jaap's selection.
"earth to earth" is one of the first straight 8s that i saw, just after "sticks and balls" and the greatness of it blew me away. here were people playing with film in an intelligent manner- using various techniques but in a way it fits the story, and with only one take per shot. i love the way nick uses stop-motion and live-action together, the story about his grandad is just so moving and the vo is brilliantly chosen. it's just a great movie.
"the last trip" kinda uses the same techniques and has a similarly moving story. it shows that script writing can be simple, but always has to be good. i really like it. the end is great. the way the movie is timed as well is very good. the pace in the beginning is very slow. and i know that when shooting a straight8 that is hard to do. you want to get on with it, you're kinda nervous all the time, but he keeps a very good pace in shots. you would say that it’s well edited- that's the trick of a good straight 8.
"heel" is an inspiring movie for everybody in line of filmmaking. it has so many tricks and things in it, that you have to see it a couple of times. the way it cuts from real-life to the fantasy of the girl is done so incredibly. the set being opened up, and the desk cut in two is so good, and the floating shoe around her desk in the next scene is just so lovely. you can take so many ideas from it- that makes a good movie in my eyes. when a filmmaker really tries things, that's inspiring.
about jaap.
speaking with jaap.
jaap herrmans, aka herrjaapmans, director of springlove talks about impending fatherhood, accidentally going to film school and juggling his unpaid directing life with his sound recording life...
see jaap’s selection.
jaap herrmans.
september 2010.
at the moment i'm in between sound design and directing. i make most of my money with sound recording on set, but try to do as much directing as possible.
recently, i've been recording on a children's feature film. it's about a famous children's character from the beginning of the last century: "the adventures of dik trom" - it means chubby troll. it was a really nice job to do, as it was done with so much detail in the art department. i saw the final edit yesterday and it looked spectacular.
as a director i'm working on a music video for a singer called janne schra, her band is called schradinova. we’re shooting it tomorrow, working with dancers to make the everyday routine of flirting into a mechanical, robotic dance. then we're going to pull the whole set apart- everything is attached to fishing wire:- all the art, props, everything. there’ll be loads of people just off camera pulling it all up to the ceiling.
it's funny, the day before you have a shoot. you think, “maybe.. we should just not do it, we should just cancel it all,” but shooting is always very nice as soon as it starts.
i ended up at film school by accident. on a very hungover sunday morning i was walking through town with an architect friend of mine, and we said "what is this ugly building?" it turned out to be the film academy, and it also turned out to be open day. i thought: "hey, film academy… maybe that's something for me."
i applied for sound design, and much to my surprise i got in. i wasn't even really into films but in the first year you have to watch so much that you get brainwashed into the whole vibe.
straight 8 was my starting point for directing. i really wanted to make small films, not too serious, with actors and stuff, but not too big. i was really afraid of the whole filming machine, but with straight 8 you can do it simple and small, and you just have to do it in one shot.
i worked with camera-girl (my girlfriend). she pushed me to figure a lot for myself, and she helped me in everything else that it needed. we were just 4 people on the shoot, the two actors, lonneke and me, i really liked that.
the next day the actress said that her muscles ached in places she didn't know she had muscles. it must have been a very funny site in amsterdam to see someone just jump from one end of the street to the other end of the street.
the biggest challenge for me, was to start calling myself a director. it would be easy for me just to say i'm a sound designer. in the film world you can't really be two things. people say "we're not gonna call him as a sound designer because he wants to be a director." i just have to prove that i can do it.
i don't think it's possible to have one favourite director, you take little pieces of a lot of people and combine them together, but i really like the work of roy anderson. if i get to direct a feature film i would very much like to build it up as he does in his movies, by taking a lot of different stories and although they don't meet each other and maybe they don't connect as a script, the general theme in the movie is so complete. songs from the second floor is really very good.
at the moment the balance of my life is hanging towards film, but i just went on holiday for the first time in 2 years and it was surprisingly good- you have to get into it but when you are, it's really nice. you can sleep a lot during holidays. i have a son coming- in 4 or 5 weeks if everything goes well, so then the balance is moving much more towards life again. it's very exciting.