Michael on Film Freeway

“I began making films in 2003 when I realised that the advent of YouTube and online streaming outlets would one day make it possible for marginalised artists, like ANÚNA, to find an international audience without compromising the nature of the music. I had approached film-makers and it seemed to me that it was a sellers market, with ridiculous sums of money being quoted for unimaginative ideas. If I didn’t learn to create a visual representation of ANÚNA no one else would.

Many of the earliest efforts are pretty clunky, but some of them have come to define a certain style of video presentation for certain niche artists. They were edited in a very early version of Final Cut Pro and filmed on a Standard Definition camera (later a HD camera purchased on the back of surprising broadcasting payments for some of those early efforts) and resulted in a full length film “Invocations of Ireland” (see below). Since then I have filmed and edited many, many short and long form videos. You can see some of them below and others have been broadcast and released everywhere from Japan to the USA and Europe. You’ll catch them of Nordic TV platforms, Sky Arts, long-haul flights and at Festivals.

It has been a surprise to find that there is no mystery to film making. With the advent of AI and prompt-based creativity becoming the norm for the future, a world where nothing is what it appears to be, films made with minimal technological interference may find a singular space.”