@jaramoravec

Bit late to the party but here comes a charity piece for VLESP, Flemish suicide awareness charity, that we shot with Hamlet last year. So many charity films are bleak and depressing and I always wondered what happens if you bring some light into the story. Depressions can be confusing creatures, they come and cast dark fog for a long time, then they disappear for a brief moment only to come back again. A bit like long winter days without much sunlight. The original script was a classic noir scene with two solitary men driving in a car, having an imaginary conversation about the troubles one’s experiencing. I thought that moving the scene into a car wash made sense for a number of reasons. I always liked the dark and broody atmosphere inside of a car wash and felt that environment represents depression really well. Handling mental ilness is about finding a new perspective, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel which is exactly what happens in the film at its end. Then there is a moment when one man cannot stand the silence anymore and turns on the music. I knew that was my opportunity to bring something different to the script. Initially I was looking for loud and strange new wave songs but once I heard Sir Victor Uwaifo’s “Happy Day From Me To You”, something clicked. The lyrics, the carefree, unassuming atmosphere of that track was perfect antidote to all the worries of these two friends. Produced by: @hamlet.tv DP: @sandervandenbroucke Colour and post: @xavier_dockx Sound: @sawuel_jurkovic Music licensing: @goldsteinmusicgroup

Last bunch of postcards from Argentina.

Shooting ads can be a drag sometimes but I am blessed to spend so much time with curious people who are just as obsessed with trying out all sorts of ideas. I had a blast working with incredibly dedicated @juan.manuel.castelo , who did not hesitate to make a brand new carpet when we could not find one to buy, among many other things. Just the shape of the thumbs took us a couple of weeks to figure out. We went through so many outfits for Bae that @solmontalvoph decided to sew shirts from scratch even though we could see it in just one shot. @sawuel_jurkovic has been a mad artist once again and recorded custom sounds just to illustrate the crooked smile of the bus lady. @ninalou.giachetti was in charge of lovely “cardboard cereal” title design and I am sending a big high give to an amazing Nigerian singer I tracked on Fiverr to record the jingle vocal at the end. All these guys spend incredible amount of time and energy to get each detail just right, knowing very well that the shot might not make the final cut or the audience won’t pay attention. I am sure we would get away with less finessing but nothing beats a proper deep dive. Thanks to all the patient souls who helped along the way.

Here comes our latest ad for OnePlus shot in Buenos Aires this January. The script was already loaded with lots of quirks and I could not resist to add some more. Lensed by Filip Marek, produced by Kode Media and Red Creek Films. Many others helped along, please find the full the credit list on my Vimeo. We were very lucky finding Ian, the main protagonist playing Chad. Ian lives in the US, arrived to BA for summer holidays on the day of casting and left day after we wrapped. Considering this was his first time in front of the camera, he did great! Fiona, who played Bae, stormed each casting round with a fearless energy. I was so relieved we were allowed to feature her talking in Spanish. But it was Daniel Senillosa who stole the show whenever he was in the frame in a role of a reporter. I would love to film a story featuring his thick eyebrows in every single frame.

With Stromae coming back after such a long break, we wanted to keep his presence distant. I always imagined that he’s being broadcasted globally as some sort of a mysterious cult leader slash teleshopping presenter, a source of neverending good energy. There’s something very dystopian about the idea of being instructed to cheer up on command so we wanted to compensate that with tutorials that feel innocent and cute.  Animation was created by incredibly talented @ninalou.giachetti and @bendudur in Paris and together with Luc from Mosaert we tried to figure out the visual language for this other world. I was curious about mixing work-safety manuals, anime and teleshopping commercials.  Initially we wanted to throw a lot of other activities into tutorials, all sorts of late-night party antics but eventually we narrowed it down to Stromae’s dance moves. Those were shot on a blue screen on 16mm to achieve a more processed look. Another idea that we explored were less familiar alphabets that made it to the posters scattered throughout the video. By avoiding English language and Latin alphabet altogether we wanted to make the locations even more nondescript, harder to identify.

