John Morton

We’ve released the first promo for the new Vultures webisode Where Have All The Good Dicks Gone?

In it, the former detectives of V.P.I. talk about their own personal favourite fictional detectives. We’re oh so meta. It should provide a nice taster of the upcoming yarn.

The episode, which as we revealed in the trailer is a documentary made by Janine Drew, is going to be released next month. Keep an eye out for it. I’ll probably post up more stuff about it in the meantime. Details and info and such like.

You can subscribe to Vultures on iTunes and also on our YouTube channel.

There are many words to describe a collective of vultures. My favourite is a ‘vortex of vultures’ and I also like that a group of them circling in the air is known as a ‘kettle of vultures’. But for the sake of this entry, I’ll go with a ‘cast of vultures’ because it’s the most apt for my current doings.

We just wrapped the new installment of our webcom Vultures. It’s going to be leading the charge for a new series of Vultures short webisodes that will be released online between March and June. Unlike the bigger story arc orientated first series of the webcom, this time we’re offering smaller, self contained episodes that will be infinitely more digestible. The story catches up with the detectives of V.P.I. three years on from the ill fated Pinkerton feud as they struggle with unemployment, loneliness, mild alcoholism and general disenfranchisement. But in a really FUNNY way.

We shot Where Have All The Good Dicks Gone? this past weekend and it was great to get the old team back together, along with new members of our cast and crew. I got the glasses back on as Jim Vultour which was as blinding as I remembered. David Thompson and Seán Hackett return as Dan McGrain and Niall Tennyson respectively with Suzanne O’Brien returning as college student Janine Drew who now takes centre stage as the fourth ‘vulture’. Some familiar cast members will be returning this time around and we’ve got some new characters joining the cast.

The episode won’t go online until March so there’s no point in harping on at length about it now. What I will say is that it was a great shoot, a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to doing some more. For Mycrofilms, it felt like being on holidays. It also felt like being a public nuisance on the streets of Kilkenny. Again.

If you’d all be so kind, please subscribe to Vultures on YouTube, on iTunes and keep an eye on the website for more information. We’ll be unveiling new bits and bobs in the coming weeks. The lovely photos above were taken by Ross Costigan. He still hasn’t taken any photos of himself.

Nearly 3 years since we wrapped filming on our low budget detective webcom Vultures, we announced last week that it’s coming back for a series of new webisodes (like episodes…but on the web…)

So I’m going to write a little bit about why we’ve brought it back and what we’re doing and what to expect. Since we finished the first series in 2009 we’ve been shopping the show around in the hopes of getting it funded/broadcast/commissioned. And it’s just been a really long process. RTÉ weren’t interested. They turned it down in three different formats and told us that it wasn’t ‘broad’ enough and comedy isn’t really their thing. Yup. We should have paid more attention to what Graham Linehan said. We’re going to wear ‘not broad enough for RTÉ’ as a badge of honour. But it hasn’t all been negative. We’ve had some really positive responses and chats with nice people and there’s ongoing interest that we’re trying to sustain.

And sustaining interest explains the return of Vultures. The first series was filmed three years ago so we’re aware that considering the long commissioning process we’re now trying to sell people on older material. So we’ve decided to shoot some new material to freshen up the show.

It’s not a second series though! The process of making anything that took the time and the budget of the first series means that we won’t do anything until we have both time and budget! Which also translates as being less stupid nowadays… less. We wrote a second series that I’m really happy with and we’re still looking for funding. The new episodes, if anything, are like a Series 1.5. Like when Arthur Conan Doyle did all those flashback Sherlock Holmes stories to kill some time and generally be cheap about coming up with new material.

Unlike the long episodes we did in the first series (lesson learned: become your own script editor) these ones are all short and self contained and they bridge the gap between what we did in the first series and the storyline for the second series that we may maybe might make, possibly potentially. You won’t need to have seen the show before to enjoy them. We’ve got five lined up and we’re planning a new Christmas episode to complete the six for 2012. The first one is called Where Have All The Good Dicks Gone? and it shoots in Kilkenny this coming weekend (that is absolutely a Bonnie Tyler reference). The episodes will then be released between March and June on iTunes, our YouTube channel and VulturesPI.com.

The new material revolves around Tennyson, Vultour and McGrain, the unemployed former detectives of V.P.I. and new addition, college student Janine Drew. We’ve got the cast and crew on board and there’s also a few new faces lined up, so we’re looking forward to getting back into the fun stuff.

