PRODUCER

DIRECTOR

MUSIC PRODUCER

Gawain Morrison 

After finding that life in the IT world around London, wasn’t for Gawain, he took a couple of years out and travelled extensively around Asia, residing in Hong Kong for a year.  Whilst away he developed a hunger for experience, and an open-minded view to possibilities.

When he returned to Belfast, he became a self employed events promoter & co-ordinator, running many successful nights, one regularly, called Evolution, which was nominated for several awards, and won OhYeah.net ‘Best Small Club of The Year’.  During five years of club nights he co-owned a couple of record labels and a DJ agency for local artists, organising European tours.

After this he became a director in local t-shirt company ‘Tart’, handling PR/Marketing & Sales, organising & co-ordinating European & International trade shows & exhibitions.

In university he had became involved with electronic music production, which continues to today, and in all of his roles he has worked closely with visual artists, in interior club décor & visuals, using anything from projectors slide projectors to LCD screens, through to artists who came from media backgrounds, and designed for print, on clothing or magazines.

Over the last 7 years, he has attended many courses to learn various aspects of the film industry, from scriptwriting to production, from local NVTV through to the Media-funded Script Factory & Discovery Campus.

He had always had an interest in film & music, beginning his own film night, to screen local short films. And after having worked with audio production on several projects, and then making a couple of music videos, felt it was the right time to submit some scripts to the NIFTC’s ‘Deviate’ scheme. 

He produced 2 short films, one called ‘The Cat’ directed by Fran Apprich, which won Best Cinematography, for a short film, at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival in 2005, as well as winning a Gold Remi Award at Worldfest, Houston, 2006; the other short he produced with Anna McCaughtry, is called ‘3 Seconds My Arse’, which was selected to compete at the Independent Film Festival of Boston, the Irish Film Festival, in Chicago, and won ‘Best Original Comedy’ at Worldfest, in Houston, after winning Best Dark Comedy at the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival in Los Angeles, in Mar 2006.

2006 saw Gawain as production supervisor for Series 3 of the N.Ireland Film & TV Commission’s Short Steps & Deviate Schemes, resulting in 8 HD digital films premiering at Belfast Film Festival. He is now looking after their marketing to festivals worldwide. He was also associate producer on an experimental film shot by Irish director Hugh McGrory, using Arri Media’s new digital slow motion cameras, and in which Adobe Digital Systems were heavily involved in the post-production.

Gawain came up with an idea to produce 4 music videos as part of a collaborative project between record label Red Label Records & production company Seamless Productions, called Jukeboxes & Triggers. 3 of them are animations of varying styles, including stop frame & puppetry, 2D graphics, and hand drawn flash animation, with the other one being a complicated studio shoot at Belfast's Panavision studio.  During the productions 2 of the films became stand alone short films above and beyond the music videos.

In 2007 Seamless Productions also saw the director & producer team of Fran Apprich & Gawain Morrison coming together to make the UKFC Digital Shorts funded film ‘Out Of Tune’, completed and screened as part of the Seamless Productions 07 evening at Belfast's Queens Film Theatre. 

2008 has seen Gawain taking part in this year's Deviate scheme, both as production manager & 1st AD for each  of the 4 films selected, alongside his 3rd year submitting to the Straight 8 competition, which has been selected for screening at this year's Straight 8 Art, in Brick lane, London.

Currently Gawain is working on launching the documentary strand of Seamless Productions with a feature-doc on ‘We Want Light’ a documentary about the emerging country of Albania, is focusing some of his attention on the new media concepts of his new company Filmtrip, and is putting together an Irish Language concept in conjunction with production company Red Ray Films.

MUSIC PRODUCER

MUSIC LICENSING

Shane McCourt

Shane is our resident all round musician with a difference. One for atmospheric and differential musical talent he can craft a masterpeice with his own inimitable sounds. Brought up on an eclectic mix of traditional folk music he started young as a result of a family who all in their own right were audiophiles. His grandfather was a traditional Irish player and also ran a succesful big band scene for many years, so from a early age of pressing and playing with instruments that he probably shouldn't have been messing with he has progressed into a unique sound of  electronic and traditional music.

