About Me
Michelangelo Antonioni’s statement “I think I'm someone who has things to show rather than things to say", is the closest a director has come to describing my experience of film. From an early age, I’ve loved and practiced visual arts. Initially, this was drawing and painting, but once I discovered independent films, film has grown into a consuming passion. Although, in the past, being shy and introverted I had difficulty communicating verbally, I have always been adept at communicating visually. I have increasingly come to understand visual media’s potential for greater impact through visual communication rather than verbal.
I spent my childhood in West Wales, a rural utopia where newcomers seeking an alternative lifestyle have settled alongside the local Welsh-speaking people steeped in traditional culture. My parents’ belief in self-sufficiency shaped the way our family lived: little money, but a lot of resourcefulness. My primary education was in a Steiner School, an educational approach which offered a ‘global education for children respecting all their needs’. My time there encouraged me to enjoy learning and to be confident in my individuality and creativity.
When I was eleven, my family moved to rural Ireland, where we lived in two primitive, facility-less wooden huts: one for my sisters; the other for us four boys, my mother and stepfather. I was home-schooled for a year, then entered the local Catholic Boys School. Its out-dated approach to education - dictating information and enforcing conformity - was a cruel shock! Also, my stepfather’s alcoholism deteriorated radically, but during this time I was fortunate to be able to attend Alateen, which helped me make sense of the madness of living with alcoholism. After five and a half years at this school, I found sponsorship to study at a small private school in America. My teachers were passionate, knowledgeable and encouraged participation and opinions and at the end of the year I was on the high honors roll.
Financial reasons forced my return to Ireland and –American education not being credited – to start again at the beginning of the Leaving Cert cycle. Frustrated, I left school, and found work until I could do a one-year (Steiner-based) Orientation Course at Emerson College. This aimed to give young adults from many different countries and backgrounds the opportunity to explore themselves through cultural studies, personal and career development and the arts and crafts. It included personal projects (I made a short film), community work, (including a weeks work at an educational centre for youth offenders), and two months’ volunteer work abroad – in my case, at a school for poor, disabled and deaf and dumb students in Northern India.
After completing the course, I chose to return to school to complete my secondary education in Britain. Already knowing that I wanted to go to film school, I chose the most related subjects: Film Studies, Fine Art and English Language and Literature. After completing my A-levels, I worked for half a year to finance a six-month trip around South America. In Peru, I spent a month volunteering at an orphanage for street children, near Cuzco. Here, I met a film-maker who so highly recommended AFDA in South Africa, that upon further research into the school, I decided to study there.
At AFDA, I wrote and directed six short films and one play. In line with its team-based focus, I worked with crews of up to thirty-five members from all over southern Africa. At the school I constantly had to adapt my working methods to the varying skills, ages, experience of my fellow crew and cast members. Living in South Africa was a challenging but invaluable experience. The country’s cultural, social and economic climate is incredibly complex and multi-faceted. One legacy of its traumatic recent history is its appalling crime rate, which I inevitably experienced first hand.
Many of the films I made at AFDA focused on issues that affected many, but received little public attention: white paranoia about racial crime, domestic violence, and Apartheid’s continuing impact on traditional family life. Under Apartheid, Black mothers with children were forbidden to move with their migratory working husbands, fostering alienation from their fathers/husbands. My graduation film focused on a son’s relationship to his parents and what happened when his absent father returned to his newly motherless children. The story was about a Xhosa family and was set in a township, an environment and culture completely unfamiliar to me. Therefore I read extensively, interviewed key township individuals, including a Witch Doctor, Zion Priest, political leaders, fishermen and fish-factory owners. This gave one layer of background, but to ground this, get a clearer idea of people’s daily lives and develop insight into relevant issues, I spent as much time as possible in the township, exploring, volunteering and participating in community activities.
Shortly after graduating, I spent seven months for the BBC as a Floor Runner on Torchwood. Mediating between departments and servicing the needs of frequently changing crews and casts taught me how to work with a wide variety of different temperaments under stressful conditions. I then made two DVDs for Bridgend Prison; one introducing new prisoners to the prison and resources available to them, the other giving their families an overview of what prison life is like. In April of this year, I returned to work with the BBC, helping them once again as a runner on a family film titled Framed. In the past two years, since graduating, in order to broaden my horizons and learn more about film-making and related subjects, I have taken classes in Photography and Philosophy.
The film makers and Artists who have inspired my work include Krzysztof Kieslowski and Antonioni, who have taught me how theme can both be a structural and visual element in my approach to storytelling. From Bergman’s films, I’ve learnt how powerful character driven stories can be, and from him and Tarkovsky, I’ve come to understand the potential power of symbols and images. From the living film makers, Terrence Malick and Wong Kar-wai, I’ve found out about the poetic potential of the medium and from Bela Tarr and Werner Herzog, I’ve learnt how to look for the mythic in ordinary. Two notable cinematographer’s who have also had an impact on my work, are Christopher Doyle and Slawomir Idziak, both of whom have opened up my understanding of the new possibilities of cinematic language. Art movements and artists have also impacted my work, The Abstract Expressionism art movement, has shown me how powerful color and form can be as a means of communication. Impressionist artist’s too have helped me understand how we can only ever represent and understand the world in meaningful way by remaining true to our singular points of view and our experience of it. The surrealist artists have taught me to find the strange in the familiar and to make the familiar strange. Amongst others, the photographers who have most influenced my work are David Hockney, Paul Seawright, John Coplans, Rut Blees Luxemburg and Sophy Rickett.
My reason in choosing to study Production/Directing at UCLA is to cement my personal style of film making, through in depth learning and practice. While at AFDA I was given a good introduction to film, but in my Graduation film, when I worked with a challenging crew, the limits of my knowledge and skills were highlighted. I believe that a Masters degree at UCLA would help me gain greater knowledge of film and provide me with the means to learn to utilize film to its full creative potential. There are not many film schools that have merit in the industry, but I believe UCLA is one of the few film schools in the world which will help me grow as a film maker and stand me in good stead for work in the professional business. I feel my career prospects, creativity and knowledge can only prosper by studying alongside some of America’s most driven and talented fellow students and under its innovative, experienced and distinguished faculty members. What proves to me that UCLA is an institution, whose students succeed, is the success of past and recent graduates such as Francis Ford Coppolla, Charles Burnett, Paul Schrader, Gore Verbinski and Alexander Payne.