v.p.i. Category

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December 30, 2012 • mycrofilms, v.p.i., vultures

The Dicks Who Came In From The Cold

The final episode of Vultures hit the web just before Christmas, finalising the hell out of our final season with a real sense of urgent finality.

The Dicks Who Came In From The Cold is the title of the episode (it’s not just spies you know) and sees the events of the second series get tied up in what I hope is a funny, entertaining way. The story sees Janine Drew finally going through with her promise to quit college. She arrives home for the Christmas break intent on fighting crime in her home town (without her Ma finding out she’s quit). After watching Janine’s detective documentary, crime novelist Kate Marple hires the ambitious young sleuth to help her write an expose of rumoured crime boss Johnny Curragh. In the meantime, former dicks McGrain, Vultour and Tennyson have been brought together for a Christmas reunion by an unknown party. Everything comes to a head in this festive finale which should answer the question posed by the first episode of the new series ‘Where have all the good dicks gone?’

This is the one where we get to tie together all the storylines of the new series, which has predominantly dealt with the mundane lifestyles of retired crimefighters. This follows on from the fourth episode Dan McGrain In The Nick Of Time which saw the former dicks meet their first fully fledged adventure only for them to walk away from a return to detective life. In this one we also get to show the full extent of our series villains Johnny’s Blades. Like a mix of Charlie’s Angels and Josie and the Pussy Cats with a dash of IRA brutality, we hope they provide formidable villainy to proceedings. The artists sketch of Johnny Curragh as drawn by Mick Minogue definitely gives a sense of our Josie and The Pussycats (well, Captain Caveman) meets IRA spymaster vibe.

And the Charlie’s Angels idea is best represented by the Blades, Johnny’s trio of ball busting lady agents. Maeve Munroe was introduced in the last episode. The new episode will see the debut of Irene O’Haire as played by Alexandra Christle. McGrain and Vultour referenced the nice girl who they used to go line dancing with back in Episode 3 and here she makes her mark. And it will inevitably involve more unprovoked, albeit stylish, violence. And of course, there’s a third Blade but you’ll just have to watch the episode to see how that unfolds.

So this is it for Vultures in its current webcommy form. It may be the end overall but there’s still a few other potential outlets for our brand of detective comedy so we’ll see how it goes. It’s definitely exhausted itself as a low budget webcom and after 12 episodes I think we’ve pretty much told the story and had the laughs that we wanted. It’s also been really nice to finish it off as we started it in 2007 with a Christmas episode. I’d also like to personally thank all the good people who have watched and supported the show since we started making it. It’s been a lot of fun. Here’s the episode itself. Enjoy!

For more on the show, please take a trip over to VulturesPI.com

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December 21, 2012 • irish sitcom, mycrofilms, v.p.i., vultures

Employment Opportunities

We’ve just released the trailer for the very final Vultures episode. ‘The Dicks Who Came In From The Cold’ hits the web this Sunday December 23rd and it will tie up our second series with a bit of festive panache.

The trailer features a head to head between the punky informant Jack Street (Ross Costigan) and dapper architect Tom Moriarty (Stephen Colfer). It allowed us a nice opportunity to give two of the best Vultures supporting characters a scene all on their lonesome as we see that the former detectives aren’t the only ones struggling with unemployment.

It also ups the stakes for our detective baiting Christmas reunion in the final episode. The plot for the new episode sees Janine Drew upping the stakes as she tries to reunite the good dicks who can take the fight local crimeboss Johnny Curragh. And it’s also set at Christmas just like the very first episode all those many, many years ago. It’s nice to finish things off in a sorta full circle kind of fashion. Here’s the trailer:

Check out www.VulturesPI.com for everything else on the show!

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November 27, 2012 • mycrofilms, v.p.i., vultures

To The Rescue?

We’ve released a trailer for the next Vultures episode, and the fourth in our current series, Dan McGrain In The Nick Of Time. And here it is:

It shows that the new episode kicks things up a notch from the ex stalking, sandwich stealing and stakeouts of the first three episodes. The Vultures website has a handy little synopsis for it that goes like this:

The uneasy retirement of our detectives has been compromised and despite all their protestations to the contrary in our first three episodes, they are now finally caught up in a full scale adventure!

