Verna

in 2010, I was offered a place at the Helsinki Film School as an Erasmus student. During my time in the film school, I had a chance to observe Finnish film students producing short films. Verna was one of them and I worked in the production to document the process. Here’s the video.

John Seale Masterclass sponsored by Panavision

I am really happy that I have been able to find myself in this panel as a cinematographer. Needless to say without the help and support of Benjamin B, this would have never happened.
Click here to see the post by Benjamin B at Panavision official website.

Mayerson on Animation: Freelancing

I have been following this blog for the last couple of months and although it is mostly about animation, I find some entries really useful especially the ones about the production side of animation making as well as the aesthetics of it. I would like to share in this blog the entry about working as a freelancer and your rights that you should keep in mind before starting working with a client. It is recommended to anybody who does freelance work.

Mayerson on Animation: Freelancing: I’m writing this post for the benefit of Sheridan animation students and grads, but it may prove useful to others. If you are not on salary…

Interview with Duygu Sağıroğlu

This is an interview that I did with Duygu Sagiroglu in 29. 05. 2010. He is a filmmaker that I truly admire and he was really kind to give me his time in his office. Here, he talks about John Huston’s relationship with his father and how he helped him to relaunch his career.

Back to Work!

Filmmaking has its own way.. And I love it in every way!

Camerimage 2011

This year’s Camerimage had two significant value for me. First of all, I have had the pleasure to work as a cinematographer for Benjamin B to document his masterclasses. John Seale was one of the main guests during the festival and he had a long panel conducted by Benjamin B. The videos will be online soon in his website the filmbook.
Secondly, I had the opportunity to meet Todd Hayes. Haynes was, along with Ed Lachman, this year’s director duo award guest. I had the chance to talk with him for a couple of minutes about Douglas Sirk and how Sirk influenced his filmmaking style.
For more information, visit Camerimage 2011′ website.
The photographs above are taken by Kaan Arici.

Outline!

Hello! It has been quite sometime since I have written anything in this blog. As a matter of fact, I have been having difficulties with some of the work that I am trying to accomplish and I still do. I thought making a list of the stuff that I would like to accomplish would be a good way to motivate myself. Why not write about the things that I would like to do, I have to do and I already did.

Let’s start:

The things that I would like to do:
– Finding the right distribution channel for our short film “Evcilik” directed by Aytuğ Üngör and produced by me. (I have already made a list of film festivals in Turkey and we will start with Altın Portakal and the deadline is 12 of August. We will continue submitting our film to İzmir International Film Festival and Akbank Kısa Film Festival subsequently. Our aim is also to participate to film festivals abroad but I have not made a list about them yet. I am not sure if we will be able to get in first rate film festivals such as Cannes or Venice but we may have some good opportunities in festivals elsewhere! And by elsewhere, it is my job as the producer to find out the right festivals. My encounter with a photographer friend from Åland, Kenneth Bamberg may actually give us the opportunity to screen our film in that area.
– Develop the short film project I.N.D.I.A. This is a project that I have been willing to develop for a long time but the negative thoughts as well as insecurities because of not so much of lack of information, but from an exaggerated fear of making a mistake prevented me from doing so. And finding a way to integrate this project to my thesis -which is about staging methodologies- is also something that I have to think of.

The things that I have to do:

-Finish the last two videos for ISEA2011. We finished the shootings with Emre Birismen and now I have to finish the editing by Monday.
-Rewrite the introduction for the thesis.

The things that I did:

-I finished 16 videos for ISEA2011.
-We finished the shooting for my dear friend’s exhibition Kenneth Bamberg.

Now I have to go but I hope to expand this list later on!

I’ll not date in August!

Scenes From a Marriage

Before coming to Helsinki, I never realized that I would go back to my theater days but this time not as an actor but as a filmmaker. I met Carine Ravaud, production designer student from Paris and she was already designing a Bergman play Scenes From a Marriage in Helsinki. She told me that the director would like to use video installations during the play and asked me if I would be interested. My answer was yes without any hesitations.

Next Monday, I went to Helsinki Theater School, Teak to meet with the director. Marcus Groth was directing the play and the next thing I know, we were already in the process of brainstorming.

Marcus was looking for a realistic and natural way of telling the story. The actors were trained to perform in a natural manner and the set design was built in a realistic way. I knew from that moment that at least the introduction video should act to fulfill the set design and extend the idea of home feeling in the mind of the audience.

But to accomplish that, I also knew that I needed elements of tension because the intro scene had a crescendo. I wanted to divide the composition by emphasizing the difference between man and woman and I used objects that can sometimes be dangerous such as knifes and boiling water.

Between the acts, we have decided to use animal couples, Marcus had the idea to show the animals to underline how it is actually easy to be together. For this reason, I spent plenty of time looking for animals that would match what we are looking for. I went to a stable to shoot some horses, I shot squirrels, swans, dogs and fishes. We didn’t really like the horses and the squirrels (although I found the experience rewarding!) and we went to use swans, fishes and dogs. The reaction to these videos by the audience was extremely satisfying. I believe we were able to extend the play with the installations.

To shoot the introduction videos, I have visited a lot of houses. I was lucky since the people in Teak found me couples where I could go and shoot their homes. And in that sense, I was able to see inside the houses of real Finnish people which was also a rewarding experience.

We had ten shows and we had the last play last Saturday on 30. 10. 2010. We had really good reviews which I have shared some of the links with you below. I will never forget the experience, I will definitely miss everybody that I met at Teak during the production. It was a really good opportunity and I feel really lucky to be a part of it. I think the play was a blast!

Below is an extract from the introduction video originally used in the play. Of course the video by itself doesn’t really say much because it was made to be shown during the opening scene where the characters are interviewed by a journalist.

Here some of the articles and reviews:

Website for Ingmar Bergman Foundation

Newspaper/Västra Nyland

On Radio in Finland!

Borgåbladet & Östra Nyland

Newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet!

The photographs above are taken by Niklas Sandström.

Vimeo Page

Hi,

I have decided to use my Vimeo account to share some of the stuff that I did from 2007, so if you want to check it out, here’s the link!

By the way, have you ever had what they call a writer’s block! Well it seems to me that I have had it in my whole life. Today I was thinking about myself of four years ago and I have realized that I still have the same problems today. Which is, trying to do something so desperately but not to be able to find a subject or a voice or to come up with a story or I don’t know what they call. Well I have red and listen to a lot of people and I just couldn’t find any solution. Well if you have any advice, I would be really happy to hear your thoughts.