During the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a documentary about freedom of speech. Since last year me and two colleagues have been doing interviews with people from Egypt, Tunisia, France, Saudi Arabia and the UK. Talks have been about censorship, freedom of expression and democracy. It feels like the project is really taking form. Documentary filmmaking is a really vague thing and a lot of the time you have no clear idea of where things are going.
Then something just happens. You suddenly realize that you have enough pieces to put the idea together. You start to see the people and stories that you’ve been looking for. I think we’re moving towards that place at the moment. It’s not exactly the way we set out for it to be, but I think it feels better than the original idea. Mostly I think it feels better because it’s for real, actual people that is living the idea.
The timing for it is perfect, in a week or two the missing third of our trio is coming back to Sweden. We’ll be going through all our material and ideas, then we’ll piece together a more specific idea of our film. One year of pre-shooting and research will hopefully result in a complete idea that we’ll be able to apply for funding through. The project will otherwise proceed in a slower matter.
At the moment we’re thinking of financing the project one step at a time. I have all the equipment for the production, so all that we’re actually in need of is financing for the costs of shooting the project. Recently I started to break down my projects into these kind of stages.
Stage 1 First research + pre-shooting, in that phase there’s no funding. Stage 2
The second stage is financing the actual shooting and then shooting it. Stage 3
Then when that is done, we jump into the editing room and build the whole story, when that’s done we actually will be trying to finance the whole project.
This way we have far more control and ownership of the project, something I think is vital to realize and be true to our visions.
It can be extremely stressful to work this way, since you’re fumbling in the dark you might loose hope in the project. That’s a natural feeling in all projects though, but I try to look at projects in shorter goals, that way I always move forward. This way of working is slow though, but I love it, the slow and improvised process of making film is amazing. You shape the story while you’re making it, very far from the traditional way of making film. It does bring a lot of challenges. By working this way you automatically put yourself outside of the traditional financial-system. But that is something I consider positive, because it often feels like it’s the only way to keep true to your ideas.
This process is really inspiring to me. It’s like sculpturing, you slowly shape the story piece by piece. Where you often have no idea of where your going. Creative minds work this way, I feel at most creative when I just do things without planning too much. I have a clear idea, but I’m open to things that just happens on the spot.
I find myself really locked in when working in more structured ways. Something I believe create predictable stories. That being said, let’s see where the project ends up. Even though I work in a creative chaos many times I try to keep extremely structured. Recently I read “Making Ideas Happen” by Scott Belsky. It’s a great and inspiring book that makes the obstacles of making ideas happen really clear. A lot is common sense, but it was great to just hear it in an obvious way.
I recently got the fantastic news that I will get funding for the development of a documentary that I’m working on. It’s great news that give me the possibility to focus on finishing the first stage of the project this fall. I’m going to do the last couple of interviews and then edit the movie together. After that I will be applying for more funding to finish off the project. For now that’s all I’m going to say .
Freedom of expression is something many of us take for granted. But what do you do when someone strips you of your right to free speech and what are the tools you use to circumvent the censors and push for change in your society?
Together with two colleagues I’m making a documentary film about individuals and groups in the Middle East and Persian Gulf who have found creative ways of expressing themselves and generating change, including through art and music, in places where free speech is controlled and censored. A significant part of the film will be dedicated to the role the Internet plays, particularly social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs, in getting the free word out in the modern age.
Here’s an image from an interview I did last week with Charles Leadbeater.
About a month ago a did four behind-the-scenes movies for Wreck Creative Studios (www.wreck.se). The were making four commercials for the MTV and Nordea campaign called Check-IN. What they needed was someone to create four short documentaries about those commercials in the making.
I’ve been busy researching a documentary that has been in my mind for a couple of years now. It all started with a lecture film a couple of years ago. I was documenting a workshop called relationship week, it addressed how to get out of a destructive relationship. It’s an all women’s group and I was privileged enough to be filming in the discussions of about 20-30 women with different destructive pasts. Most of them had been addicted to narcotics or alcohol for many years and was both trying to change their habits of addiction and destructive relations.
The woman that holds the responsibility for the relationship week is called Lena. She has come clean of an 17 year old drug addiction. In six years she lived with a man that abused her. She was close to taking her life when no one took the violence in her relationship seriously. Finally she was admitted to the psyche and came into contact with a therapist.
The documentary is about Lena and her life story. It’s a really interestning story about a woman who has lived outside society’s norms in many years. Her life experience of poverty is enormous. Despite this, she managed to turn her life into something positive and today she’s trying to improve substance abuse treatment in Sweden.
Next week I will do my first days of shooting with Lena. The project will become an animated documentary. It will be really interesting to see a life story with a lot of authenticity combined with animated storytelling. More information about the project will be posted regularly.
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