Eoin living the dream job

THERE aren’t many 31-year-olds in the current climate who can say they have their dream job, but that’s just the case for one Clare man who is due to celebrate his seventh year as a cameraman on the TG4 series Ros na Rún.

 

Eoin, who has ties to both Ballyvaughan and Ennis, says filming the television series is like a dance in many ways and working on such a large production comes with its own unique sense of pressure.

“It can get pretty hectic, we don’t have a lot of time and we do have to shoot a lot of scenes but that is good in the sense that you can’t afford to make too many mistakes. There’s the performance, there’s lighting, sound and cameras. It’s a dance really. Everyone has to get it right for every scene which is usually nine to ten scenes a day,” he explained.

His role as cameraman on one of Ireland’s most watched television dramas was not one that just fell into his lap, it involved plenty of hard work and perseverance, although he readily admits luck might have played a small part.

Eoin, who worked for ABU Media before landing a job with Ros na Rún, said it wasn’t going to be easy to break into the industry but after graduating from NUI Galway, he was determined to be involved in something visual and creative.

“I had to do a lot of freebies and that kind of thing but it’s totally worth it. You’ll spend three or four years working freebies trying to get your experience up. It was like a college course. I loved drawing and art and I’m quite visual and I think cameras were definitely the way for me to go,” he said.

Now in its 17th season, Ros na Rún is not afraid to tackle the big issues in Irish society and Eoin explains that the balance between the show’s grittier elements and more light-hearted storylines is the secret to the show’s success.

“As a TG4 show, it is their main soap drama and it should be commended for doing so well for such a long time. It’s 14 years running now. That is huge for any television show to be on the air,” he said.
While he is full of praise for Ros na Rún and a number of other Irish shows, Eoin admits Irish television is still a long way from being perfect.

“I think Irish television could be better, absolutely. I think more risks should be taken with programmes and I think less reality television would be a good thing. I don’t see what it does for society other than annoy people,” he said.

In tackling the problems with home-grown productions, he stated that “more risks need to be taken and if they go wrong, they go wrong. You learn from that. Young directors and young filmmakers should be given more chances definitely, especially on the lower end of funding schemes and things like that. Young people can make mistakes and everything, but they should be given more responsibility. I think that should be something that changes in Irish television.”

Eoin offered one piece of advice to budding camera men and women and that is to simply buy a camera and start filming.
“Get as much shooting as you can done. Learn your camera and the mistakes you can make. Those are the two biggest things,” he said.

Ros na Rún is the single biggest artist production in one location in Ireland. It’s a huge employer for a rural area Spiddal village in Connemara, with over 160 involved on and off screen.

The show has weekly viewing figures that reach on average 200,000 people a week and airs on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8.30pm on TG4, with an omnibus edition on Sunday evenings at 10.30pm.