For both of us, the Heritage at Play project was an absolute joy. It’s challenges and hundreds of hours of work were validated in a simple experiment. We showed the film to a public audience we did not know, and they enjoyed it. In fact, they wanted to know more about Gaelic Games. An Irishwoman in attendance told us we had captured “the entire ethos” of gaelic games and what they mean to the Irish. An American told us he was smitten with the beauty and uniqueness of the games. Both of these responses create great satisfaction for us, as appeasing these two populations with different agendas was our ultimate goal.

Read on for the full, formal conclusions:

NEWPORT, R.I. – This Saturday (September 18th), Colleen Brogan & Zachary McCune will premiere their “Playing Irish” documentary at the Newport Public Library. The event will be free and open to the public. Nearly two months since the pair left Ireland, and three weeks since the team completed the film, the event will mark a celebratory conclusion to the Heritage at Play project. The Newport Public Library is located at 300 Spring Street Newport, Rhode Island and the screening will begin at 4:30 pm. A question and answer session with the filmmakers will follow, and items collected during the filming of “Playing Irish” will also be shared.

So the video is finally UP! And we could not be prouder. This project was challenging on every level, but we were thrilled for the opportunity and wanted to produce a high quality, intermedia documentary with professional level content, videography, and product.

None of this would have been possible without the generous AT&T New Media Fellowship and the support of the Watson Institute for International Studies and the Global Conversation blog. We were honored to be in the company of outstanding students, alumni, and faculty of Brown pursuing fascinating and forward-thinking topics and issues on an international scale. We have enjoyed the project and the collaboration immensely, and greatly hope that the AT&T New Media Fellowship will continue and grow in the following years, as it has been an incredibly influential project for us and we know many who would appreciate the same opportunity.

With that being said, as part of the first (we hope, of many) iteration of the AT&T New Media Fellows, we thought it only proper to offer some of our tried-and-true lessons from the field. Brown University and a liberal arts education prepares you for many challenges in life, but there were some specific skills and lessons we learned that were absolutely vital to a high-level media production skills while abroad. We thought we would share some of those lessons here, and hope you will add anything you have learned (here’s looking at our fellow AT&T Fellows!).

1. Don’t skimp on the multimedia tools you will need for success: besides cameras and tripods and necessary audio equipment, don’t forget to buy a cell phone (preferably with a 3G signal at minimum), wireless modem, or some way to ensure steady Internet access with decent bandwith. We found, unfortunately, that though Internet was widely available in Ireland, often it was very low bandwidth, so it would take 2-5 hours to upload one of our 5-minute videos–often these hours were spent in a cafe using the free wireless, biding our time over cappuccinos and croissants. Ensure that

a. you are producing content that isn’t so huge it will be impossible to upload

b. you have access to consistent Internet and bandwidth to upload your polished product.

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2. This brings me to the next point. Consistency. You need all the tools to access the Internet so that you can provide consistent updates to your blog, videos, or podcasts. You want to be producing new content daily, so that viewers feel they can check back every day or so and see new and dynamic content. Here are some tips:

a. Connect Twitter to your cell phone and “tweet” updates 2-3 times a day on your status, where you are, and interesting things you see. You can take it one step further and sign up for “twitpic”, where you can take a picture with your camera phone and upload it to Twitter just like if you were sending a text message.

b. Connect WordPress to your cell phone: there is a new service where you can “call” your WordPress and record up to 10-minutes of an audio post. It will be unedited, but playable, and you won’t need Internet access to compose it, just a cell phone signal.

c. Prepare drafts in advance and “flip the switch” on the cell phone: If your phone is 3G, you will be able to access your blog but I doubt you will want to compose an entire blog post on the small keyboard. So write the posts in advance and save the posts as drafts when you know you are going to be in an area with little to no Internet access. That way, you can access the WordPress site through your cell phone in the following days, and just “flip the switch” so the blog post goes live. That way, you will be able to post new content consistently, instead of overloading with 3-4 posts on one day, announcing you will be going into a “dead zone”, and then not being able to post for another 3-4 days.

