Blue Light Pub
A short documentary about the Blue Light, a mountain pub above Dublin. It was a group project on which I was writer, videographer and interviewer, built around a single interview with the man who runs it.
- Role
- Writer, interviewer, filmer
- Timeline
- 2025
- Tools
- Premiere Pro, Audition
- Type
- Student brief
The story
A short form documentary taken from conception through to completion: researching the topic, coordinating with the people involved, running the interview, filming it, and finishing it in post. Out of everything I looked at, the Blue Light was the one with a story worth sitting still for.
The challenge
Most of the difficulty was outside the camera. Coordinating with third parties who are not technical meant doing it in person, at the bar. The room itself was the next problem: bare stone and low light make audio and exposure a fight. Keeping camera quality consistent across the day, and making sure none of the footage came back corrupted, took up as much attention as the filming did.
How I got there
Research and discovery was topic exploration, which is where the Blue Light came in. Concept development meant writing the interview questions and putting together a detailed plan for the shooting day. Before any of it happened I tested the equipment and did practice runs, so that setting up on the day took as little time as possible.
What came out of it
The shoot went smoothly, and the questions did what they were supposed to do: they led the interviewee in a direction and let him tell the story of the Blue Light himself. That interview carries the film, with the pub and the view over the city cut around it.
