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Naji al Ali doc premiere on Al Jazeera July 28, 2010

Posted by joost in : producing, screening, work , comments closed

Exactly one year ago I line produced a documentary on the Palestinian cartoonist Naji al Ali (ناجي العلي). This week episodes 1 and 2 are premiering on Al Jazeera in the Middle East, on Friday evenings at prime time 8pm!
The title is “La likatem al sawt” or “No for the silencer”, which is a reference to the last cartoon Naji drew before he was shot.
It also marks a première for me since I had not seen any footage nor the finished version. But even if I had, it would have still been a challenge since the entire program is in Arabic :-)
Very excited and proud to see the doc out in the open! Now let’s hope and pray the ratings and reception will be good.

The first episode focuses on his youth, upbringing, the state of the (and his) world from the forties to the eighties and the run up to his death. This episode can be seen (at least at the moment) on youtube:
parts 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

The second episode focuses on the assassination, the people and organisations who might have been involved, and attempts to uncover new evidence. Watch the live stream of Al Jazeera on Friday the 30th of July 20:00 UEA / 19:00 NL / 18:00 UK (Java required). Check out this episode on Youtube:
parts 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

What’s up, doc? April 9, 2010

Posted by joost in : producing, work , comments closed

The downside of working on documentaries is that their timeline usually is not set in stone. The availability of guests can (and will) change, the scope of the project might be altered due to better insights or growing concerns, and last but not least the usual logistical variables such as visa applications, permits, you name it.

This spectrum of factors has led to postponing two of the projects that were supposed to kick off in March and April. Annoying because I was excited about the prospect of getting them up and running, and because it took a while before it became clear that the timelines would be significantly different than initially planned.

I’ve been trying to make good use of the time spent in limbo, by trying to revive and finish I/O recontextualized, by conceiving a new short sci-fi film and by some studying. But to be honest I would have preferred to be on the prowl instead of debating what season it is….

Busy february February 19, 2010

Posted by joost in : commercial, film, producing, work , comments closed

February is turning out to be a productive month!

I’ve worked as a camera and sound assistant on a (non)corporate video for the NHS, shooting a series of testimonials and short videos based on actual case studies that have to do with the intersection of HIV/AIDS and high risk groups / ethnic minorities.
It is one of the best projects I’ve had the pleasure to work on in the last few months, because it deals with a topic that matters, working with two film mates that I trust and whose company I enjoy, with lovely and committed NHS staff to support us, and with fascinating lunch and dinner conversations to top it all off.

I also helped out on a short film by other LFA graduates. They were selected in the first round of a short film competition and received some money and a small amount of time to create a new short for the next round.

Next week I am working as 1st AD on another short film, about superheroes with useless superpowers :-) The director will pitch this idea as a tv series to the BBC, and the short film will be shown as an example of the characters and their universe. Everyone involved of course hopes that both the film and the pitch will turn out well and will lead to new opportunities. That aside, it is a well-oiled production, making me look forward to what will hopefully be a smooth shoot.

At the same time I am about to produce a handful of tv documentary episodes to be shot in the second half of March. This mainly involves organizing and accompanying the shoot so that the (foreign) tv anchor and director can fly into London and do several interviews with “famous guests”. Target audience are viewers in the Middle East.

As if that is not enough, I am exploring the offer to produce another documentary, about a recent controversial topic (can’t be more specific for the moment) targeted towards the English and American market. It looks like a big chunk of potential work for me. In the coming days we will have to figure out what the production aspects will entail, and if that promises to be something that I believe I can and want to do.

Oh and then there is still this other documentary that I hope to be involved in on a creative level… Exciting times!

Focus, plans, ambitions for 2010 January 13, 2010

Posted by joost in : directing, festivals, film, london, producing, reflection, screenwriting, work , comments closed

The start of a new year is always a good moment to write down plans and ideas. My ambition is to…

Specific goals and focus for the start of this year:

MOFILM ad competition October 6, 2009

Posted by joost in : directing, producing, work , comments closed

One of the many things budding film makers do in order to get noticed, to get some practice or to get some money in the bank for future projects, is participating in film related competitions. MOFILM is an example of one of them.