He is also one half of the downtempo ambient group "Men is Speedos" who have found success in many places around the globe. Under his solo guise as Bad Samples he has now taken the direction of a more soulfull and funky turn, concentrating on his original musical loves.

Shane is also one of the directors of the new company Film trip, set up to explore new media projects.

DIRECTOR

PRODUCTION DESIGNER

ART DEPT

WARDROBE

Anna McCaughtry

Anna originally studied Spanish & Italian at Queens University Belfast. Part of the course involved spending a year in the cultural hub that is Barcelona, and a spell in Italy. It was during this time that she realised there’s more to art than waving a paintbrush about, and on completion of her languages degree she embarked on a series of arts-based short courses. A tutor suggested she stop ”fannying about“ and take it all a bit more seriously, and in 2005 she graduated from University of Ulster with a first class honours degree in Fine & Applied Arts.

Throughout her art career Anna has regularly exhibited her sculptural & photographic pieces, and won several awards, including first prize for sculpture in European ‘Bigstars of the Future 2002’ competition, sponsored by Bigstar Jeans, Germany & ‘UTV Young Artist Award 2003’ at the Royal Ulster Academy.

 Alongside these skills Anna has spread her wings ever further into TV & film, working on costume, makeup, props, and the odd bit of acting, in friend’s music videos, and short films. 

In 2005, while Anna was completing her final year show for college, she was embarking on her directorial debut (as well as production design, art direction, wardrobe, fish wrangling…) for the Deviate film ‘3 Seconds My Arse’, produced by Gawain Morrison, which has gone on to screen at festivals across America and Europe and win a handful of prizes along the way.

Her huge range of skills made her an obvious choice for Art Director on Wild Rover Productions’ 4th series of prime-time national comedy show ‘Just For Laughs’.  On completion of the show, Anna made use of the ‘Ernest Anderson Award’ from Castlereagh Borough Council for a two week residency at the prestigious Tyrone Guthrie Centre.

2006 saw Anna work in art department roles in a variety short films, music videos and commercials. She has also been working with community arts groups creating costumes, props and floats for carnivals and pantomimes, as well as co-writing a six-part comedy show with fellow artist Timmy White.

In 2007 Anna worked in Wardrobe for the remake of Emu, the hugely succesful children's programme, as well as production designer & art dept in several features, shorts, promos & ads.  She has also begun directing her concept-video for part of the Kalamazoo Album Video project which will span across all the other videos.

2008 started with Anna working in the art dept for the horror feature 'Red Mist', shot wholly in Belfast, which was quickly followed by the 4 UKFC/NI Screen funded digital shorts for the scheme Deviate.  Anna was production designer & head of wardrobe for all 4 films, which was a massive task, and shooting them back to back  only made it more of a challenge, which Anna rose to and once again surpassed herself with her skills in both of these departments.

Anna is presently working with the Belfast Carnival organisers, The Beat, creating costumes & floats for the end of June Summer Carnival.

WRITER

DEVELOPMENT

MANAGER

Timmy White

Timmy's background in fine art and fashion have led his artistic eye into the world of moving image.  Having studied fine art at art college in Belfast, and helped one of Belfast's finest boutique clothes shops establish itself in the local fashion world, he wanted a new challenge.

After a photoshoot of characters that he invented, he approached Gawain Morrison with the idea of a series of short mock-umentaries about a few of the characters, and from that evolved the concept for a short film, 'Lipstick of Peace'.

Timmy has written the lyrics for all of the songs in 'Lipstick Of Peace', and with Anna McCaughtry & Gawain Morrison has developed the script.  He has worked with Anna to create the look & feel of costumes, and is assisting in concepts for how the film should be shot.

As a result he has now been taken on as development manager for Seamless Productions, looking for new projects, as well as helping to progress the concepts that Seamless is already working on.  He attended Cannes last year drumming up interest in Lipstick Of Peace, as well as looking out for other projects.,

He is also presently freelancing as a sylist for local fashion magazines & bands.