 They thought they were done. Unemployed. Their detectives days long behind them. Alcoholism and depression burgeoning. But no, they’ve finally been dragged back into an adventure kicking and screaming. Well, not kicking and screaming, because they are bound and gagged. Johnny Curragh has got his mitts on them. Well, not all of them…. there remains a lone avenger who will rescue them with style and derring do. His name? Dan McGrain! This shall be interesting…

 The fourth episode in our new series of Vultures sees us approach our series finale with the emergence of Johnny Curragh and his fearsome blades, the criminals that are running roughshod over our heroes hometown. Our erstwhile detectives have been trying to avoid trouble and now trouble is coming for them…

We’re currently editing the hell out of it in preparation for a December release. It’s definitely the most action packed episode of the series so far and will lead directly into the events of our final episode which we are gearing up to shoot this very week! And our plan is to finish the second series as we started the first one in December 2007, with a Christmas episode!

The Dicks Who Came In From The Cold is the fifth and final episode in this series and will see the mounting threats to McGrain, Vultour and Tennyson’s retirement from professional investigation come to a head. With a festive spin!

I’ve written the final episode and will also be directing it and likely, locked in an edit for most of December. For the shoot this week we’ll all be wearing the thermals and hoping to god that it’s not going to be as cold as the Christmas shoot back in 2007. We’ve learned a lot of things since then and wrapping up more efficiently is definitely one of them.

Dan McGrain In The Nick Of Time and The Dicks Who Came In From The Cold will wrap things up in quick succession when they’re released in December. For more info, tip on over to VulturesPI.com and subscribe!

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October 15, 2012 • mycrofilms, v.p.i., vultures

Jim Vultour And The Mystery Writer Writing Mystery

The newest episode of our webcom Vultures has hit the internets. There was a bit of a summer break but hopefully this episode brings the series back with a bit of style… and a man in a small car. Entitled Jim Vultour And The Mystery Writer Writing Mystery, it puts the focus on the character I play, the scruffy, myopic, socially inept Vultour. It’s pretty much him sitting in a small red car for 16 minutes but hopefully in a very entertaining way. We’ve synopsised the new episode as thus:

After the shenanigans witnessed in Janine Drew Presents Where Have All The Good Dicks Gone and The Lost Lunch of Niall Tennyson, the third episode further continues the stories of our quartet of disillusioned, unemployed detectives struggling to get some meaning into their lives. This time the focus is on the perpetually haggard and ill dressed Jim Vultour. Entitled Jim Vultour and The Mystery Writer Writing Mystery, it follows Vultour as he decides to stake out the home of up and coming mystery writer Kate Marple. Convinced she is stealing his ideas for her own book, Vultour sets out to prove her plagiarism the only way he knows how… stalking!

And that’s it! The new episode is written by myself and is directed by that wily rogue, the talented (and moderately handsome) Peter McGann. And here it is, embedded for your viewing pleasure.

It’s also the first opportunity we’ve had to properly introduce the character of Kate Marple, who you may have seen pop up in our Digital Comedy Lab trailer. Vultures has more characters and storylines than we will ever get to execute and so with the second series I tried to bring in some of our favourite new characters (Johnny Curragh, May O’Neil and Ronnie Drew have made it.. and a few more are still to come). Not all of them fit into the overall storyline but Kate Marple did. Myself and Paddy Dunne came up with the character back in 2008. She was a children’s writer (like Enid Blyton) but with a taste for really violent stories (not like Enid Blyton). We had an idea that she would be a love interest for Dan McGrain but that hasn’t followed through in the end (probably another reason why this series is so much shorter). But here she is, played by Niamh Moyles, and should hopefully prove just as lovely and violent as we always intended.

We’re into post production on the next episode Dan McGrain In The Nick Of Time (which will land next month) and will be wrapping this series up with a Christmas episode in December. In the meantime, enjoy the newest escapade!

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March 22, 2012 • mycrofilms, v.p.i., vultures

Janine Drew Presents Where Have All The Good Dicks Gone?

We’ve just launched the first episode in the brand new series of Vultures. It’s called Janine Drew Presents Where Have All The Good Dicks Gone? and here it is:

Online feedback to the episode has been great so far and we’re really happy (and kind of relieved) with how well it’s gone down thus far. It definitely sets our stall out for the next few episodes in terms of story, tone, style and yes, length! Speaking of the new episodes, we’re back at our James Bond (or Kevin Smith if you like) tricks of announcing the title of the next episode at the end of this one. In this case it’s revealed to be The Lost Lunch Of Niall Tennyson.

Niall Tennyson, under the spotlight.