Me and three fellow film academy graduates decided to give this one a go. Biggest challenge was that we were all out of the country until late September, leaving us exactly seven days to come up with a concept, work on the script, find props and locations, and then shoot and edit the commercial.

We brainstormed and worked on several ideas for the first two days, with two viable and promising concepts as a result. Since our team consisted of four people, we decided to appoint two “team leaders” for each concept who would be in charge of realizing all that needed to be done. The other two would then have a supporting role for the other commercial, and vice versa.

We spent the next days on storyboarding and preparing for two days of shooting. In general we followed the “work with who you know, what you have and what you can get” principle – a motto that every guerilla filmmaker will recognize.

The two days of shooting the commercials were good fun. We acted ourselves, ran around in London and shot on some great locations. This left us with plenty of material and exactly one day to edit. We pulled an all-nighter and exported both commercials around 7am Monday morning, with a whopping five hours left to submit them before the deadline :-)

The shortlisted commercials for each brand will be announced really soon, next week already. They will appear online then as well. If they don’t then I will upload them myself for your viewing pleasure.

No matter the outcome, for us we have already succeeded; the manic week really got our creative juices flowing again so watch out for more viral videos, commercials and other visual gags by our team!

Current work June 17, 2009

Posted by joost in : editing, film, producing, work , comments closed

I’m currently co-producing a documentary on the life and death of Naji al-Ali. My involvement in this project started several months ago when I offered to help on what then was just a no-thrills simple shoot one half of an afternoon. Slowly but steadily this project has grown into a two part documentary to be broadcast on Al Jazeera before the end of this year – and with it solid (paid!) production work for me. I’ve started pre-production a while ago and we are aiming to shoot several elements (interviews, location shoots, crime scene re-enactment) over the course of two weeks early July.

I have also (finally!) started post-production of I/O recontextualized, the experimental short film that I directed during the Easter weekend. It took longer than expected to determine the best post-production workflow, not only because my film uses a myriad of source material (super16, HD, SD, cell phone) but also because we wanted to find the best and most sensible price/quality for processing the super16 film. We eventually settled for a transfer to HDCAM SR, 1920×1080 4:2:2. Practically speaking this resulted in a QuickTime file with a runlength of about 16 minutes and a size of 120 GB :-)

Simon, former classmate and roommate, will be editing the film over the next few weeks. Quite a challenge because there are many possible ways of interpreting the source material and piecing it all together. We will need to go through a couple of iterations where we want to be as free and experimental as we were during the shoot, but where we also need to get some of the key concepts across in the midst of all the artiness.
I hope to publish a more in-depth description somewhere soon on this blog of what the film is about, how the shoot went and what I am trying to explore. But first there is some producing to be done…

Funding proposals update (second half of 2008) October 21, 2008

Posted by joost in : film, funding, london, netherlands, producing, screenwriting , comments closed

A quick update on the three scripts and proposals for funding that I had been working on in August and September:

NPS One Night Stand – They received 125 entries, my treatment has not made it to the final 18. A pity, although I gauged that this scheme was probably more oriented towards writer/directors who have a couple of years of film making under their belt, so I wasn’t too surprised. At least they’ve seen my name for the first time, more will follow in the future!

UK Film Council / Film4 Cinema Extreme – In progress, will receive feedback half December. I submitted roughly the same treatment here (but adapted to the UK) as to One Night Stand since it is a similar scheme. Chances of success are slim here as well judging on the winners of previous grants, almost all filmmakers with a number of successful short films on their CV’s. Curious to see what will happen nevertheless.

North London Production Fund – Received a phone call last week, my script and proposal made it to the final round and I was invited for an interview! This took place on Friday the 17th of October. I had half an hour to introduce myself, to talk about my plans for the film and to answer a series of questions on the script, the characters, the visuals, etc etc etc. They will tell me this week whether or not they will award me some funding!

