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Chasing Santa through the streets


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This is a bit of a throwback , but christmas was just way too busy this year to post this.

I think I must have got it from my Irish Granny. Growing up I thought everybody in the world knew her. We could hop on a bus and by the time we got to the destination she had everyones story. At large family gatherings, once all the latest news from family and friends was done, she was off, telling and listening to stories from other hotel guests. Many of whom  were from other parts of the world and hadn’t long arrived of the plane. 

I loved it. Her secret , she was just so genuine and friendly that everybody seemed to want to talk to her. 

Anyways something must have rubbed off, because thats what I love doing most. Meeting people like in these pictures and videos I have done and getting to know peoples story and capturing a glimpse of who they are.

On this occasion they were strangers from the local community who came out to see Santa coming down their street. I spent a month running around the city trying to capture the the spirit of these magical evening’s. I opted for both photography and Videography to try and do them justice.

Click here to see the Photography

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Jimmy Hill – Legacy


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In the making of this movie I am reminded  of why I love sport. Yes there are those moments where one second changes everything, nerves wracking palpitations, anguish, wild celebrations.But even more so, why I love sport, is because of characters such as this legend, Jimmy Hill.

I got to hear lots of great stories about him and like any great story he has all the elements, drama, inspiration, competition, victory, defeat and, looming above it all, revolution, sky blue revolution.

Thanks to the football fans, players , volunteers and whole extended coventry community for sharing both stories and personal pictures and footage of this great man , Jimmy Hill.

Videography, Edited, Directed, Produced,  – Barry Fitzgerald

Archive Footage:  Coventry City FC , Dean Nelson

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Blog, Crazy Irish Poet, Life

Fitzy Family 2015


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2015, a year when my forever young granny , my fun loving uncle (Milo), my daring great uncle (Tom) and lovely sweet gentle father in law passed away. My first thought was that was a world without colour and light. But a different story emerged from our Fitzy family footage archive. As we edited the footage we noticed that maybe when there might be grey skies, how much more a smile can be like a sunrise, and maybe when your wings are a little broken how much more beautiful the flight.

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Fast & Furious Young People


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When the action on the other side of my lens is a blur of metal collisions,high speed wheel revolutions, young people cornering like electricity punctuated by unexpected moments of poetry in motion, you would think that I am making an explosive hollywood blockbuster. Well this is better in my view, It’s real life. This is a documentary of young people playing wheelchair basketball who are pushing them selves to the limit being the best they can be and loving every second. I am looking to find the story that beats deep in their hearts and makes them hurtle around a court like they have a Wile E coyote style rocket under their chairs. I have already suspected that this sport they play at full throttle is also how they play life. I cant wait to document this movie.

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Sleep Easy


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Sleep Easy

Photo – Film – Story

There is a story about this homeless guy who taught he was invisible.But one day this kid gave him his sandwich. The homeless guy startled and bewildered said, “You can see me? How can you see me? I’m invisible.

That could happen any one of us. I have filmed over the years homeless people who once had been succesfull, managing big business, rockstars, family men and women, teenagers.  Some of them wanted to be invisible , some thought they actually were, as people just walked on by like nobody was there.

Anyway why am I telling you this. Documenting this Sleep Easy project was more than a project for me. I too slept on streets when I was 15. But I will leave that story for another time. More than any commercial I have worked on that sells coffee , perfume or most other products, It’s projects like these that I feel most passionate about working on.

For now I shall use the words YMCA England use to describe Sleep Easy.

Sleep Easy is a YMCA fundraising initiative raising money to help change the lives of vulnerable young people. Since the event began in 2010, almost £1million pounds has been raised by hundreds of people who chose to sleep rough for just one night.

The aim is simple: spend a night sleeping rough to highlight the issue of youth homelessness and raise vital funds to support the work of your local YMCA. Your money goes directly to the local YMCA projects; impacting your community and helping young people in your town build a future.