Then there was the dance. The song runs in an unusual slow rhythm, far from your usual Saturday night disco boogie so the dancers sometimes struggled to find the right groove. But I always wanted to embrace the imperfections and clumsiness and distance from the glossiness of the music video world. It was all about there and then (like in Beau Travail’s famous title sequence).  Filip and me considered making the final chorus of the video more stylised with more expressive lighting and angles but every time we tried, it felt like a cheap shot. Once we set out for a tripod and fluorescent lighting, we could not go back.  I wanted the very final dance sequence to be really visceral, almost transcendental to give the story some arc. I remembered the final sequence from Shame where Michael Fassbender got lost in one long beautiful take. I was sure it’s going to be the lead fisherman Zhenia with his dramatic face and flamboyance. But dancing on the deck was not very easy with lots of diesel fumes, wind and noise. The PA also broke down so in fact the dancers on the boat danced without any music whatsoever. I think that moment with Zhenia fleeted away as we were too busy making things work. At the end it was @djamilitta who was able to let loose. She struggled with her nerves for a while and then had a big shot of vodka and then completely transformed herself and showed the pain and the beauty.

Casting has been incredibly important for this video. We ran a full gamut - from amateurs to professional dancers back to street casting. References being viral videos with gritty, authentic characters dancing away without a care. But how do you find somebody like that in a couple of weeks? We quickly learnt that these rough street working types don’t really overlap with beautifully elegant dancers. To make things easier, I wanted to have one strong performer for each scene and then mix it up with other people who might not be as good but will fit the role. When I was watching the tapes, the message of the song hit me the hardest. Every person spent a considerable amount of time and energy to make it to the casting agency and perform a silly dance only for me to spend a short while to say yes or no.  And hey, did they throw some crazy moves! I was so impressed with the confidence and zero fucks given by most people we casted in Kiev. There’s this incredible fierceness in Ukrainian culture, different to much more careful and self cautious behaviour of the rest of Europe. I am very grateful for all the patience @easy.casting.agency had with me, thank you. We first casted Zhenia Skisov, an incredible character, a lead actor on the boat. He did his dance topless and stayed in a zone even on his way home. Then there was Nikolai Taran, an older gentleman who went berserk during his casting.  Then we discovered Hugo Huberto, a lead actor in the office, in Amsterdam. I was looking for groovier, less intense performances and together with Gregoire Ationgahire and Baubacar Alwata they formed an office squad with lots of shared energy. Gregoire became everyone’s favourite as he was incredibly photogenic and radiated this living teddy-bear charisma. We struggled with the main lead for the restaurant and just two days before the shoot we found Jamilya Andreyeva in Prague (thank you once again for saving me @simonsayscasting). We ran a casting session on a tech recce, knowing it would be a bit of a gamble but we were lucky.

After a long search for warehouses, farms, hotels and factories, we decided for three separate storylines. A seedy, forgotten restaurant somewhere in Asia, a sweaty call centre in Africa and a fishing boat in Eastern Europe, each one of them having their own strengths.  The restaurant was the most symbolic and followed the lyrics of the song the most. A waitress cleaning up after a big feast. Each frame there tells the Cinderella story straight away. The restaurant is located inside a typically big Soviet culture centre, the seemingly exotic Asian architectural style is all fake.  The call centre felt more contemporary, reflecting the fact that many people are blue collar workers even though their shirts are white. The screens also helped to make the concept clearer. We found this room inside of the National Library, a location that turned into a meme over the time with film crews coming and going every single day. I imagined some of these grand spaces might work for the end of the video but it felt too music-videoish and dishonest. Stromae has been away for 7 long years and the idea to have him appear as an annoying pop-up banner on a computer screen seemed interesting.  The last location was meant to be a heavy, industrial space but those places very often feel heavy and depressing with very little poetry. In the end we rented two old tugboats from the 1970's and sailed down Dnepr for a couple of hours. The guys playing cards are boat captains. This scene was also our ticket to show some non-urban environment and get some sunlight into the story. I want thank amazing @natalie_maxovska for turning bringing the locations to life so well.

I am happy to finally share the latest music video that kept me busy over the summer. Santé is the first track announcing Stromae’s comeback after 7 years. Unlike other music videos, Stromae and his label Mosaert came up with a pretty clear idea for the video. The song celebrates everyday hustle of seemingly invisible low-paid workers - cleaners, bakers, fishermen, waiters and so forth. These characters are instructed to break their routine with a dance. Stromae appears as an enigmatic figure, an instructor that teaches these people to let go and celebrate even if it’s just for a moment. There was a lot to this concept. A social commentary with dystopian elements. Celebration that should feel joyous but not overly choreographed. The track is a wild combination of world music, modern electronics and the strange, slow, syncopated beat reminded me of suburban areas in Latin America that I visited. I was also fully aware that I am part of the priviliged class that the track is also about. A tourist looking at a completely foreign world, a paradox so emblematic in today’s world. I wanted to create a wide landscape, busy with lots of people grinding through their day. I wanted to look at these people in an honest, almost accidental, voyeuristic way. We debated the trade offs between the beauty (that people generally look for in a music video) and overall integrity of the characters and their environments. I didn’t want to romanticize or pity working class. I wanted to chart a larger number of characters from all corners of globe in broad strokes and let audience wonder what their lives are like outside of their job. And most importantly, I did not want to take this too seriously and let the comedy come through whenever it appeared on the set. Link in bio.