3. Use multiple media platforms and promote your material! You’ve posted through Twitter and used your WordPress consistently… But don’t stop there! Cross-post your content on Facebook, send around e-mails to your friends, professors, and acquaintances during the trip to remind them of your consistent updates and link to where they can follow you, and even try to comment and cross-post on other blogs that are about the same subject or media as you. If people comment on your videos or retweet your updates, send thank yous and respond to people’s questions or concerns. People will keep coming back (and keep commenting!) if they feel their participation is appreciated and being heard.

After dark, wet week in Cambridge, Mass. Colleen and I were able to complete our feature documentary. The result, a 32-minute exploration of what gaelic games are and what they mean to the Irish who play them, is cheerfully titled “Playing Irish.” The title is inspired as much by our experiences as filmmakers in Ireland, playing along within a world of Irish sports and culture, as it is by the fact that for many of the Irish people we met, gaelic games represent an Ireland at Play.

Much of the final film cut has been drawn from the best of our broadcasts so readers and viewers familiar with our material here on heritageatplay.org will recognize a number of the characters, places, and adventures shown in the final documentary. But fear not, the documentary also features a host of new material and more importantly, the entire approach to editing this final film was very unlike the broadcasts. Instead of focusing on our travels and experiences, “Playing Irish” approaches gaelic games as a single theme, working through its meaning to communities, players, coaches, and spectators around Ireland. The result, we think, is a tight and informative exploration of hurling and football, offering an introduction for the uninitiated and a succinct celebration of the GAA for the long-time fan. Or as we describe it on the DVD box (which are prototyping this week)

Gaelic Games are among Ireland’s most popular and celebrated pastimes, with massive stadiums, national television coverage, and a network of clubs criss-crossing the Emerald Isle.

But few outside of Ireland have ever heard of Gaelic Games, and fewer still know how they are played.

Just after graduating college, two Irish-American filmmakers (Colleen Brogan & Zachary McCune) set out for Ireland to learn about these ancient games and their importance to the Irish people.

And that’s the story we’re telling!

In Irish popular culture, the All-Ireland is an event revered like the World Series or the Super Bowl, and attendance at this final, ultimate GAA fixture can be quite hard to ascertain(as in this Guinness ad) if you are not among the two team’s supporters. The phrase “All-Ireland” is used on gaelic footballs and sliotars to designate a top quality product, where “inter county” or “club” designate less refined sports equipment. And commercials on television make frequent allusions to the glory of winning the All-Ireland, with Guinness playing with the popularity of the event in its advertisements.

Kerry & Kilkenny’s Dominance

The All-Ireland competition has been dominated by certain counties. Kerry has won 36 All-Ireland Senior Football Titles, while Kilkenny have won 32 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Titles. I say senior because of course there are any number of “underage” championships (like u-17, u-19, etc.) that should not be confused with the top flight championship action. Not that anyone in Ireland is ever confused. If you say “All-Ireland” people assume you mean the top-flight “senior” action.

To the victors go the Spoils

The Sam Maguire Cup, awarded to the winners of the All Ireland Football Title.

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Like all great athletic competitions, the All-Ireland Championship has become associated symbolically with the trophy that is awarded to its winners. The Sam Maguire Cup, modeled on the ancient Ardagh Chalice has been presented to the Football Champions since 1928. On the hurling side of things, the Liam McCarthy Cup is handed to the All-Ireland winners with the winning captains being presented a model of the iconic trophy.

Liam McCarthy Cup, awarded to the All Ireland Hurling Champions

All things go

Which brings us to this weekend, when Dublin will play Cork in Croke Park to determine whether the “boys in blue” or the “rebels” will be booked for a place in the All-Ireland Football Final. This marks a serious comeback for the team Colleen and I watched be humiliated at home by Meath nearly two months ago. Last week, Tipperary dismantled Waterford to qualify for the All-Ireland Hurling Final. Their opponents will be Kilkenny, who are currently in the hunt for a historic fifth-in-a-row All-Ireland title.

