Here is a bibliography of various media projects I have worked on, ranging from audio, short films, interviews and PowerPoints. In these projects, I was;
Director
Writer
Producer
Cinematographer
Casting Director
Storyboard Artist
Interviewer
AssemblyEditor
Actor
Sound Effects
Let’s get to it!
JUST ANOTHER PART OF ME
(STUDENT SHORT FILM)
“Two women discover there’s more than meets the eye with their cheating boyfriend”.
PRE-PRODUCTION
Theme was regarding breaking stereotypes, so I had chosen how characters with mental health disorders are presented in media. In this scenario: someone with dissociative identity disorder being in an accidental love triangle. Besides the cast, the crew was basically just me. So I broke down the story beats and created profiles for each character, creating brief descriptions and creating visual inspirations as to what they would look like.
STORYBOARDS
I also drew the story boards myself. Quite crude, and of course on a much large scope than what the end product ended up being, but it helped provide a template.
RESEARCH
The main inspiration for this was an interview I had saw of someone with the disorder who would unknowingly go on dates with multiple men at the same time, which they found mildly amusing.
While the circumstances that lead to this disorder can be awful, I wanted to pivot from the cliché that someone with the disorder would be wacky or dangerous but were instead very normal and casual and would do no harm to others. I had consulted with someone online with Dissociative identity disorder to get their input and consult on the script. I wanted to make sure that on the page that the character of Costello was a regular person and not the threat that people in their community are portrayed as being and that their disorder was shown in an accurate way. Which included sound mixing and sound designing for when they switches alters.
FILMING
This was an interesting production as it was my first time working with professional actors.
I made sure that I left a good impression. Eva and Vanessa were two actresses that I came in contact with through my brother who helped with casting and he did a pitch perfect job as the two had a real grasp on their characters from the jump and were very collaborative throughout the shoot. There were some last minute rewrites on this production as it was meant to have a much larger cast but issues of illness and scheduling prevented actors from being able to partake in the shooting. Therefore the amount of characters were trimmed down to just three, with me stepping in for a role. However this worked far better as it kept the story focused and wouldn’t lean too far into absurdity.You can see the differences from first draftto the final draft here.
POST PRODUCTION
With the use of long takes and the low cast count, this became a far easier short film to edit. When submitted for my Creative Digital Media module, I got a great score and succedded into my second year.
THUMBNAIL
For the thumbnail, after sitting with it for a few years, I wanted to change it to something more whimsical . After all, you rarely get a second chance at a first impression. So I can I reached out to wickedly talented Pauline De La Hoz to create a new one for me. I had shown her the short film, explained the premise and we collaborated on making a more suitable first impression;
I had come across this painting after I had made the short film and thought it would be perfect for what I was going for given how the story is about an accidental love triangle between one man and two women.
“For the illustration I was inspired by the references [Oisín] sent me, with one woman on each side of the main character, holding on to him. Their facial expressions are meant to showcase their personalities: one is more anxious and the other one rather confused. As for the main character, I wanted to give him multiple heads/faces melting into each other to represent his DID diagnosis. The faces that are looking at the girls have sweeter looks in their eyes, showing the love he does have for them”.
You can find more of her work here and hereand connect with her on Linkedin.
ARTIFICIAL IRASMUS
(STUDENT SHORT FILM)
“Actor Irasmus Kingston is reincarnated into an AI by his relative, Hector. To the surprise of Irasmus, Hector has ulterior motives…“
General themes regarding letting go of the past, misappropriation of one’s image and how it is unwise to disrespect the dead.Eventually we settled on making a commentary on AI and it’s misuse with deceased actors. This a topic that has only grown more relevant since the creation of this short film.
An early plot point involved a woman coming back from the dead to get revenge on the man responsible for her death but who also got away with it. This story idea was loosely inspired by tragic event in my life and was done as a form of catharsis and a way to process my grief. It was meant to be more a metaphor with a zombie but it was decided to make it a more direct commentary to avoid any confusion that were to arise.
We did PLENTY of test footage for this as practice. It’s important to always be working and rehearsing on things like these. This was done for the opening scene since it required the most work. We tried different filters for each shot to see how it would look.
We also did test footage with the actors in costume.
Worked on this with Destiny Coker and Dylan Kenny. The scene were the AI Irasmus wakes up had to be reshoot due to issues with lighting in the original scene as well as the original location not looking that well on camera.
The newer scene turned out to be far better, especially with the new lenses that we used in the scene. I had booked a slot at Fade Studios and paid for the slot to make sure we had enough time to film the scene.You can learn more about the production here.
Here’s a behind the scenes snippet of me directing.
SOMETHING TO DO WITH MONEY
(STUDENT SHORT FILM)
“David Daniels tries to impress his beloved Stephen with a bag of money he claims to have earned through a heroic deed, only for Jack to come along, providing conflicting information”.
