have time to do anything extra at the moment and right now it doesn’t feel like the highest priority thing. However it would be very easy to continue saying this until another producer contacts me asking to look over my CV. At which point I would be most likely to start ‘considering’ the transition again desipite the fact that it would once again be too late for such a transition to make any sort of difference to the decision making process undertaken by the producer/director.

Anyway, it being after 1am I think I’m going to call it a night. I think I mostly just wanted to get these thoughts all down somewhere so I could come back to them again and work out what I really wanted. If you have any thoughts on what I should do, just drop a comment down below !

Date Added: May 4th, 2009 | 10 Comments

Ok, I don’t actually have my name in lights anywhere, but I’ve made it onto IMDB and feel like trumpeting this minor achievement to the general public.

In fact, I’m sort of there twice, at least in spirit. The first time up is my own page detailing some of the films on which I’ve worked. It’s quite incomplete really as some of the films I’ve worked on aren’t up there and I’m not sure I can really go adding films, but it’s a start anyway.

So what did I mean when I said I’m actually sort of up there twice. Well there is Cpl. Alex Leonard, a character in “Ultimate Force” a TV show made in England with Ross Kemp. Amusingly I was at a fund-raising auction and the incredibly sound Rob Heyland had put up for grabs the honour of being named in the next TV show he was going to write for.

In the end he named pretty much all the characters in that show after people I know, all of whom ‘bear no resemblence to persons living or dead’ yadda yadda. I’ve never seen it so I don’t know but I believe my namesake in that show is a half-caste bisexual killing-machine (or something), which I’m pretty sure doesn’t bear any resemblance to me

Date Added: April 2nd, 2009 | 2 Comments

I was just put on to this fantastic film by George Méliès by Shirley from Stitch Films. I highly recommend watching the whole thing – it’s a really wonderful adventure and I can’t quite believe it was originally made in 1902.

Le Voyage dans la Lune

It’s a damn sight better than a lot of shit put out these days.

If you’d like to find out more, check out the Wikipedia article on George Méliès.

He was very innovative in the use of special effects. He accidentally discovered the stop trick, or substitution, in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his films. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality with the cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the “Cinemagician.”

Date Added: March 7th, 2009 | Leave a comment!

I’m still in bed. In some ways this is fortunate today as the weather outside is truly miserable, hard to believe it is the longest day today – although I was blessed with an amazing sunset last night that went on and on getting richer and richer in colour.

Being in bed has one advantage, I am afforded a rare chance to read books and watch more movies. I am finally getting my head back into reading more books and I must say that it feels very good.

I started off by easing myself in with some Alan Moore graphic novels – he really is a master of his craft, and well worth checking out, even if you’re not attracted to the graphic novel genre. From Hell absolutely blew me away and I’d highly recommend it.

I’ve just finished a few new books, having got through all my Christmas presents (including the excellent “Death and the Penguin” by Andey Kurkov). Last read was a Louis de Bernieres novel called “A Partisan’s Daughter”, which did not fulfil my expectations following on from his trilogy beginning with “The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts” which was absolutely fantastic.

I’m reading a random present from Gaia now, Louis Theroux’s “The Call of the Weird” which I’m enjoying and is a fairly easy read. Next up include:

• Saki – The Best of Saki
• John Burnside – Glister
• Iain M. Banks – Consider Phlebas
• John McGahern – Amongst Women

There isn’t much connecting any of these books I realise as I look at them stacked by my bedside table, but I’m looking forward to each one and I certainly won’t be getting bored any time soon. I’ve already lined up my next plans for reading, including David’s recommendation of Cormac MacCarthy, a random purchase of Victor Pelevin, and, having just rewatched Before Night Falls, I am finally going to buy some books by the Cuban writer Reinaldos Arenas.

Before Night Falls is a really beautiful film, directed by Julian Schnabel – who also directed Basquiat, a film I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time. Javier Bardem plays Reinaldos Arenas and he is absolutely captivating and earnt himself an Academy Award nomination (very much unjustly beaten to the post by Denzel Washington in Training Day – no comparison in my book).

With a very well judged score provided by one of my favourites – Carter Burwell – and with consistently beautiful cinematography, I highly recommend watching this film.

I’ll post again about this when I’ve read some of Reinaldos Arenas’ work.

Some more random photos from the film:

Date Added: June 21st, 2008 | 2 Comments

Just watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this evening. I’ve been lying in bed all day trying to get a little work done. I’ve been feeling a little miserable. Stomach somewhat upset, bit of a temperature, etc. By the time 6 came around I couldn’t face doing anything else and started movie watching. Definitely a better idea.

This screen shot is I think one of the best stills from the film. There’s something about the colours and juxtaposition of the characters. It’s nice.

I think Jim Carrey is surprisingly good in this film. Like Man in the Moon, he manages to show that he can do more than stupid faces. Kate Winslet is very good too, but the main kudos lies with Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry. It’s really well put together and whilst the moral of the story might be fairly simple, it’s handled well.

Worth watching. Nice soundtrack too, including this cover version of “Everybody’s gotta learn sometime” by Beck.

Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime – Beck

Date Added: June 20th, 2008 | Leave a comment!