An interview with Out of Orbit
Out of Orbit is a production company based in our Blick Shared Studios, Malone Road, Belfast. The team consists of producers Brian J. Falconer and Christopher Myers as well as writer and director Jon Beer. We chatted with Out of Orbit about their company and to find out more about what makes them tick!
Cover: Still from #WeAreYou
Above: Stills from Boogaloo & Graham
Founded in 2011, Out Of Orbit have worked on a range of exciting projects from #WeAreYou, the widely acclaimed Police Federation of Northern Ireland films watched by over one million viewers within the first four weeks, to Boogaloo and Graham, the 2015 BAFTA winning and Academy Award® nominated live action short film starring Martin McCann to The Death of a Projectionist. As well as their core team, Out of Orbit is continually collaborating with exciting established and emerging talent and have even more exciting projects up their sleeves!
Out of Orbit are very focused on supporting Northern Irish talent and their concepts often have Northern Ireland as a starting point as location upon which their stories are built. To the team, Northern Ireland is also an incredibly exciting place to be based because of the increasing number of film and television productions being created here and how well received the productions have been locally and internationally. From the award-winning Line of Duty and The Fall to Game of Thrones, Northern Ireland has started to make a name for itself as a hub for great productions.
“Someone asked Jimmy Page where he got so many great riffs from. He said he tried 50 riffs a day and if at the end of the week he had one good riff it was a good week well spent.”
– Christopher Myers, Out of Orbit
The creative process can be a long and complex one, and it often involves writing several stories and concepts, combining different parts of these together and often creating multitudes of work until you hit the jackpot and find something incredibly special. The key thing is to keep creating new material.
Out of Orbit have been supported by Northern Ireland Screen and been awarded the prestigious “Vision Award” to help develop projects with BFI.
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The Out of Orbit team:
Brian J Falconer, a 2015 Guiding Lights participant, is the producer of BAFTA-winning and Academy Award® nominated short Boogaloo and Graham. Among his many projects, he is already in development with playwright Owen McCafferty (Mojo Mickybo, Scenes From The Big Picture), directors Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn (co-directors Good Vibrations, Cherrybomb), composer-director David Holmes (’71, I Am Belfast, Hunger) and filmmaker Mark Cousins (I Am Belfast, A Story of Children And Film). Brian also has a focus on working with upcoming talent such as Out of Orbits own, writer-director Jon Beer (shorts – Land is God, The Death of a Projectionist), writer Marc McElroy (shorts – Bunker, No Sweat), Northern Irish photographer and debut director Helen Warner (short – Pollen) and Australian Writer Rory Cahill.
Already a key figure in Belfast’s booming film sector, producer Christopher Myers joined Out of Orbit in 2015 as the company moved focus into feature film development. Christopher’s award winning catalogue of films have found audiences in Europe, North America and Australia. Christopher studied film at The University of Kent. He loves a good story.
Jon Beer is a writer/director who’s short films have screened at numerous international Academy Award® and BAFTA qualifying film festivals. In 2016 he directed a triptych of films for the Police Federation of Northern Ireland entitled #WeAreYou. This global multi-platform campaign was launched via the virtual world and in cinemas and has been widely acclaimed, reaching nearly 1/5th of the Northern Ireland population in just 4 weeks. #WeAreYou has been recognized at the 2016 Digital Communication Awards in Berlin. Jon is currently developing a slate of original and adapted screenplays for Out of Orbit.
Images: Out of Orbit
