Youth Film

I am sitting under a sun umbrella on top of a slide in the playground. It is raining. I am capturing timelapse footage of a stage setup for a heavy metal music festival. Tomorrow is the big day, and I am only here in an advisory role, but Luca - whose project this is - is still in school taking a Latin test. He is 14 and my nephew and ever since we made a 2 minute short thriller 5 years ago (written, shot and edited in 2 days) he has been making films. So far he mostly completed the trilogy that was conceived following the success of the first film, which won 1st prize in a youth film festival. But as with most serial films quality deteriorated. But word got around that he is a filmmaker and now he has been commissioned to make a documentary of the local free music festival, now in its 3 rd year, after making a short doc about a Battle of the Bands contest. After filming the preparations including meetings with the police, setup and interviews he is now planning the big day and has me asked to help out. He is a pleasure to work with as he's extremely professional - something he probably learnt from his graphic designer father. We will have a crew of 3 more students from his school, some of whom have not done any filming before, so I will be doing a bit of a workshop to introduce them to basic filmmaking principles, too. As the festival takes place in one of the sleepiest parts of Germany his idea is to interpose footage - still to be shot - of sheep, cows in fields and general scenes of tranquility with shots of headbanging. Additionally he wants to make music videos for the bands. We have three cameras to play with - ah, bless the digital age where a 14 year old can command multiple camera setups- so should have no problem capturing sufficient footage. Now we just have to hope it stops raining.

I have seen the future and it screens in 3D

A few weeks ago my friend and editor Leonardo Guerchmann was an extra on James Cameron's new movie Avatar being shot in Miramar. He pointed me to an interview about Cameron's style of shooting with the new 3D camera system, the new way of set design and blocking used to make the most out of the new technology. I was doubtful, having once endured the dubious pleasures of one of those black and white 3D movies that constantly has things sticking out or rushing towards the audience, plus the cardboard glasses are really uncomfortable. But last week I read Cameron's fantastically informative and engaging interview in Variety so when Leo asked me if I wanted to go to U2-3D, a sort of test run for the Reading cinema's new digital 3D projector, I reluctantly agreed. I kind of like U2 - they are my generation after all - so all would not be lost if the technology turned out disappointing. How wrong I was: turns out Bono I'd even more of a dick than I thought, but the concert looked AMAZING. Everything was super-sharp and there was so much going on in the picture that I felt my visual cortex had been scrambled. There were beautiful layers of graphics overlaying the action, crowds stretching into space and shafts of stage lighting like solid pillars of smoke. Even the title sequence was eye-popping. Suddenly a simple text scroll becomes filled with possibilities. I can't wait to make films like this. It's how stories should play out on screen, making 35mm flat and boring like a tired watercolour. The possibility for drama, from audience immersion to intense intimacy are mind-boggling. See more about the camera system Cameron used in Avatar here:

Infratil Investor Day 2008

I have found myself with an ongoing commitment at Infratil, the company whose annual Investor day I filmed a few weeks ago. A whole raft of ideas followed, and the first promo piece is up on YouTube and the Infratil website. The next step is for the individual presenters to find their highlights from the hour-long presentations, so they can be added to the website. It’s a learning process for me and the company to find how material can be re-purposed and what the process of generating video web content involves. There is a certain involvement from the company to clarify their message, the graphic designer to generate intros, lower thirds and other graphic material to give a corporate image, and the editor to pull this together. The trick seems to be to work in batches, since every iteration creates more work and another draft that needs to be uploaded, viewed, commented and changed.