Last couple notes on Bylo Nebylo We took a different approach to storyboarding and left most frames pretty loose. That made the shooting process more organic and sometimes little chaotic but made sense as we did not have any permits. One of these loose ends was Annet’s performance. I was confident it will be a piece of cake having seen her previous music videos. We started our last day looking for a good place in the forests nearby but the green trees and bushes did not really suit her so we made our way back to the cottage. The blue setup was an obvious choice with lots of light coming through the curtains. The other setup with flowers was improvised right on the spot as we were running out of time. The flowers were meant for one of the characters outside but we were scrambling for any good props after ransacking the whole cottage. It’s a nice tribute to Annet’s other track called “A girl with a flower” The final part of the video was shot right at the end of our last day. We talked about using matrjoška as a symbol of growth. As we age, we put on more layers, hiding the younger, smaller us deep inside. Matrjoška was a nod towards Annet’s Russian heritage that can be heard in a conversation with her Russian grandma in the background. We experimented with burning matrjoškas, even filling it with ash to create a funeral urn. I wanted the ending to be bittersweet. It’s a moment where Valerie realizes she might too turn into one of these strange adults one day . Those grotesque adults are shown vulnerable at the same, the tables turn. 1/2

When I wrote the first draft of Bylo Nebylo, there were even more characters - a cat in pyjamas, a naked boy, a random guy with a piece of wood nailed to his forehead and couple more. The idea was to ditch expensive locations and camera rigs and put more attention to what’s in front of the camera. We ended shooting 11 characters with 9 making the final cut. With the benefit of hindsight, I would have picked fewer actors to make the process more manageable, especially when shooting far from Prague. It seemed like these bizarre roles attracted equally unusual actors - the role of a “desperate woman” in violet blouse was played by Monika Foris, a famous child actor. When I explained her character, little did I know that Monika has lived a pretty colourful life herself, we later found out Monika was telling us an actual story of her life on camera. Monika has a good-bye letter from her partner written on her face - a visual play with a Czech saying: “Má neštěstí vepsané ve tváři.” / “Misfortune written in her face.” I want to thank Arwa from Simonsays for all the research and help throughout the casting process. Extra photos taken by @annetx and @vojtechveskrna.

A new music video for Annet X is out! Some songs take a lot of time to figure out, while others present themselves right from the beginning. Annet’s “Bylo Nebylo” translates to “Once upon a time” and the lyrics tell a tale of younger Aneta trying to make sense of the world of adults. We wanted to create a fairytale world littered with adults that lost their way. Some are lonely, some are humorous and some are just fantastical. Veronika and me settled for a modest, straightforward framing that does not show too many crazy camera moves. I wanted to work with a simple camera pan and use the principle of spinning throughout the video. It reinforced the idea of a journey, of a circle of life and the dizzying effect the life can evoke sometimes. Big shout out to the whole team, it took ages to get done and I want to thank every single one of you for your dedication. A very special thank you to Aneta putting a lot of trust in our vision. DOP: @deravabuchta Producer: @monika_kraft PA: @magick___malvina Production company: @bistro_films Casting: @simonsayscasting Cast: @valerievachkova @filip.kankovsky Gleb Gribov Vaclav Rysavy Josef Rycek Heda Pecnerova Anna Olsanska Monika Foris Jirka Jelinek Costumes: @princezna_nik / @zenita_helgo Set design: Anna Pospisilova / @hlutwig MUAH: @martinaloy_ Sound design: @radimosax Graphic design: @kate_bohemia Catering: @ucko95301 1AC: @rob.smu Key Grip: @abuludvik Gaffer: Erik Zila Best Boy: Jakub Marek Photographer: @vojtechveskrna BTS: @sxmfnk