Just finished and decompressed after 10 days on the road shooting the TurfNet Goes to Ireland 2009 series. I have to admit we had a blast albeit hard work at the same time. We started off by picking up Jon Kiger from TurfNet at Cork airport and heading down to the Old Head Course at Kinsale and spent a pretty breezy day shooting in 70mph winds on the top off a cliff. Keeping the camera still was certainly a challenge to get some of the dramatic shots of the cliffs…with a 400ft drop down to one side. The day brightened up and we got all the footage we needed hopefully. One nice tough at that course was their Stone of Accord where people shake hands through a hole in a standing stone to as a sign of goodwill to cement the trust in a relationship before playing…as per an old Celtic custom.
From there we headed up to the Mt.Juliet course near Kilkenny for a posh experience. The accommodation they gave us was far too good for production crews anyway. The good bit about this trip was that all hotels seem to have HD TVs in them now..nice big ones to run through the day’s tapes. Great to get a look at everything in 720p to reference the camera settings for the next day too. Mt.Juliet is a gorgeous house with massive grounds..including a Stud Farm and river fishery as well as the Golf Course. We had a swan fly over five feet our heads and I just about managed to lock onto it to get one of the classic ambient shots. There was some serious dollars running around the fields too in the form of bloodstock. We took off after leaving Jon Kiger to play a round of Golf the next day with RTÉ’s very own Sean O’Rourke. It seems like if I throw a stone blindfolded I’ll hit an O’Rourke. Nice guy though and I reckon descended from the Ballinamore branch at a guess.
From there it was a dash back up to Leitrim for a day to touch base and log footage before going down to Limerick to meet up with all the Course Superintendents arriving from the US on their trip to play the Irish courses and compare maintenance practices. It goes without saying that we headed straight off to the nearest pub to catch some music and then a story took hold…as is usual with all things Sleeping Warrior. To cut it short…a rugby team was in the pub trying their best to drink the Guinness brewery dry and I gave our company bank card to Jim to get beer cash. being sensible..lol..I headed out early to leave Jim and Jon to soak it up. As the night progressed it wasn’t bad enough that Jim set fire to himself trying to get a photo from a table..and burned his back quite badly, but someone from the rugby club decided to gather up all their jackets..including Jim’s, Jon’s and all the musicians..and head out to the hotel. As it turned out after Jim and Jon tracked down these guys to their hotel no-one seemed to know anything. The big problem was that our bank card was in the inside pocket of Jim’s jacket..and we were kinda screwed without that particular one for exes etc. Again in the morning we tried to get these guys out of bed to get information as to what happened to the jacket..still to no avail after hours of trying. Jim decided to walk the route they took the night before..via burger bar and then..a miracle..he spotted half his jacket on the pavement..and the other half up a tree. Some drunk had obviously decided to climb the tree with railings around and got caught up. Jim got the half jacket down from the tree and hey presto..one back card in the pocket. However..it cost us half a day’s filming and I lost my sense of humour due to a lost night’s sleep too.
Next….Tralee, Dooks and Lahinch in Part 2.