Profile Spotlight: Oisin Prendiville

[Profile Spotlights]

Nature, you from Oisin Prendiville on Vimeo.

This week we are delighted to bring you filmmaker, photographer, and world class speller Oisin Prendiville. See what he is currently working on at http://day516.com/

Who are you and what is your profession?
I'd been running a small web design and development company called Little Deer from Dublin, Ireland for a few years. In January 2009 I left Ireland and started a journey from New York to Argentina and am currently based in Bogotá, Colombia. I continue working on various projects for clients of Little Deer but have also had more time to explore other areas of interest, like photography, filmmaking, and my own web projects. I'm also starting to develop iPhone apps.

Client work is still challenging and rewarding but I'd love to reach a point where my own projects are self-sustaining and I can travel and settle anywhere worldwide.

Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I was born in Dublin in August 1982. We moved to Limerick when I was seven and I was there until I finished school and could finally leave. The year after school I worked in a computer factory for 6 months, saving money to take a trip around Europe with a friend before moving back to Dublin to start studying Multimedia in DCU.

In DCU I met pretty much all the great people who I continue to collaborate with on projects five years later.

What inspired you to be a filmmaker?
During university I was learning how to edit and shooting bits and pieces for college projects. I shared a house with three great guys. We spent a hell of a lot of time watching movies and these guys were very proactive about making them too, which was new to me at the time.
I can pinpoint one short film in particular, UK Images by Martin Parr on the Cinema 16: British Short Films collection that sparked my imagination and made me think "i could make films like this." It's impossible for me to judge it objectively but the first short film I ever made http://vimeo.com/998937 was pretty much a direct result of having watched UK Images.

Who are your heroes?
This has little to do with film but first and foremost Leonard Cohen has been a hero of mine since school. His lyrics and his attitude have always resonated with me.
In cinema I think primarily of David Lynch, Wener Herzog, Michael Haneke. I love their films but appreciate them in a daunted kind of a way, like standing at the base of cliff I have no idea how to climb.
By contrast films by Chris Marker have been more empowering to me and as I mentioned above, that one little short by Martin Parr probably had more affect on me than anything else.

What do you feel you want to shoot on 10.10.10?
It's still hard to tell, I'm not sure exactly where I'll be. I hope to have to opportunity to discreetly shoot different scenes of daily urban life, encounters and interactions on the streets of Buenos Aires perhaps. If I can capture banal events on camera that reflect wider social realities I'll be a happy man.

Why is this important to you?
I guess we're all grasping to make sense of the myriad of realities surrounding us. I sleep better at night if I've taken a good photo or shot an interesting video that day!

http://day516.com
http://vimeo.com/album/14120
http://topdrawerapps.com