Hilary Rose is an Irish actress and writer. She is best known for her portrayal of Mairéad MacSweeney in The Young Offenders franchise, including the 2016 feature film and its subsequent television series, which commenced in 2018.
In this interview Judie speaks to Hilary about her life as an actress, filming self tapes for casting directors, imposter syndrome and her blog about living wild and free in our modern world.
How does Hilary learn to live a life on camera but also stay very true and grounded in herself, and in her life?
Here are three key take aways:
1. The Self-Tape Set Up:
As an actress, filming self-tapes are a big part of Hilary’s life. “Nowadays before you even get in the door to do an audition face to face with somebody, you do a self-tape first.”
Hilary started out filming with her laptop camera however more recently she has upgraded to the iPhone 13, two softbox lights and she always makes sure her background is neutral.
While casting directors and directors can somewhat see-through poor quality self-tapes, they do have some expectations for the auditionees.
2. Imposter Syndrome:
Imposter syndrome is ubiquitous. Even the most confident among us can still feel the burden of a bad day or lack confidence when we need it most. Hilary too struggled from imposter syndrome and to her this was a signal that she wasn’t “going in the right direction”.
Hilary used to put a lot of weight on her career but now, she has realigned her values. While she takes her job seriously, she now treats her roles with fun, and she tries not to take herself too seriously.
“I think the second you stop taking yourself seriously, you kinda drop all those negative expectations almost of yourself.”
3. Self-connection and frequencies:
During 2020, Hilary had created her blog website called Live Wild. Hilary shares that she has a whole other side to her that is very deep and holistic where she loves to go “barefoot walking in the woods” and “sea swimming”.
As humans, we all naturally strive to connect and Hilary understood that people were craving this connection however, not from an external force. For her, “the blog was all about self-connection, like connecting deeply within oneself”, where people are looking for connection deep within oneself rather than externally.
“What you emanate from yourself is a frequency and when other people match that frequency you are drawn together quite a bit”
For Hilary “the frequency of love is the highest frequency that one can attain” and as sovereign beings we have the choice to change our frequencies whenever we want.
Behind the scenes:
For this interview, we filmed on three iPhones using the FIlmic Pro App:
iPhone 11 Pro Max - the wide camera on a tripod in the centre of the presenters.
iPhone 12 Pro Max - the close up on Judie. We placed this on a tripod at eye level on the right side of the room.
an iPhone 13 Pro Max was for the close up on Hilary. We placed this on a tripod at eye level on the left side of the room.
For audio we used:
The Rode NTG Video Mic on Hilary - recorded on to the iPhone 13 with an extension cable and adaptor.
The Diety V3 on Judie - recorded onto the iPhone 12 with an extension cable and adaptor.
And a couple of affordable boom arms from Amazon.
For lighting:
The room was bright so we opened up all of the windows and turned off the overhead room lights.
We also used Hilary’s new soft box lights and placed these next to the close up cameras (iPhone 12 and iPhone 13).
For Editing:
We edited in Premiere Pro as there were three different files to syncronise.
We added color back to the Logv3 image on the iPhone 12 and 13 using the Filming Pro LUT. We found the LUT very heavy so we duplicated each video clip, laid it onto of the clip with the LUT and reduced the opacity to 50% - this reduced the intensity of the LUT and left a nice pastel style palette. We’d love any tips and tricks that you use when working with LUTS so leave them in the comments below.
(For the Pros: With the iPhone 12 and 13, we shot in 10 Bit Logv3 and added a LUT in post production)
Find out more:
Explore Hilary’s blog Live Wild. https://bit.ly/TheVidLiveWild
Follow Hilary on Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/thehilaryrose/?hl=en
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