It's Happening: CLOUD OF SKIN

 For the past few months, a major project has been brewing, a feature film called Cloud of Skin.

I've launched an Indiegogo campaign to finance it:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cloud-of-skin

And we're also Twittering and Tumbling:

https://twitter.com/cloud_skin
http://cloudofskin.tumblr.com/

Here's the pitch:

Cloud of Skin is a love story with hints of science fiction. It concerns three main characters, all of which are gifted with visionary powers that prevent them from settling to a normal existence, leading instead rootless, wandering lives. In previous films such as Private Report (2009) and Areas of Sympathy (2013), I’ve used vague genre plot set-ups from which to build collage-like structures that tap into the characters’ states of mind directly rather than unfolding as a linear story. Cloud of Skin will elaborate on this poetic approach to the material, treating the film as three overlapping inner visions. 

Landscape and atmosphere will be crucial, a brooding, wintry vision of Ireland that will combine post-industrial spaces with urban edgelands and timelessly bleak countryside. The film’s visual texture will also vary, to highlight the different characters’ subjective perceptions. Although it will be shot primarily on DSLR, there will also be sections shot on Super-8, DV and even VHS. 

Cloud of Skin will be produced by Experimental Film Society, Dublin. Rouzbeh Rashidi, head of EFS, will co-produce and bring his overall filmmaking expertise to the project as technical consultant.

The two lead roles will be played be actors I’ve already collaborated with fruitfully on previous projects. The male lead is Dean Kavanagh, the Wicklow-based actor and filmmaker with whom I worked on Forbidden Symmetries (2014). And the main female role will be taken by Cork-based actress Eadaoin O’Donoghue. The section of the collaborative feature Weird Weird Movie Kids Do Not Watch The Movie (2013) that I directed was built entirely around her performance. Newcomer to the screen Siannon O’Neill will round out the cast.

Sound is a crucial part of my filmmaking. I seldom use synch-sound, creating instead artificial soundscapes to root my images in. Cloud of Skin will be a departure for me in that I’ve relinquished this task and invited composer Karen Power to create the sound for this film. Amongst her many other accomplishments, she collaborates with me on the ongoing expanded-cinema performance project Gorging Limpet.