Monday, March 09, 2009
Monday, October 27, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Levittown, une banlieue américaine idéale...
Or in plain English, the ideal American suburb, Levittown, Pennsylvania.
A short movie on the website of French newspaper Liberation.
A short movie on the website of French newspaper Liberation.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Some last words before I'm updating the main site...
Before I'm uploading the "official" version of the two first movies on the main website, some explanation about the working method I followed during my travels through the USA.
I left the UK the Saturday of Labor Day weekend on a flight to Chicago, with a return ticket from Houston two weeks later. An extremely tight schedule, after driving for the largest part of the day, little was left besides organizing my next day meeting and having an evening meal.
Most of the people I interviewed were contacted through political forums, facebook and emails exchanged with friends of friends. Most of them (bar one) were strangers I never met before. So my first task was making people feel comfortable with, let's face it, a badly shaved Belgian claiming to live in London, doing some strange internet project, not to make a living and not to get on TV.
So I didn't want my interviewees to worry too much about the location, extra light, a perch and all kinds of unfamiliar kit. They had to feel at ease, as if I knew them for years and my camera was invisible. Most of them choose themselves where and how they wanted to be filmed, in their living room, their office or the local diner. With only a Sony mini-DV camera this was far from perfect to make good looking images. And with a my tiny voice recorder, the sound was never going to be perfect either...
However, emotionally and in the timescale I had, this proved to be the near only solution. After all, I was more interested in obtaining real stories touching a nerve (something in the style of Kuba from the Turkish artist Kutlag Ataman) than Michael Moore style sound bites...
I left the UK the Saturday of Labor Day weekend on a flight to Chicago, with a return ticket from Houston two weeks later. An extremely tight schedule, after driving for the largest part of the day, little was left besides organizing my next day meeting and having an evening meal.
Most of the people I interviewed were contacted through political forums, facebook and emails exchanged with friends of friends. Most of them (bar one) were strangers I never met before. So my first task was making people feel comfortable with, let's face it, a badly shaved Belgian claiming to live in London, doing some strange internet project, not to make a living and not to get on TV.
So I didn't want my interviewees to worry too much about the location, extra light, a perch and all kinds of unfamiliar kit. They had to feel at ease, as if I knew them for years and my camera was invisible. Most of them choose themselves where and how they wanted to be filmed, in their living room, their office or the local diner. With only a Sony mini-DV camera this was far from perfect to make good looking images. And with a my tiny voice recorder, the sound was never going to be perfect either...
However, emotionally and in the timescale I had, this proved to be the near only solution. After all, I was more interested in obtaining real stories touching a nerve (something in the style of Kuba from the Turkish artist Kutlag Ataman) than Michael Moore style sound bites...
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