CWazyTom's Ancient Land DVD recording experience

You me!  Its only 1 DVD out of 6 having it!.
It's obvious I somehow skipped Believe because aside they all have You Raise Me Up. Interestingly the Parting Glass has ended both since Believe, until Destiny and back now to Ancient Land.  

I think just about all of us that got to see Ancient Land were really lucky, not just because we got to see such an amazing show live, but because we got to be in Ireland during a time with some unusually good weather.

Personally, I only had about 1.5 days of drizzle the entire couple of weeks I was in Ireland. 

Just a few days after the DVD recording, Ireland started getting battered with a series of bad storms. High winds, rain, and now plumetting temperatures over the weekend. I think it's safe to say our trips (and the shows) would have been very different had this nasty weather arrived a week earlier.

Hopefully the girls stay nice and safe during this period of wicked weather. Wishing them and their families all the best.

Yes, there was lots of luck to go around!  💗🍀

I carried an umbrella around with me on most days when I went walking, but I only had to use it for about an hour or two during my whole 7-night trip.

I was pretty lucky with my flight back to the U.S. on September 16th.  I landed in Charlotte, NC with no delays, while it was experiencing rain from the remnants of hurricane Florence and other parts of the state were flooded.

Then just three days later, I heard that a deadly storm hit Ireland, and someone died in Galway just four days after I was there:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/storm-ali-woman-killed-as-storm-blows-caravan-off-cliff-in-ireland-today-2018-09-19/

It's not exactly luck, but I am very grateful that I didn't hit anyone while I was driving around in Ireland.  I did a total of 750 km of Irish driving, and I had never driven on that side of the road before.

Does anybody notice the similarities between the first castle performance and the this performance?

Does anybody notice the similarities between the first castle performance and the this performance?

The other similarity is that they were both amazing! 

in my opinion ANJ is their most iconic DVD special, still my favourite, after all those years. hence I don't mind AL being similar to it at all. 

What???

How did he get back that close the castle after the first show? 

The staff started shooing people out even while we were taking photos, and that was long before the girls came out.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BntOcyKBBXL/?taken-by=rolandmt

Haha!  That was the first night and I thought you already talked to him after it happened.  Matt is a charming guy; you should add him as a friend on Facebook and see this picture.  😘

Yeah that was night 1. He met Eabha back there too, and also Anto, Glenn, Gavin, probably more that I'm not thinking of right now. None of us even attempted to get that close and were really surprised when he came out with those pictures. On night 2, knowing Matt had done it on night 1, we tried hanging around the stage longer, but they kicked everybody out so they could dismantle the set. We should hang out with Matt and learn his meeting tricks! He's got some awesome pictures on facebook!

Haha!  That was the first night and I thought you already talked to him after it happened.  Matt is a charming guy; you should add him as a friend on Facebook and see this picture.  😘

Yeah, I knew he met a bunch of them including Megan on night 1. But I figured they were just coming out of the gated area closer to the stands than we were standing. Yeah, I guess we had no chance waiting for them anywhere outside the gated area that night. Only the choir members, dancers, band, and orchestra were leaving that way.

Yeah that was night 1. He met Eabha back there too, and also Anto, Glenn, Gavin, probably more that I'm not thinking of right now. None of us even attempted to get that close and were really surprised when he came out with those pictures. On night 2, knowing Matt had done it on night 1, we tried hanging around the stage longer, but they kicked everybody out so they could dismantle the set. We should hang out with Matt and learn his meeting tricks! He's got some awesome pictures on facebook!

We could learn his tricks or just stand in the exact opposite places I normally do and it would improve the odds dramatically. Haha!

It will be really interesting to see how they use the shots from across the two nights. Given that there was so much mist on night 2 for almost the entire show, almost all the shots from night 2 are going to look very different from the shots from night 1. The closeups from either night will probably look similar, but it's going to be tricky to mix the wide shots. I suspect that for each songs, they'll choose a set of medium and long shots from one night or the other, not both. I'm still curious what they'll do from one song to the next though. It's going to look really weird if there's a mysterious fog that comes and goes every few tracks.

Clearly there will be some mix of shots from both nights, unless they just cut some songs from the DVD altogether. For instance:
- County Down, Garden of Eden, and Faith's Song were only performed on night 2
- Ae Fond Kiss was only performed on night 1
- There were a number of slips on night 2 due to the moisture on the stage. The parts where people slipped will likely not be on the DVD, although they could potentially still use the shots from those songs on night 2 and just cut away during the moments when the slips occurred.

It'll also be interesting to see what they do with the long and overhead shots of the crowd, since different people were sitting in different places and there were fewer people on night 1 (forcing a blackout in certain seat sections).

It's definitely going to be a different experience seeing the DVD having actually been there this time.

I agree, it'll definitely be interesting to watch it with the perspective of having been there for the filming. I had a couple of thoughts that will be cool to see how they edit for the DVD. One was the transition from Follow Me to Mná na hÉireann. They dance during Follow Me and it ends with the guys dipping the ladies backwards. During night one of filming, they had to hold that pose for a solid minute while the drone was filming it before they started into Mná na hÉireann. I bet they'll make it a very fast transition on the DVD. The other thought was about how they'll edit The Enchanted Way. This is an incredibly fun song with Tara and the four dancers. It went much smoother on night one just because they had a dry stage. On night two, the stage was so wet that they were slipping. The video from night one will be great, but the crowd was more vocal on night two during this song in particular, giving a lot of love to the dancers. I wonder if they'll mix the video of night one with the crowd appreciation of night two. That'll be interesting to see.  And then of course if we're in the crowd footage, we were in the same section both nights but second row the first night and front row the second night.

I really hope they keep all of the songs in the DVD! If they do, Mairead will have two solos in the first act and the others will have their solos split between act one and act two.