Alternative Artists at The High School

As part of our Media Studies class, we carried out an interview with two pupils in Form 6, Oscar Maguire and Jack O'Malley, who collaborated last summer on a music video for the former's song, ‘Summer Storm’.  Here is what we learned about the multimedia project. 

Oscar was sitting in his room on a gloomy summer day and was inspired to write a song about it, picturing stormy weather, one of his first songs ever.  He describes his song writing process as like “writing a story”.  He starts off with the melody and then adds lyrics, thinking about the place and people in the story.  

Both Oscar and Jack have had experience in their fields of music and filmmaking. Oscar first started

playing music when he was in Form 5 at an Open Mic event - he enjoyed it so much that he began writing his own songs.  He feels that the Open Mic events are really great way to encourage people to perform and promote music, sometimes for the very first time.  He played piano from a young age and took up guitar in Form 4 and
composing music just came naturally - “[he] just had the knack”.   After he posted the song on SoundCloud and a few months later Jack contacted him about making a music video for it.  Jack has had experience in making music videos before for hia friends.   "This isn't my first video project", said Jack. "I used to make short films with my siblings when we were younger for fun and before Summer Storm I'd also made a few music videos for my friends Reuben and Alex. There wasn't much work experience available as I was in 4th Year during Covid but over the year I worked on a couple sets, I worked on a Spar ad and an ad for the Irish Cancer Society." 

When asked about the design concept for the video Jack said, "We chose to shoot the Summer Storm video in black and white
as we enjoy the aesthetic of old black and white photography and felt it would match the overall vibe of the song. " The two spent a day in Milltown filming the video, the same amount of time it took to create the song itself.   Jack has always been interested in movies and filmmaking for a long time and always wanted to make films. He says, "My favourite filmmaker is Paul Thomas Anderson as I've seen nearly all of his movies and have thoroughly enjoyed them all.  He's very good at creating complex and flawed characters that feel real and grounded.  These characters paired with his great cinematography makes all his movies both thought-provoking and entertaining.  He plans to do a film PLC next year and to study film at IADT after that.  Jack’s father is also a director in the film industry.  Oscar plans to take a year out next year and travel to “focus on music and work and just live life on my own” and then plans to go to Trinity to study Spanish and Sociology.  Ideally if his music career takes off, he can take a couple years to focus on that before college.  This summer Oscar plans to release an album.  He has quite a catalogue of songs ready to record but is focused on his exams at the moment.  You can watch Oscar and Jack's the completed video on You Tube here.
Saoirse Reilly and Ava O’Brien