"grbavica" feature film

award winning snow shoveling

it is nice to have worked on a film that has won the golden bear in berlin. even if at times the melting snow on a 12k was freezing again when it had reached the bottom of the gel mounted on the barndoor. but grbavica (dop: christine maier, dir: jasmila spanic, prod:coop99) was really worth the experience. working in a country that is struggling to find its way back to normality after a war is an experience. electricity was borderline, english was rare and additional equipment we had to use from sarajevo was very old. but the crew we had was amazing, old school - from times when the yugoslavien film industry was at its finest. improvisation was a key to keep on rolling. shooting in sarajevo is like being on an island. as a 12k ballast broke down, a lokal electrician replaced the busted pieces with parts from a washing mashine. also the austrian production company found ways to get stuff to us within a day by local busses. luckily we were able to keep up the fine quality of light in front of the lens. on the main location we were extending daylight by bouncing 12k, 6k's into 20x20 grifflons which were rigged as a topper outside on the window. we had it on ropes, so when we were looking outside of the window we could raise it just above the frame. in addition we had 6k's going directly trough grid frames to let the daylight reach further into the room. christine mayers idea was to give the whole film a feeling as if it was dusk all day. practicals were mostly on inside giving the scene a mixture in colour temperatures. for more pictures, please use this link.