Home Of The Year | RTÉ One | Thursday 26th March 8.30pm (Declan O'Donnell, Architect)

A few weeks ago I wrote about having a film crew in my house for a day or two.  Here's more details about the show they were filming and also a few pictures from the day, along with my thoughts about having a film crew in your house.

The show is "Home of the Year" and it involves three expert judges travelling around Ireland and judging amazing homes and ultimately choosing a winner.  I can't wait to see all the fantastic houses (I'm sure they will be very diverse) so will be watching this programme avidly. 

My home, was not entered in to the competition, but instead was used as a filming location and two of the judges were interviewed and filmed in my main living room.  

The first interview was by Judge and Architect Declan O'Donnell of ODKM Architects, who I know well, as Declan along with my husband and Barry Kane are the partners in ODKM Architects (follow on Facebook here).

Declan is a natural on camera and his Belfast lilt comes across really well as he lyrically describes his style and the style of all of the homes that the programme has featured.

The second judge is the charming Hugh Wallace - who you could just listen to forever!

The final judge is Helen James the designer who currently has her Considered range in Dunnes Stores.



The publicity shots were also photographed in my house - here are the three judges with a painting by my husband in the background.

As mentioned at the top of the blog I said I would give my thoughts on having a film crew in your house.  After having a few different crews in filming, my thoughts are that you should:

1. Give over your house to them - they are extremely professional and will clean anything that gets dirty, fix anything that gets broken (which is highly unlikely) and put back anything that they move (and they probably will need to move somethings)

2. Mentally prepare for a lot of people entering your house and it immediately becoming a working location (reread number 1 above!)

3. If you stay and watch the filming process, stay very quiet and ask the crew where you should sit to be out of shot - you wont be able to be doing work like cleaning your house as you may make noise so it may be better to head away for the day.

4.  If you do head away, give the crew a contact number so they can contact you if they finish up early.  Probably best to not arrive back thinking it will take a short amount of time (like I assumed!) - filming is a slow detailed process (although it is incredible to watch and see how good the whole production team are and how much work they get through).

I've included the below pic to show certain things that you can expect when a film crew are working in your house.  I arrived back from the shops to find a light in my garden (shining in to the house to brighten a room) and also the bins were all moved out of shot - they even had to ask my neighbour to move their car!!

 

As you can see Declan is a TV highlight of the week so make sure you tune in to "Home of the Year" on RTE this Thursday at 8.30pm.  If you do watch it let me know what you think and also feel free to ask me any questions if you need further information about a TV crew coming to your house!

EDIT: 

*Just a short note to say that I didn't enter my house in to the competition but that it was only used as a filming location for the judges interviews and also the judges publicity shots.