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Ik heb op FiViKASKA.be al een kort bericht geplaatst over het jaarverslag 2007 van het Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds maar er zijn nog een aantal cijfertjes die mij toch wel opvielen.

1. Iets minder dan 40% van de aanvragen krijgt daadwerkelijk subsidie.
2. De nummer 1 qua kijkers, Ben X, haalt ongeveer 270.000 bezoekers en kan dus niet op bioscoopbezoekers alleen uit de kosten geraken. (Het budget van Ben X was ongeveer 1,5 miljoen euro, d.w.z. 5,5 euro per bioscoopbezoeker.)
3. Dagen zonder lief haalt nog 43.000 bezoekers, maar Kadahk nog maar 12.000.
4. Ex-drummer haalt er ongeveer 21.000 maar verkoopt wel 323.000 DVD’s dankzij de HUMO-actie.
5. Dat is meer dan de verkoop aan DVD’s van alle andere films tesamen, en bijna evenveel DVD-kopers als kijkers voor Dennis van Rita op VTM.
6. In Vlaanderen werden 17 films geproduceerd met gemiddeld 68.000 bezoekers, in Wallonië werden er 33 films gemaakt voor gemiddeld 16.000 toeschouwers per film. Het hogere Vlaamse gemiddelde ligt aan “kaskrakers” als Ben X, Firmin en Vermist.
7. In de top 10 van de Belgische film van 1996 tot 2006 staan 6 franstalige films (waaronder 4 van de gebroeders Dardenne) en 4 nederlandstalige (o.a. De zaak Alzheimer). De top 4 is helemaal franstalig.
8. Het VAF recupereert subsidies als de film goed draait. Voor 2007 was de uitschieter qua recuperatie De hel van Tanger (61.000 euro), van de subsidies voor De zaak Alzheimer zag het VAF maar nog maar eens 29.000 euro terug verschijnen.

This short by Spike Jonze is one of my all time favorite short movies but I like this IMDB user comment on it even more.

Last year I made this simple movie together with the actors from youth theatre group “De Strontvliegen” whom I’ve been directing in 4 stage plays. The movie took us 2.5 hours, from conception to final shot, but the end result is fun nevertheless. Editing took a bit longer, mostly due to the slowness of my old PowerMac G4. The compression to H.264 alone took about 25 hours. Yesterdays hardware with todays software ain’t much fun…

It’s also the first time ever I’ve been editing HDV material. Guess what: my computer is too slow to play 1080i50 HDV fluently. But I’ve been able save a few shots where I wasn’t close enough by zooming into the High Definition material, up to 200%. I don’t think you’ll be able to spot the digital zooms since my main timeline was SD.

Enjoy it.

Slaapkop is een eenvoudige film die ik verleden jaar samen met de acteurs van jeugdtheatergroep “De Strontvliegen” gedraaid heb. We zijn van nul begonnen, hebben een eenvoudig verhaaltje bedacht en twee-en-een-half uur later was de film opgenomen. Geniet ervan!

It’s been a while seen I’ve shown a movie. This one called After Dinner has been quite long in the making. Both the shooting and the edit took quite some time.

The shooting took place in november 2004. We shot on and off for about 5 days inside the Hnita Jazz club. The crew consisted of Reinout (the hunter), Diana (the deer) and me, and it most certainly was too small. Being the camera operator, director, gaffer and grip all at once made the shoot more complex and tiring than it needed to be.

The thing I really like is the atmosphere we were able to create with a dozen plants, a few 500W spots and two projectors. None of the movie was filmed outside and no green screen or blue screen tricks were used, although there is some silly CGI at the end.

But above all I like the song. So what are you waiting for?

La Pasión started as a small, single afternoon movie Roeland and I planned to make for school. We quickly realised it could be something bigger, so we reworked the scenario and filmed the next sunday, and then the next sunday and then another and another sunday. It took quite a long time because most of the time we had to wake the actors first (Hi, Jeremy and Elliot) and clean the guest/party room next. But most of the time was spend setting up shots. It’s amazing how much longer it takes when using a tripod and all manual camera settings compared to hand held shooting with a camera in full auto mode.

The reason most of my previous stuff is handheld (see for instance Degoutant) is because our teacher tells us to do so. In fact, when I showed him my tripod during one of the first lessons two years ago, he told me I wouldn’t be needing that for quite some time. It might seem contra-intuitive when every bulletin board on the web tells you to use a tripod if you want “professional looking” movies, but the truth of the matter is that it’s a lot easier and faster to use a handheld camera if you want to learn about composition, camera moves, shot continuity and rhythm. The end result might not be as good looking but you do learn how to tell a story visually. I hope you see the progress I made if you look at my first movie and this one.

By the way, there are still some handheld shots in the movie. See if you can spot them. And another by the way, this is the first movie shown here shot with my new Sony FX1. I’m quite happy with it. I feel like it will take some years untill I will have exhausted the possibilities of this camera. Next on the list is sound and light design and working with a larger crew. We deliberately chose against using lights in this movie since there were only two of us: me as the director, and Roeland as the camera operator.

Anyway, here it is.

Clip Curoon is my first videoclip. Some love it, some hate it. I guess you could call it an anti-videoclip. It’s a single shot movie, 5 minutes long. This one is take 9, the last take.

Image quality could have been a lot better. It think it was around this time (september 2004) that I started thinking about a better camera. As you can see, my Sony TRV 60 just doesn’t cut it, although it looks better on TV than on the web. I’ll have to incorporate gamma correction into my compress-to-web workflow sometime.

Anyway, here it is. Mind you, it makes no sense to look at this clip in a bright, noisy environment. So, close the curtains, put on your headphones and enjoy the movie.

By the way, the actor is Steven Vrancken. I think he does a very good job. The music is by Troissoeur.

I cut these promo-clips for Troissoeur from material shot by the camera crew at Dranouter Folk Festival, edition 2004. Although the footage was captured on DV, the visual quality is outstanding. That’s the difference a professional crew and professional cameras make. The visuals on stage are made by Ruben Bellinkx.

Two clips: Curoon and Trays. Enjoy!

There are some days where everything works without effort. The day we recorded Degoutant (Disgusting) was one of them. We shot this movie on a June 2004 sunday afternoon in school. I cut the movie the same evening.

Engross yourself.

Millenniums Live is a demo video for the Millenniums, a Booty Shakin’ Big Band born in Belgium on January 1st, 2001.

The video started out as a straight concert registration but I spiced things up with shots of the musicians in their natural environment. Camera work was done by me, Roeland Vandebriel and Werner Matheus. Werner used an old Sony Hi8 camera, Roeland used his old MiniDV camera with a faulty pixel and I borrowed a MiniDV camera because mine was being repaired. This is no budget filmmaking after all. To be honest, the image quality suffers a lot but the bands energy makes up for it.

I hope you enjoy the music as much as I do. Be warned, this a 20 minute long movie and thus a big download.

No 1 is the first movie I ever made. It was made in the summer of 2003 on a very hot weekend at the end of July.

I had a hard time editing this movie. I did have some experience directing people, but I didn’t have any directing the camera. The end result was: a lot of takes but not enough shots and surely not enough angles. Afterwards I decided to go to a filmschool.

Enjoy!