What it was was a kind of nine-month documentary about the work of Ghetto Film School.
Ghetto Film School are a nonprofit which allows young people to define a pathway and get learnings about how to enter the film industry, as part of their after-school and summer course. Students need to sign up to and be quite dedicated to it.
They finish by doing a thesis. A country is nominated by each branch, and there’s one in New York, London and LA. The students research and write a short film specific to this country. All the films are submitted, they’re voted on by the fellows of each respective school, and one is selected. Each cohort then crews it out the same way, putting themselves forward and pitching for each crew position, and then they get to go to that country and make that film.
The first time in one place
In this instance it was done in Iceland, and it was the first time that all the schools would be filming their thesis project in the same place.
As a result I was asked to come on and shoot the behind-the-scenes for each short film. That required me to crew up additional camera operators in New York, London and LA.
In the middle of it
Organisationally, manning a crew.
Being in the middle section of working to shoot the films of less experienced people who I was more senior than, but also had to respect the artistry of. Dealing with their minders and teachers, their tutors and mentors. Managing my own crew. And respecting the wishes of the higher-ups than me, whether that be partners in Meta and Dell or the client itself in Ghetto Film School.
Figuring out the narrative
Day to day it was discussions with my other camera ops and documentary makers, where we were constantly just trying to figure out what the narrative was. Figuring out where to put our energy day to day. Discussing where each film was at in its process, and the different pain points we were seeing, in order to create a compelling documentary and divide our resources correctly. Reviewing rushes.
I worked closely with Dell in pre-production to define what we were going there to capture, and with their marketing team to identify the critical things they wanted and what they didn’t want.
Meta came over. They wanted to create short vertical viral content, and they were there as sponsors on that side. I worked with them day to day to help them fulfil their vertical briefs, as well as making my own documentary.
Ten days, three films
The pre-production was shot by myself and three other people. After pre-production we all went to Iceland.
It was a ten-day shoot, where three different short films were made in three different locations. Again, myself and three others would divide ourselves between the three locations and shoot the behind-the-scenes. Lots of hours of filmmaking to go through, and I edited all of it.
Cameras were Sonys and Blackmagics. We also worked with a professional score, sound design and music design, which was a critical aspect of the post-production and super interesting.
It’s just a colossus of a project. So many learnings from doing it.
It was a real production, a real producing credit, because organisation was the hardest part: trying to constantly juggle the various needs of the various parties involved while also working creatively to make it as a director.