CheckTheGate – Part 6 – Merry Christmas & a happy new year!

In: Internship 'Check The Gate'

17 Dec 2009

Blog_ChristmasI would like to use this particular blog to wish everyone a merry chrismas and a happy and succesful 2010 from Lisbon, Portugal. I know that at this moment in the province of Friesland (where I was born) in the Netherlands there is currently a 30 cm pack of snow – and still growing. Unfortunatly in Lisbon this obviously is not the case! :) However, I would like to post a picture from my province – made by a friend and fellow student of mine – to share a pre-white christmas with everyone who reads this.

Also I have another anouncement to make: my next semester will be my graduation project, and I’m currently working out several ideas including a synopsis for a short fiction film and a plan for a short documentary about a town called Hasankeyf in the far south east of Turkey. Due to the ammount of time a project like this might take, I might go back home a little earlier from Lisbon then planned before. Officially I should be doing an internship for 5 months, but my faculty agreed they don’t want to stop me from working a little longer on my graduation project by starting a bit earlier on it. Another reason for me personally is that currently there are not so many filmshoots at the company – allthough a lot of other work is obviously being done, all linked to filmmaking.

When exactly I will be going home is uncertain at the time. I enjoy my time in Lisbon very much. Both at my internship and socially it’s a good life here at the Atlantic Ocean :) Have a look at the Christmas card I made in Photoshop as well for all the foreign clients of CheckTheGate!

Snow in the Province of Friesland - Photograph by Jelmer de JongChristmas_card_Final_English

Christmas card I made for clients from CheckTheGate

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CheckTheGate – Part 5

In: Internship 'Check The Gate'| Video Projects

9 Dec 2009

logo_CTGIn this blog I posted the commercial I worked on during my internship at Check The Gate. It was a commercial for Angola, one of the former colonies of Portugal, where – just like in Portugal – they love football! Enjoy the 30 second commercial for ‘Ngol Lubrificantes’ and leave a comment if you like or not.

The commercial was shot with two Red One cameras and the post production was done in Tobis, the first post production house in Portugal.

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‘Letting Go’ premiere at the Northern Film Festival!

In: Video Projects

23 Nov 2009

Letting_Go_00On the 11th of november I went back to the Netherlands for 6 days to be at the Northern filmfestival (NFF) in The Netherlands, Leeuwarden. Thanks to a teacher from my faculty in The Netherlands I was able to enter a workshop ‘Making Documentaries’ given by two famous Dutch documentary makers Pieter Verhoeff and John Appel.

The next day the short films that were nominated a few months earlier were shown in the ‘filmhuis Leeuwarden’ which included my short film Letting Go which ended up in second place in the highest catagory (Semi-Pro). I’m very happy with the second place of Letting Go, also because at first I wasn’t planning on sending it to a festival in the first place! I added the film in this blog below.

The competition was also very enjoyable because some friends & family came along and also the crew and actors were there. Koen Leerink (DOP), Arne Mulder, (DOA) Boa Mulder (set photographer), Christopher Morgan (actor) and Vassilena Valchanova, who was the actrice in the film, came to the festival from Bulgaria to the Netherlands. In the end it was a great week for me of networking, inspiration, motivation, agknowledgement that we made something good,  and off course meeting up with family and friends.

And now it’s finally time to put the short film Letting Go on my blog! Hope you enjoy it :)

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CheckTheGate – Part 4

In: Inspirational| Internship 'Check The Gate'

23 Nov 2009

logo_CTGIt’s been a while again since I last posted here so I figured it’s time for some new ones! Firstly some more about my internship! Finally went to the filmset some weeks ago and it was great! We did a 23 hour job straight on but I got so much positive energy from it that I didn’t feel tired at all. I especially learned a lot from the Director Of Photography (DOP) Rui Pocas who is known as one of the best DOP’s in Portugal. He tought me a lot about lighting and camera movement and compositions and most importantly – why he chose them. What was interesting for me as well was that some shots were exactly how I would have done them.

I was able to work in the intire process of this  production (which by the way was a commercial for Angola, I’ll try and upload it once it has been aired on TV) from making the photos during the scouting for filmset locations up to the casting of the players and finally the Post Production. The casting and scouting allready took several weeks of work. The Post Production company was actually very interesting as well. In fact; it’s the first one in Portugal and nowadays they do basicly everything that’s possible in Post. From 35mm film up to the digital RED and from colorgrading to high standard 3D modelling and animations. I especially enjoyed the colorgrading part in Post on the commercial they did. Learned a lot from it!

I also do some editing myself at Check The Gate. So far I did a making off and some showreels for Check The Gate itself. Some of those showreels contain commercials they did in the past but a showreel where special film techniques are shown are not rare either. More soon! :)

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‘Letting Go’ Soundtrack

In: General| Music Projects| Video Projects

15 Oct 2009

Letting_Go_PortraitIn this blog I would like to share two songs from ‘Letting Go’. I made other versions after I finished the script and never used those.  After we started shooting I was able to compose more ‘visually’ then before.

The first video is the song Iyi Yolculuklar. I wrote it for the film under a different title at first, but later I kind of took some elements from a previous song (iyi yolculuklar) that I was unable to finish before.

Iyi yolculuklar is Turkish for ‘Safe journey’ or something like ‘happy traveling’. I promised and enjoyed composing it for a very good friend of mine from Istanbul.