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Blog, Crazy Irish Poet, Life

Waking up on top of the world


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Waking up in the swiss alps, with clouds at my feet, mountain dew between my toes, the air chiming like a choir, my skin tingling like electricity, I felt like Heaven was pulsing at the end of my fingertips as I reached up and found myself moved into song, my heart was pounding inside my chest so much I could hardly hold my camera still to take this picture. A few moments before I walked out the door , I was tired, weary from travel work, and obsessing about my overloaded to do list and then bam, boom, this scene hit me. I love it when God surprises me. Because when he does, He goes Big. ;0) .

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Finding poetry at subzero in the dead of night


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It’s early, tick creeps past tock at 1am and minus one degrees, the backstreets are silent as I pack up steel clanging camera cranes and frosted lenses glistening in a thin layer of frost.

You might feel sorry for me as a lonely soul packing up equipment out the back of the cold unbeautiful and kept out of the way trades mans yard for the ICC. Why do I this Job I hear you ask.

Hidden behind this scene in the small details is the night air reverberating the body heat on my skin as the adrenalin still pumps through live wire veins electrified by having just filmed The Phat Cats perform on stage at the ICC.

A kind of side effect to the job of looking through lenses and moving cameras in time to music, to performers, to rythmns, to drumbeats looking for the poetry in the ever changing abstract motion of music artists and bands.

Kandinsky, who died today in 1944, said: “Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for color, and that you be a true poet.

I tend to agree and am inspired by his thoughts as I find film making to be very like painting and I am always looking for the poetry in life, in people who to me are great works of art and musicians for me , even more so.

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Not everyone will agree, but all I know is that on this particular frosty morning lugging equipment around unaware of numb thumbs and frost forming on my sweat soaked hair is that all I can feel is the vocal pyrotechnics striking a match inside my chest, the sound of drums throbbing inside my skin. I can still see the lights pirouette as they hit the stage, the wide eyes of the guitarist with arms like a speedboat propeller striking chords, The Boom, Boom,Boom detonating on the end of the drummers sticks, Keys being resurrected like long forgotten pianissimos, stacks of amps breathing in and out at a million times a second to an audience that thunders like waves in a sea of music..

so don’t feel sorry for me if you see in the earl hours lugging equipment, I love my Job, I love finding poetry.

p.s if you do see me by the way, feel free to come over and help me carry some of my equipment back ;0)

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Under The Spotlight


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Filmed in a condemned rickety old ramshackle of a hut, made from the debris of the last world war, performed by some unshakebale talent.

With Little room for rigs or lighting we cut openings at strategic place’s to allow light in and filmed with the diminuitive yet powerful Canon 5D.This approach meshed with the cramped spaces allowed for the claustrophobia and uneasiness of the captor to come acros,s as he fought to explain his belief to his interegator who lurked in the shadows.

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Overcoming


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Giving someone a hand up, as opposed to a hand out is the approach that Mayday Trust take with helping thieir clients fight addiction.

I feel priviliged that all the people I meet on this project trusted me enough to tell thier story. It is one thing to look deep into the forgotten chambers of your soul and bear it to your peers,

but it is another and quite a brave thing to do it on camera, so that others in similar situations can be inspired and encouraged to never give up their fight and overcome their addictions.

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Whole Life Ahead


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There were no great explosions or edge of your seat special effects with fireballs and daring stunts in this story, but the young people’s journeys to this place in front of this camera were nothing short of inspiring.They had no body double or stunt person to encounter their trials and tribulations, they encountered each and every hard act of life themselves.

This short movie shows the amazing work that Mayday Trust do in terms of helping these young people to help themselves.This is one of those projects that leave’s me feeling challenged for all the right reasons and enthused about life.Getting alongside these young people and hearing their stories made me realise that we are all just a  step away from  the many pitfalls of life but how they choose to get back up again with the help of Mayday Trust was good for the soul.