And you should watch these games! Because the closer one gets to the All-Ireland, the higher the stakes become and the harder the players compete. If you cannot find a local Irish pub to watch these final games, do check out the GAA’s new “web magazine” which puts out a fun recap of the past week’s action while profiling the upcoming matches of the weekend. This service, called “Round the Square” does not have the most instructional footage, but the graphics are good, the highlights are fun, and music keeps the tempo high paced. You can also download the GAA’s iPhone app to listen to live radio broadcasts of the games, or go to premium sports where you can procure pay-per-view rights to stream all of the games. It’s a little too expensive for my taste, but perhaps it is good for yours.

And of course, continue to follow us here at heritageatplay.org for further expositions and introductions to the wide world of gaelic games.

But what’s it all mean? What is the All-Ireland? How does it work? Who competes for it? And why should anyone (least of all a baseball/pre-season football addled American) tune it to care? The answers are a part of this week’s Beginner’s Guide to the All-Ireland, brought to you a full four weeks since the Heritage at Play team left the site of the action.

Everything Starts at the Club

As our broadcasts have highlighted, the Gaelic Athletic Association closely mimics the model of the Catholic church in Ireland. Small villages and parishes of larger towns are represented by community clubs that may compete in hurling, gaelic football, or both. Take St. Rynagh’s that we visited in Co. Offaly as an example of a football only club, or Nemo Rangers that we visited in Co. Cork as an example of a dual sport club. Each of these clubs competes against all of the other clubs in their county to win the county championship. As Tom Potts of Nemo Rangers told us “the county title is the prize that everyone is after.” Every county club champion will have the opportunity to compete against the other 31 county champions to be the champions of the entire island of Ireland. But this is not the All-Ireland proper, this is just the All-Ireland Club Championship (which our friend Ross O’Carroll won last year in football).

From Club to County

While clubs within a county compete against each other, a county board makes selections from across the clubs in their purview to create a all-star county team (or in the idiom of the Irish, a top-flight county panel). This All-County squad will hold practices with players who are used to competing with each other, but now must come together in the name of county pride. The clubs may proud, but being a part of the county team is very special honor as the player will be celebrated throughout the county as a top-talent.

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The Fight for the Province

County teams play compete for provinicial titles. As you may know, Ireland is traditionally divided into four provinces. Munster in the south contains Kerry, Cork, Waterford, etc. Leinster in the east contains Wicklow, Laois, Offaly, Dublin, etc. Ulster, to the north contains Down, Donegal, Tyrone, etc. Connacht, to the west contains Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon, Galway (except in hurling which is an odd technicality), etc.

In the early part of each summer (June through early July), the provinces hold their championships with the county sides playing a single-elimination bracket down to a single champion. This was what the Colleen and I saw at Croke Park: the Leinster Provincial Football Semi-Final between Dublin and Meath, and the Leinster Provincial Hurling Final between Galway and Kilkenny. Winning a provincial title is a great honor and it automatically qualifies your team for a place in the All-Ireland Quaterfinals.

Qualifers: the back-door to the All-Ireland

But losing in the provincial championships is not necessarily the end of the season, as the top 16 teams in Ireland (at least in Gaelic Football) are entered into a “qualifer” bracket that will allow some of them to actually challenge the provincial champions for revenge, glory, and another shot at the ultimate title. For after the provincial championships have been won and lost, a second tournament begins to determine the champion of (All) Ireland. And if you lose in this second tournament, there’s nothing to take solace in except next season…

The brackets for these events, can be found in convenient “wall chart” formats on the GAA’s website.

It’s been tough.

We’ve been at it for 72 hours now, holed up in an apartment in Harvard Square with bottles of Diet Coke, a 6-pack of Allagash White, and an air conditioner. Occasionally we ventured outside, and let ourselves remember it was summertime.

During the course of this project, we have worked hard to keep on top of our footage. Every few days in Ireland, we would summarize our activities with a Broadcast. These proved helpful for us because it let us catalog what we had captured and exciting for people following the blog from around the world. We had wonderful responses.