INSPIRATION
Over the summer of 2025, I tried watching comedies to decompress from the stresses of life and finally watched Curb Your Enthusiasm by Larry David. The fast talking, overlapping dialogue and tense comedy appealed to me and reminded me a lot of Uncut Gems by the Safdie Brothers, as well as Shiva Baby by Emma Seligman, two movies that I love.
So when our lecturers Hugh Rogers and Ian Cudmore gave us an assignment to make a short film where the central conflict was “a bag of money was found”, I knew exactly what we could do. We created a story of miscommunication in which one character was given two separate versions on how a bag of money was discovered, however, both POV characters would often interrupt each other, and talk in a very neurotic way while also telling conflicting information. So even though there is a answer as to who is telling the truth within the story (if you look close enough), you’re not really sure who you should believe.
PRE PRODUCTION
As we began developing the script, we began first by doing a some test footage as practice for how the camera movement would look (with some very fancy lenses) but also how we’d want the actors to inhabit the scene.
We also shot scenes to practice the tone of the scene and how our characters would speak. We started out by giving the outline of the scene, the outline of the characters, their dynamic, their history and then we’d allow ad-libbing to make the dialogue seem more natural but also some jump cuts to mimic Curb Your Enthusiasm. Below you will see some test footage we did using a made up scenario as our blue print, which would lead to the two characters arguing and a third party being annoyed by their behaviour.
The test footage above was loosing based on a true story. So it’s not that far fetched. However it established the kind of energy we were looking for. The test footage centres around an argument between two brothers (Aidan and Dekken) that emerges when a rumour of their father having Alzheimer’s is spread around. We had filmed the scene 4 different ways and then stitched them together getting the parts we liked the most into a singular narrative. We then broke down the pieces of dialogue we thought best suited the characters for the short film and incorporated them into the final script. As you can see in the test footage, it often got very mean very quickly, so we did pull back to make it more comedic as to make it a silly argument, rather than a serious one. As well, the lighting would often lead to over exposure for some actors and under exposure for others, so we decided to film the scene at night time and used the in-door lights for the scene.
As well as taking inspiration the frantic Jewish New York style of humour, we also took inspiration from the Hong Kong films of Wong Kar-Wai to show the flashback scenes by messing with the shutter speed to create a “dreamlike” visual to the flashbacks and to create a distinct look that would separate past from present.
We did this using step printing
Here’s a proper test we did in a park near our campus.
PRODUCTION
This was a lot of fun as a director since I was more focused on cultivating the adrenaline for the scene and maintaining it throughout. It required lots of long takes and moving the camera in frantic ways to mirror the overlapping and rapid fire dialogue. Causing the viewer to be in the same headspace as my character Stephen.
This was also done with the help of Cian Atowo. We were able to create a visual language that kept the viewer purely in the headspace of the characters and the energy needed for the short.
Here’s a funny side-by-side blooper.
POST PRODUCTION
Naturally the sound mixing for such rapid fire can be tricky, so the post production for the proper short film took a few weeks just to get right.This was done with the help of Cian Atowo.
I also got to use a song by sophiemaria called ‘down‘ which we used as a background music for the test footage above and in the short film itself. Through contacting her agent/manager (I’m joking, I just texted her girlfriend), we received her blessing to add the song to the background of the beginning of the short film. A nice relaxing calm song before all the yelling starts.Which you can listen to down below.
Fun Fact: This song was released on the last day I used Instagram.
For more information on the short film, there’s a process book that details the entire journey in more detail. Here’s some behind the scenes snippet of me directing.
I even made the title card.
The approach was to create something frantic looking, with overlapping text with the word ‘money‘ being singled out. Encapsulating what the short film is all about.
I designed and documented the entire thing myself but got feedback and support from fellow designer/photographer Roberta Kroteva (who also appears in the film).
Irish Neutrality Interviews
Asking TUD students their views on Irish Neutrality with Dylan Kenny. Due to some technical issues with Dylan, we had to scrap the 3 interviews we had filmed prior and start all over again. However, I managed to reach out and seek multiple students who were willing to be interviewed and even exceeded the requirement needed.
This was of course a very sensitive discourse to discuss but we managed to find students from various countries, some of whom came directly from war torn nations, so it helped create an open dialogue while also ending on a note of letting the viewer decide what their position was.
IDENTITY, REPRESENTATION & MEDIA
This was a group assignment with Danila Timofeev, Auste Mockapetrye and Penny Williams. I had real difficulties speaking into a microphone so I had to overcome that stammer. However, Danila was quite patient with me.
Speaking of which; the real credit belongs to the others who had worked on this production.
They brought their A+ game. They’re quite a talented bunch.
STUDENTS VS SHARK
Asking students in Creative Digital Media how long they could fight a shark. This was a simple and silly project, but I had fun with it as you can tell from the silly inclusions of Mortal Kombat, Dick Dale’s Misirlou and Austin Powers.
SEVENTH SEAL RECREATION
We were tasked to do a shot-for-shot remake of a scene from a famous movie, and we picked Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’. We spoke the lines in English but with editing made it look like we were speaking Swedish.
Oisín MacMathúna Portfolio 