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Here’s a fun addition of us preparing to shoot the actual film!

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Camera Operator/ Publicity - Yuhong Liu

“My position in the documentary is the camera operator. In this role, I need to operate the camera as well as helping research the entire project.

Honestly, I don’t have much experience with cameras before, so it’s indeed a challenge to begin with. It’s an interesting experience though; I’ve learned a lot through the process. Both tutorials and exercises give me a clear introduction of how to use the camera, and during our seminar, our instructor also gives us many filming tips specifically on the documentary, especially focusing on interviews and B-rolls. These tips really have helped me a lot when it comes to the actual shooting in our project.

Besides operating the camera, I also take part in the research from the beginning. During the research, I have gained basic knowledge of how the documentary works in general and have a better understanding of our project the gallery W139 particularly. It’s been a great time on this journey, and I would definitely do it again for sure in the future if I’ve got another chance.”

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Editor-in-chief research/ Press Junket - Elīna Meinerte

“In the documentary film project, my role was editor-in-chief of research. Together with another member of the group, we had to divide responsibilities among the group members regarding the research part of the project. Doing the research was very fun and insightful, especially since at first, we had to find information about two different ideas – for us, it was the gallery Warmoesstraat 139, which ended up being our main topic of the short film, and a charity run by students called Guara Roja. Because of such different subjects that both our ideas had, as a group we learned a lot about both squatting in Amsterdam and hurricanes in Honduras. The role in the “research department” seemed dull to me at first, but eventually I started looking at it as an opportunity to make the documentary more engaging, and working in collaboration with my groupmates, we dug up some intriguing facts, talked to very interesting people, and in the end shot some fun and attractive shots.

           Another role of mine in the process of creating the film was taking part in the Press Junket. Technically, it has nothing to do with the documentary itself, but it presented us with an opportunity to see an award-winning documentary film and talk with its director. Together with the interviewer of our group, we saw Aliona van der Horst, a Dutch director originally born in Russia, who shot a film about the World War II and its aftermath. I think that experience helped us not only practice our research and interviewing skills once more, but also was generally a very exciting thing to be present at.

           The documentary project was definitely very different from the fiction film project that we did before, but in a way that it helped us practice different skills and oversee a different kind of filmmaking.”

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Interviewer/ Head of research - Iana Minakova

“Personally, I was a head of research. During the several weeks, my responsibilities involved collecting the information about the both ideas for the documentary. Mostly, I focused my attention on the documentary idea about the charity organization. Firstly, I’ve read resources about the organization itself. Secondly, I’ve learned about the events in Honduras. Finally, I’ve prepared a list with structured information. Overall, I enjoyed this position as I have to collect and structure the interesting material”

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Sound recordist/ Editor/ Production/ Editor-in-chief “Making of” - Mila Miloševski

“After having done the fiction film, I was stoked to be working on a documentary film as this is where my interest lies as well as where I see my career going in the future. Having said that, the second half of the Film Practices course was definitely up my alley, and I approached it with more enthusiasm. As I was more enthusiastic, I did take more responsibility upon myself, which I thought that would help me immerse myself more into the world of documentary filmmaking. I enjoyed having to do production as I was the link between the gallery and our group, I also enjoyed being on set as well as being in the post production and really getting a grasp of every and all parts of the filmmaking process.”

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Director - Guissanée Tutundjian de Vartavan

For the Documentary project my role consisted of directing the the film. As a director, I aimed to take the responsibility to not only manage the arrangements for interviews but as well as taking the risks and decisions regarding the subject. To make a project happen I pushed my limits in having an spontaneous yet rational view of creating an ideas and achieving my expectations on set. For instance, the approach of interviewing the owner of the “Condomerie” shop, came at a very last moment after hearing an interviewer from the gallery raising information about the squatters of the neighbourhood. The next day, though the initiative of asking the owner for an interview was rather tempting, I hesitated. However, after pushing myself for the sake of contribution to the project, I managed to contact the Theodoor van Boven, the owner of the Condomerie to pursue an interview with us regarding his opinions and experience on squatting and the housing system in Amsterdam. Editing was the most challenging experience to go through as it required consistency of repetitive cuts for the perfect illusion and making the choice of the words spoken by the interviewees, as of course, the interviews lasted on average one and a half hour and they were revealing very interesting informations about the history of squatting in Amsterdam as well as the W139 itself.

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Crew Positions for documentary!

The crew positions were set at the start of the course, with small revisions made when it was discovered that they needed to differ from the ones we had when working on the fiction film.

 Director - Guissanée Tutundjian de Vartavan

Camera Operator/ Publicity - Yuhong Liu

Sound recordist/ Editor - Mila Miloševski

Editor-in-chief research/ Press Junket - Elīna Meinerte

Production/ Editor-in-chief “Making of” - Mila Miloševski

Interviewer/ Head of research - Iana Minakova

Next, every member of the group will tell a bit more about their experiences while working on the film.

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Formal Execution of the Documentary Film

During gD12, we decided upon shooting on Nov 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th. During the shooting days we encountered and interviewed people actively involved in the work of the gallery, both in the past and in the present.

The shooting of the film went smoothly.

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Here’s some more pictures of the shooting process :)

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The filming begins!

Upon making a moodboard, a storyboard and having done investigation into the stylistic elements of the director of choice, namely Tim Burton, we proceeded onto shooting the film. The filming of the film took, in total, 3 days. We had two filming locations, one for the first part of the film (street and stairs scene) and one for the second part, De Pijp and the Bijlmeer, respectively.

Even though the shoot was demanding and tiring, it was a fun experience for the whole group.

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Before the shooting of our short fiction film started, we prepared a storyboard to guide us through the process. Here’s a snippet. Later, we redrew it by hand.

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Preparing the shoot of the short fiction film

Our group was assigned the script from the film “A Promising Young Woman”, which was a film we were not familiar with. Regardless of that, we were determined to make the best of it.

As it was the first project we had together as a group, it was a sure way to make us collaborate and, in a sense, bond. We quickly had to come up with different ideas of how to make the script more unique. This helped us shape our creative vision as well as really understand the idea that we wanted to go for.

We decided to adapt the given script using the stylistic elements of Tim Burton, more specifically we were aiming to use the lighting, the music and the mystical characters he incorporates in his film. We chose this because it seemed like a suitable way to shift the energy of the script while maintaining what we considered the main parts. Deeming this as the right way to undertake the assignment we continued with further investigation into the chosen stylistic elements.

After having rewritten the script as well as having found a filming location we were ready to continue onto the formal execution (shooting) of the film.

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FORMAL EXECUTION (SHOOTING)

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TOPIC RESEARCH