The deductive minds among you will see a pattern emerging with the titles. Four episodes, four detectives and yes, four different leads! That’s the plan. There will be a fifth… but it’s cliffhanging at the moment. We’ve got rehearsals lined up this weekend for the next of our two final shoots. Yes, we actually rehearse this show. Who’d a thunk it?

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Vultures on YouTube and also on iTunes. We’ve also given the website a bit of a spring cleaning too.

Photography by Ross Costigan. Yes, he was in the episode. Did you like his nice green coat?

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March 15, 2012 • irish sitcom, mycrofilms, v.p.i., vultures

The Vultures Are Circling

We’ve just announced the date for the return of the Mycrofilms webcom Vultures.

Janine Drew Presents Where Have All The Good Dicks Gone? hits the net this Monday, March 19th (I made that title way more complicated that I needed to). It’s the first new Vultures episode since The Long Goodbye in 2009 and the first of what will be four incoming webisodes between now and June. We’re also lining up a new Christmas episode but we’ll see how everything else goes first.

Everything else being the various walls that we’ve flung Vultures shit at over the past few years, some of which have stuck. The feature film version of the show (which has the equally long but sleeker working title of The Dicks Who Came In From The Cold) has been shortlisted for the Digital Comedy Lab which will see 2 filmmaking teams (1 Ireland, 1 UK) get €50,000 to make a feature mockumentary. So we’re going to get really competitive about that because we want to win. The plot of the movie is the same storyline that we had been saving for a potential follow up series and we’re confident it’s suitably cinematic. The quartet of new webisodes bridge the gap between the lives of the detectives in the first series and our ultra exciting second series story (none of which are too indebted to each other).

Speaking of mockumentaries, the new episode is the first Vultures one to be shot in that format. It follows Janine Drew’s attempts to make a documentary about unemployed detectives in her hometown for her first year college project. The results are tragic and comical. Yes, we’re going for a general tragicomic tone on this one. We hope you enjoy it when it hits.

If you don’t, it’s entirely my fault as it’s the first Vultures episode I’ve written and directed entirely on my own. Yup, I’m finally off the stabilisers. I could probably blame Alan Slattery, my trusty producer…. and I guess in some way, I will.

All the main cast are returning as well as other familiar faces and some new ones, like this ginger rogue Ronnie Drew, younger brother of Janine Drew. He’s played by Colin O’Brien who I had the great pleasure of working with last year on Devious Theatre’s production Shifting. He’s a fantastic young actor and also a total scumbag, which helps.

The episode will go online at some undetermined time Monday and can be viewed on VulturesPI.com, YouTube or if you’ve subscribed on iTunes you’ll get it there. Give it a look, spread, support and share, it’s all very much appreciated.

Photos by Ross Costigan… who may or may not be in the episode….

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January 26, 2012 • mycrofilms, v.p.i., vultures

A Cast Of Vultures

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.

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January 16, 2012 • mycrofilms, v.p.i., vultures

Vultures Have New Meat

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 four lined up and we’re planning a new Christmas episode to complete the ‘series’ for 2012. The first one is called Janine Drew Presents 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)

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October 5, 2009 • detectives, episode 7, irish sitcom, kilkenny, the long goodbye, v.p.i., vultures, webcom

The Long Goodbye

With a teary eye, the final episode of Vultures has just gone online.

‘The Long Goodbye’ is the concluding part of our comic detective serial and follows on from the events of ‘Attack Of The Pinkertons’

The episode is synopsised as thus:

‘With Isabelle Vultour captured and the Pinkertons establishing their firm grip on the town, the gentlemen detectives of V.P.I. must concoct a plan to get Isabelle back, stick it to the Pinkertons and for Vultour and McGrain… avoid a threesome with Natalie Blaise? But in order to do so they must rally the troops. And the actions of the bullying Pinkertons has ensure that there’s plenty of volunteers. This is it. The final battle. The detective apocalypse. Who will reign supreme? Who will prove to the best detective force in town? Or will it all descend into a terrible mess? This is the long goodbye, where the goodbyes are long and the farewells are hard.’

Thanks so much to all the cast and crew who worked on Vultures over the past 2 years, without you we wouldn’t have a low budget webcom!

Also, a big thanks to the people who have watched it and have supported the show since we first shot and screened that first episode in Christmas week back in December 2007. We’re glad to have reached the end of the road with it, it’s been a hell of a journey and this is a rather fitting goodbye. A long one.

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