Making a 5-minute broadcast wasn’t easy, but it was intuitive. We organized them based on our experiences in specific locations, so no “grand narrative” was necessary. With our documentary, however, a binding narrative structure seems essential. And creating a simple, powerful structure is very hard. We’re still trying to nail it down.

After 3 days, we have 36 minutes of a documentary. There’s really no time we’re explicitly shooting for, but we expect it will be under an hour. It’s hard to not include things, but at the same time it’s difficult to make all of the included clips clear and relevant.

I guess this is why people do this professionally.

One big thing we would learn after leaving Dublin was that a potential contact at RTE had decided to retire. This made us feel a considerable bit better about the failure to actually visit the Irish media giant and learn how they covered GAA events firsthand.

While we were in Ireland, Waterford had forced an epic replay with Cork by scoring a goal in the dying moments of the Munster Hurling Championship. Following on the RTE’s iPhone App a week later, we learned that Waterford put the Rebels away to take the Munster crown.

The Dublin (“Dubs”) Gaelic Football team, the very ones we watched be dismantled by Meath, have made considerable strides in their qualifying for the All-Ireland Football Championship. In the GAA, teams eliminated from their Provincial Championships are entered into a secondary “qualifier” bracket that can advance them into playoffs with the four regional champions for a place in the All-Ireland final. Speaking to people around Ireland revealed some disagreement about the appropriateness of this system. Some saw it as a second chance for losers, others a long needed multigame solution for weaker counties. Whatever the feelings, Dublin is taking considerable advantage of this second chance and is moving towards making up for that shameful loss almost a month ago

We got three hurls, three sliotars, and a gaelic football for our time in the Emerald Isle studying such things. Back home in the US with them, Colleen and I have both taken a few afternoons to play around with them and to show them to our friends. The enthusiasm has been incredibly high for the hurls, though actually striking the ball (and mastering the lift) proves hilariously difficult. Everyone has the same awe-struck reaction when we hand them a hurl: “wow, this looks like a weapon…”

And that brings us to the hear and now: Colleen is in Boston working at the Institute for Contemporary Art, and I am in Fairfax, Virginia at a little conference on the Digital Humanities. This project has already come up several times, and a bunch of people wish I’d brought the hurl to try it out.

My mind never wanders far from Ireland now that we’re back in the States. When you are abroad for only a short while, you find yourself amused and comforted by reminders of home: the “Eddie Rockets” (chain diner Johnny’s Irish cousin) reminds you of singing “Stayin’ Alive” back in high school, and though we loathe the McDonald’s monopoly, we laugh a little at their attempts to fit local foods on the fast food menu.

After three weeks in Ireland, those all became familiar, as well as many other stores and shops and eccentricities. Now back in Boston, I’m reminded constantly of Ireland and Irishness: a bar named “Grafton Street” brings me back to the boutiques and chocolate cafes of it’s Irish namesake. And the Celtics, in their green and white jerseys with shamrocks, may be a simple reference, but it’s clear nonetheless.

References to Ireland can be spotted all over Boston, and while we were in Ireland many people, when they realized we were American, would immediately add that Boston was their favorite city. Is it their favorite city because it references their home, or because it’s an awesome city on it’s own?

I think there is a lot of parallel between Dublin and Boston, but I feel like both would refuse the comparison. Maybe we can think of them better as cousin cities, with distant relatives who were much more tightly knit, but now it’s only a ghost of their presence.

Time back in the States has given us the chance to reflect on important take aways for the final, feature-length documentary. Distance from the footage and the fantastic Irish men and women we met is giving us the time to think about what qualities, characteristics, and moments to stress, especially since this full-length documentary will be primarily for an American audience. What do Americans expect to see in Ireland? What can we do to relay a poignant experience?

Please, the best thing you can do is share with us your favorite moments from the Broadcasts or the Blog, or the Twitterfeed so far, so we can elaborate more on those moments. We look forward to sharing the final product with you!