Documentary - It's a Wrap!

So our second week of filming is over and with that we're finished with all of the scheduled filming. Our stay in Berlin went far better than I thought it would since I was scared there would be some issues with either equipment taking damage from the plane, locations suddenly dropping out etc, but everything went verry smooth. None of the equipment had taken any damage as we were sure to pad it as good as we possible could and put the most fragile equipment in our hand luggage.

The hotel we stayed at was called Hotel Big Mama, a lovely hotel in the heart of Berlin who had let us stay there for free and gave us permition to film in the lobby and dining area for the interview with Shahak and some sequences with the presenter.

Monday, after we got to the airport in Berlin, we went straight to the hotel to have a short rest and a quick look at all of the equipment to make sure everything was ok before heading to the Holocaust Memorial.

The Memorial was quite different from what I imagined it to be as it wasn't very well sign posted. The only sign that we could find only said "Memorial for the murdered Jews of Europs" - no word about the Holocaust, and was located close to the entry down to the Holocaust exhibition under the Memorial, but both the sign and the entry was very hard to find. We therefore weren't surprised to see how many people at the memorial who had no idea of what the place actually was and what it represented. Most of the people we talked to just found it as an interesting and artistic landmark. An inviting place to take interesting pictures.


Our second day in Berlin went to interviewing Shahak Shapira about the 'Yolocaust' project. Right before the interview we did a comparrison on Instagram of ina[propriate selfies taken at the memorial and at Auschwitz and the difference in numbers were huge. A lot of the interview was spent on talking about about the Holocaust Memorial. Discussing whether the ammount of ignorant people at the memorial was due to lack of signs explayning where they were.
Shahak then said something, which I think is very true and a quite important factor to the difference in amount of inapropriate selfies:

"It’s a totally different setting, you know. You don’t just stumble upon Auschwitz. In Auschwitz we can be 100% sure that everybody that goes there knows where they are. It’s not like you walk through the city like “Oh Auschwitz that look’s nice. That looks fun, let’s go in there!” No, you take a buss there, you drive there and you go in to the gass showers and stuff like that so it’s a totally different atmosphere. 

If you take a picture of yourself making yoga there or something you’re just a piece of shit. But you know you’re being a piece of shit. If you’re at the Holocaust Memorial you might not even be aware. 

That’s why I felt it was necessarily to do the project there where I can actually change people’s minds about something. Because they’re just being ignorant, they’re not being antisemitic. They’re not doing it on purpose. They just don’t know it. They don’t understand the weight of the place. If someone takes a picture in Auschwitz like that there is nothing I can do about it."


Wednesday and Thursday mainly went to logging the footage, aking sure everything was properly saved, and GV's. We went to places such as Checkpoint Charlie, Reichstag, The Berlin Wall Memorial and East Side Gallery etc to film shots and PTCs of the presenter. We also did some car sequences where we filmed the presenter driving from one location to another. 

Friday was our last day and our last interview.  We went to the Jüdisches Museum Berlin to talk to Dr. Cristoph Kreutzmüller, one of the Curators of the permanent exhibition and well known for his expertise on Holocaust and Nazi-Time. We wanted to hear what he thought about the project and the selfie culture. He had some very interesting answers and gave a great interview. 
When leaving the museum we all felt that it was the strongest interview of them all for this project (teqhnical speaking) as it was the only interview we were given 30 min to rig before meeting the interviewee and therefore had time to properly rig without neeing to stress. We all were also so used to the kit and the set up at this point so everything went pretty quick.


The filming at the airports to and from Berlin were also no problem. Over all our 2 weeks of filming has gone very well and I'm very pleased with the footage we've gotten and the interviews for this project.