The second song is called ‘Brand New Start’ and basicly begins during the end credits of the short film.

Hope you enjoy the music and stay tuned for the short film!

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‘Letting Go’ – 4 still frame shots

In: Video Projects

14 Oct 2009

Letting_Go_PortraitIn this blog I want to share a few stills from ‘Letting Go’. In the next blog I will be putting two songs I composed and conducted for the film as well, but I won’t be able to do this tonight.

I hope you like the still frames from the film. I think it will give you an honest idea of the look and feel of the short film, which for the moment is better than nothing I suppose!

After the 14th of november I’ll be uploading the full film on YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Hyves, and off course my blog. In other words: stay tuned :) two of the stills contain shots that were filmed with a crane, one shot contains an over shoulder and one shot is a close-up of Christophers expression. The other two are a thumbnail and the begin screen of the DVD menu.

Enjoy the stills!

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‘Letting Go’ nominated for Naff – Part 2

In: Video Projects

13 Oct 2009

NaFF_LogoSo, as I’ve written earlier, my short film ‘Letting Go’ has been nominated on the Noordelijk amateur Film Festival in the student catagory. You can find some more information about it on the website of the Noordelijk amateur Film Festival (click here). On the page ‘dagprogramma’ you can find the time table of all the catagories and a short synopsis about ‘Letting Go’ in Dutch is also available. I hope to see you there, I’ll probably be flying home for the intire filmfestival that will last a full week! Keep it in mind that my Dutch phone got stolen here in Lisbon, so I might not yet be able to answer by phone while I’m in Holland, unless I can allready get a new one. I’ll inform you about this later!

Location: Filmhuis Leeuwarden, Ruiterskwartier 6, 8911 BP, Leeuwarden

Date: saturday, 14th of november 2009

Time & catagory:  12.00 – 13.20 UUR CATEGORIE STUDENTEN AUDIOVISUEEL / SEMI-PROFS.’

In English, I’ve translated the synopsis as followed:

Jaap Ruurd Feitsma – Friesland – 5’39 min.

A romantic meeting between a couple in love in a beautiful poetic scenery can easily find a dramatic turn.

(English spoken, Dutch subtitles).

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CheckTheGate – part 3

In: Internship 'Check The Gate'| Photography Projects| Video Projects

13 Oct 2009

logo_CTGThe last few days were pretty interesting. Did some video editing and photography editing to begin with and apart from that yesterday was an interesting day as well especially. I went with a photography scout all over Lisbon to look for interesting places for one of our films. We took pictures from various locations – places I hadn’t seen before. For me personally it was great for two reasons; the first one is that I simply love photography, the second reason is that we came through places where we found ‘the real Lisbon’, instead of the more tourist parts of the city.

So far, I hadn’t had the chance of looking for the ‘real’ Lisbon yet. For people who read this and want to visit Lisbon, keep it in mind that a lot of areas in Lisbon are pretty unsafe (drug addicts, criminals et cetera), so don’t wander of f too far from the main roads. My iPhone being stolen last weekend is nothing compared with what can happen, especially when you carry a professional camera that you are not willing to give up easily. Try to blend in as much as possible (a bit hard for me with blond hair and blue eyes, but what the heck!)

Anyway, some even more interesting days are coming up as well! I’ll be working first hand with the Assistent Director (AD) on the upcoming film where we did the scouting for. Apperantly he is the best AD in Portugal, so no doubt that I can learn a lot! More info soon!

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The oldest trick in the book

In: General| Internship 'Check The Gate'| Journeys

13 Oct 2009

apple-iphone-3g-290x300It was one of the oldest tricks in the book and it had to happen some time, I suppose. I’ve seen it happen many times before allready in Lisbon and in other cities in the world, but I never fell for it up untill now:  my iPhone got stolen last saterday right in front of me.

So this is what happened; I was enjoying a coffee and reading a book in Rossio, a nice area of Lisbon  with the biggest shopping street and two nice squares with some very nice fountains on both ends. Sitting at the cafe next to one of the squares, a little girl and – I assume – her mother asked me to buy hankerchiefs. I had allready given a little money to someone else earlier that day, so it was enough for me. But they kept bothering me, more then usually. The little girl was on the left behind me at some point while the mother was on the right side behind me. I was holding my iPhone (I was texting). The little girl started tapping my shoulder annoyingly, so I turned to her and at the same time (soooo stupid!) I put my iPhone on the table. The little girl pushed the hankerchiefs in front of my face (so that I couldn’t see propperly anymore) and when I pushed the hankerchiefs away they finally went away. But off course when I looked down on the table the phone was allready gone! I had allready payed for my coffee so I went looking for them instantly. Obviously they were nowhere to be found. I suppose it really WAS the oldest trick in the book…

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‘Letting Go’ nominated for Naff

In: General| Video Projects

30 Sep 2009

NaFF_LogoA few days ago I learned that my short film ‘Letting Go’ has been nominated in the ‘Noordelijk amateur Film Festival’ (NaFF) in the student catagory in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. It will play on the 14th of november 2009 and the film will compete with several other films from the same catagory. During the day lunch will be included and visitors are welcome. There is not yet a time available when my film will be shown so just like my previous blog, more information coming soon!

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