Coming up in the next few weeks are new scripts and proposals for:

Can’t get you out of my head August 18, 2008

Posted by joost in : directing, editing, film, producing , comments closed

Remember the Kylie Minogue song “Can’t get you out of my head“? (la la la, la la la la la…) After assistant directing on the “Can’t have my love” music video for Sian Cross, I suffer from the same syndrom; can’t get that song out of my head. Which bodes well for the chart potential of her song I guess :-)

The shoot itself was ambitious, with several exterior locations in and around Hammersmith planned, and interiors in an apartment in Kensington and a ‘dance studio’ in Fulham. On the day itself we changed plans because the weather was surprisingly good, the van surprisingly small (preventing us from traversing any meaningful distances) and the schedule not surprisingly too ambitious. So we adopted and managed to shoot some really good stuff anyway.

Compared to filming short films this shoot wasn’t that different, partly because the director tried to stay away from the cliche of singing-to-camera, partly because the logistics are pretty much the same. Assembling the right crew, camera and lights, locations, transport, shooting schedule, lighting and covering a scene, same same.

One of the main differences is that video clips tend to have a higher number of cuts than films (although I still have to see a music video that exceeds the average shot length of The Bourne Ultimatum – 1.9 sec!). This requires more coverage (different camera positions and shots) to have enough options in the edit, but at the end of the day the style and vision of the director determines just how flashy the end result will be.
We’ll have to wait a couple of weeks before we can judge ourselves. In the meantime I’ll be humming “Can’t have my loooove…”

Wrapping up my year at the LFA May 29, 2008

Posted by joost in : LFA, film, producing , comments closed

So much catching up to do!

I totally forgot to tell about the 4th film we did in February… This short film was based on a script called “Checkmate” that I wrote and then further developed with the director. Quite an intensive three weeks of rewriting, and then 1st AD-ing the two day exterior shoot in Battersea Park. Really cool, it was a period piece set in the 18th century, pre-French revolution, with a peasant, bourgeois, king and queen, all dressed up and ready to fight each other verbally or with a pitch fork, sword or knife.

In March I finished “Rule 2″, and before I took a break and went to Amsterdam for the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, I worked on a couple of LFA related film shoots. People that I worked with before and/or knew through the LFA were doing some short film shoots and I worked on those. Great since they all shot using HD cameras (because shooting on film is too expensive on a small privately funded budget). I was camera assistant on a handful of shoots, which meant some hands-on experience with these cameras, lenses and how it looked (lightwise) on HD.

On one entirely different and wacky shoot called “Valley of the Dommes” I was 1st assistant director. How to describe this 48 hour short film competition madness? Judge yourself and watch the trailer of the resulting film on youtube. Yes, this film will be big, very big, very VERY big…

April and the start of May was a transitional period in time. I finished “Rule 2″ in March, but still had plenty of things to do for the film, in particular the promotional side. In order to send the film to festivals you have to have a logline (one line summary), a synopsis, the full credit list, biographies of cast and crew, the complete dialogue with timecode (subtitles), selection of still photos, etc etc. Not very creative work but it needs to be done, and this dragged on for a while. Luckily I finished all of this at the end of May, which means the film will be sent to festivals worldwide in the coming months.

For the film that I produced, “Sculpted”, I already have some experience with festivals. So far we haven’t been successful getting it into festivals :-( The competition is fierce, sometimes more than 4000 entries of which 40 get screened during the festival… We are now trying to focus our efforts on festivals that could be a good match with the film, in particular gay & lesbian film festivals.

This wraps up my year at the LFA. The inevitable question is: now what..?

One week to go November 10, 2007

Posted by joost in : LFA, directing, producing , comments closed

Seven days from now and the first day of shooting will be underway. Production things that happened last week:

To do – too much to mention!

And this is only what I have to do, my producer is busy with all the other logistics to get this film off the ground.