Effigy Road has been part of my life now for nearly a year. It was written by Rob Kelly, whom I met on a film makers forum. He sent me the script, hoping I would produce it and I did. We had no budget and any monies spent on it were from our own pockets. Rob is a very talented Director and working with him has been a journey to remember.

Our shoot began in June, six months after we had started working on the short. Rob wanted to CGI it to death and I wanted to do as much as we could for real, this included me getting access to a plane.

The story revolves around a group of friends who wake up in a hotel and discover the world is empty of people. So that was my first problem, how do I get rid of every one?

Our first day of principle photographery was to take place in Carlow town centre. Our cast and crew arrived on set at 3am on a wet Tuesday morning. We had two scenes to shoot here and we got stuck in. We started shooting in the Roadhouse cafe in the centre of Carlow. The crew were  glad to be inside and as we set about getting our first shots, some of us tucked into a hot breakfast and lots of black coffee. Rob and Daniel set up the first shot and action was called. The first day got off to a flying start. Once we had all our shots in the cafe, we moved outside, where some of our crew had closed down the centre of the town. Traffic was light but we knew if would soon get busy. We had a crane on site to get some high shots of our casts car arriving in the deserted town. Gerry, our driver, was on-set at 3am and had sat around until after 6. With the roads blocked off and our crew directing traffic around the shoot location, Rob set about creating a deserted town. We got our shots and re-opened the centre of Carlow at 0755am, a mere five minutes before our deadline. A massive thank you has to go out to Noel Dillon of Carlow Town Council for helping us out and allowing us to shut down Carlow for those few hours.

  The Dolmen Hotel in Carlow was our second location. They gave us access to their hotel early on the morning of June 2nd and so began day 2 of the shoot. We arrived out to the hotel at 5am. It was a sunny morning and the cast and crew got stuck in. We had access to one of the hotel beautiful suites and the staff and management were great to work with. Marianne you're a star! With our second day in the can, our cast and crew were given a few days off as our next location was Carlow Shopping centre. We had some important scenes to get here, including two stunt scenes.

John Chatten, the centre's manager, was emailed and a meeting was held and agreement reached, we had our location.

Our cast and crew arrived on set for 6am four Sunday mornings in a row. Effigy Road was back and the cast and crew were eager to get stuck in. Gemma Horan of Forget Me Not Make-up came onboard to do our Sfx make-up for these scenes and we had the great pleasure of working with Paul Burke and his stunt team too.

So our four Sundays went off with out a hitch. We had the local radio in, thank Edwina and KCLR, and the local papers in covering our shoot. Our stunt scenes drew a large crowd as they watched Sarah get dragged into the rafters of the centre and James been thrown some 20ft backwards from stairs. So now we had six days shoot in the can and only two to go. The next day would come on September 29. 

As this short had a lot of Sfx and CGI, we needed a green stage. So it was off to Ardmore studios in Bray, Co. Wicklow. After a few phone calls, we were in. A big thank you to Kevin in Ardmore for giving us the stage for the day. The call time was a late 9am start and when the morning came we got stuck in and got our shots in record time. The sole surviving member of our cast had landed on Alien decks and he and a few survivors were in for a nasty surprise. We had a blast shooting these scenes as our cast of extras and John ran back and forth attacking a green stage. A massive thank you to everyone who gave up their time to help us out in Ardmore. We also have to thank Jason, in Cine Electric and Teach Solas for all their help on the day. With Ardmore studio shot, that leaves us one more day to shoot, before this 12minute short is finshed. It will have taken a year to get 12minutes of Sci-fi, but it will be a project that I will always remeber,and I hope that the cast and crew will hold as an experience never to forget.

We plan on having our first screening of Effigy Road in December in Carlow and from there its onto the festival circuit. 

The story won't end there however, as Rob and myself are now in the pre-production stages of 50LB Films first feature film, We've Got Balls, but not only that, Rob has given me the first of four episodes to a Sci-fi series, that I am really looking forward to making with him, named 

Effigy Earth...