The only cast member we needed who we couldn’t nail down was Eddie Brennan who plays Fred Bass. Eddie perpetually has rugby training and all through the first series he would say things like ‘Fuckin’ hurry up, I’ve to go to rugby training.’ When approached about a scene in the new episode, Eddie said ‘I’ve got rugby training that day.’ So yeah, we’re gonna kill Fred Bass off in the first episode. Or maybe just get have him lost at sea. Whatever works. More updates as I have ‘em!

The sexy new promos are by Ross Costigan Photography. (Who coincidentally is currently getting ready to wear a new fur coat and pitch his voice up a few octaves)

Here’s the trailer for our new film Hot Water Bottle.

It’s taken us a long, long time to make it (and we’re still not entirely done yet) but it’s having a preview screening this coming weekend in Dublin at the 2011 Darklight Film Festival. Us film peeps at Mycrofilms are going to be exhibiting some work as part of the New Indie Voices section. We’ll also be screening a few bits and pieces from Vultures. It’s a nice way to introduce our work to a different community of filmmakers.

Hot Water Bottle is the first short film I’ve wrote and directed. I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to making a short, but it did. I’m lining up another one for late next year hopefully. With Mycrofilms, we’ve developed a plan to produce two short films a year for the next 3 years anyway. For 2011, it’s Hot Water Bottle and Baby Love, directed by Terrence White. We’ve lined up our projects for next year and we’re currently looking for funding for them. So this one is the first out of the traps, it’s not too dissimilar to Vultures, as in it’s the same team and same cast behind it. But hey, it’s a film about comfort zones anyway so I guess that’s quite apt.

Hot Water Bottle stars Suzanne O’Brien, David Thompson, Simone Kelly and Peter McGann. It was produced by Alan Slattery and Paddy Dunne. Soundtrack is by Supernova Scotia. It’s an unromantic comedy about comfort zones.

We’re currently shopping it around to various film festivals and hoping that people want to see it.

This is the poster for a film I made called Hot Water Bottle.

It was designed by Paddy Dunne, one of the producers on the film. The other producer is Alan Slattery. The three of us also made the webcom Vultures.

It’s the first non Vultures creative project that Mycrofilms have undertaken. The second is Baby Love by Terrence White which is out later this year. Two more short films will go into production for 2012 and they’re probably going to be even better because that’s how these things roll.

We got the funding to shoot Hot Water Bottle in 2009. We started shooting it in 2010. We finished shooting it in 2011. There will be a trailer for it sometime very, very soon. The film itself is currently being sent out to a variety of festivals who may or may not want to show it to people.

I will write more about it in proportion to the amount of content I have to show off.

We’ve just got our hands on the title cards for the upcoming Vultures finale. As is usually the case, Paddy Dunne has done another sterling job in representing the episodes in a fine display of design and fancy lettering.

Our idea for the Attack Of The Pinkertons title card was to go a little Manga on the look. And of course, pink. Which is quite befitting of the storyline in which the Pinkertons finally open shop and start their campaign to take over our little unnamed town. Our remit for this episode was to load up on the action and of course, we’re suckers for Manga so we thought it’d be a nice look for what’s shaping up to be our most violently cartoonish episode.

The title card for The Long Goodbye is a little more noirish and does a good job of evoking the sense that this is the final hooray for Vultures. We went a little 40′s noir on this as the episode itself has plenty of smoky bars, subterfuge, femme fatales and indeed, goodbyes.

Attack Of The Pinkertons goes online on Sunday September 20th.
The Long Goodbye will follow 2 weeks later when it brings all matters to an end on Sunday October 4th.

I’ll be posting a few bits and pieces here in the run up but as usuall, all things Vultures can be found over on www.VulturesPI.com

This is the trailer for our upcoming production of Stags and Hens by Willy Russell. Cut to the strains of David Bowie’s classic ‘Modern Love’ it depicts the titular stags and hens engaging with the bathroom mirrors of the same nightclub they inhabit. And as you’ll see they engage with them in completely different ways.

We shot this trailer on the 21st June and it was one of the most fun shoots I’ve ever been part of. We had a blast getting into our costumes and just letting fly in front of the camera. From concept to blocking, we at Devious Theatre developed the entire trailer along the way getting the assistance of Alan Slattery of Mycrofilms in Kilkenny, who shot and edited the trailer under the direction of Kevin Mooney, the man at the helm of the production. We’ve wanted to shoot a trailer for a Devious Theatre production for years and this was our first shot at it. Considering the buzz it’s after generating and the feedback we’ve all been receiving, it’s something we’ll definitely try out again.

Tickets for the show are on sale and available by calling in person to the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny or by phoning 056-7761674. For group bookings (six and over), please contact ourselves at The Devious Theatre Company by clicking here.