Wonders Never Cease

Teaming up with Lovely Productions and D.A.D.D.Y, TV3 is making broadcast history with a totally original new series. Starting April 16, the network will air a thirteen episode collection of short films entitled Wonderscreen.

“We are always looking for good, innovative series that are creatively and financially accessible,” says Jane Gogan, Commissioning Editor for TV3. “We got the right proposal from the producer, Lorcan Finnegan, for a creative, well-structured, powerful work that we felt would be an asset to our line-up.”
Finnegan created Lovely Productions in the summer of 2003 along with two of his close friends, Steven Courtney and Graham Newcombe. In 2004 he left Zeppotron productions to concentrate on the company full-time. Since then Lovely Productions, which offers talent in any number of fields ranging from advertising to music and sound design, has been busy developing short film packages for airlines, writing a new sketch show and directing a short film for the Irish Film Board. Wonderscreen, Finnegan’s brainchild, is the company’s first TV commission.
“Some of the great innovators of cinema are represented here. The shorts come from all over: Ireland, Australia, France, Britain, New Zealand, the US and more,” says Gogan.
The short films were carefully selected over a six month period, during which Finnegan and his partners viewed over 1,500 samples.
“The whole idea was selfish, really," Finnegan says. "I really like short films, but the problem is you can’t find them anywhere except at film festivals. Nothing like Wonderscreen has ever existed before and it is as much for me as for the viewing audience. Traditionally shorts can be rather boring with some guy sitting in a chair crying for an hour or someone screaming at a mirror for five solid minutes. But there are a lot of really good ones that never see the light of day which we’re aiming to change. We’ve chosen a broad selection of modern, cutting edge films that are, most importantly, very entertaining.”
Packaged into thirty-minute time slots, the films range from 15 seconds to 15 minutes. D.A.D.D.Y, whose creative team includes a member of The Chalets, was commissioned to create the opening production to the series. D.A.D.D.Y, short for Design Animation Design Design Yay, is self-described as “a two-man directing superteam that produce high quality Animation, Design and Illustration every single day of our lives. We also like jokes, making stuff up, winning races and getting off with girls.”
Chosen for their outstanding work that includes music videos on MTV and VH1, D.A.D.D.Y was just a part of Finnegan’s vision of producing the highest quality work.
“We don’t ever want to compromise and do corporate videos. We only want to do nice work and supply nice work as well,” says Finnegan.
And Finnegan is confident that his team chose the best of the best. Some of his favorites include films like Overtime, a black and white animation where fabric puppets throw a celebration for their dead creator, and Ward 13 – a dark film where a man gets hit by a car and finds his life is threatened again in his hospital ward.
“We hope this will change people’s perspective on what short films can be and hopefully inspire people to make them as well,” says Finnegan.
With people like Gogan behind them (“Lovely Productions will be around for a long time,” she says), it looks like they are well on their way.

Wonderscreen can be viewed at 11 pm Saturdays, on TV3.