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LIKE THE MOVIES
In Romania, small steps are taken towards the 3D.
"The Cork Excuses the Means" is the first 3D ever filmed in Romania
and our crew was backstage when the movie was shot.
A spectacular technology, a director who is a specialist
in stereographic filming, a strange setting,
as if from Tim Burton's movies and a project
that is going to make 3D waves.
We will see now a making of material offered exclusively
to the "Like the Movies" show.
As Captain Jean-Luke Pickard used to say on the Enterprise,
"we boldly go where no one has gone before".
In other words the Romanian film no longer has
sequence frames, minimalism and cold colors
and has last minute technology.
Few courageous and somehow crazy people did in Romania
something that Paris has never seen and even more, something Granny
would never have believed.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a 3D film !
"The Cork Excuses the Means" is the first artistic movie production.
It was meant to be 3D...
It is a beginning ! That is clear.
3D is a spectacle.
To be honest, this is the first 3D movie I have done.
None of them knew what they were getting into
when they decided to film a 3D production.
Yet, it all ended well...
After one year of pre-productions, 12 days of shooting
and four years after the director, Mihai Ionescu, wrote the script,
the short-film "The Cork Excuses the Means"
finally got to the post-production phase.
It will probably be ready until the end of the year.
I have heard around people saying...
Finally they are making a colored film,
finally, they make a movie that will look differently
from what we are used to in the Romanian minimalism.
I think that the specialists in Romania will follow the movie,
because we are very few and these people will pay attention
to what happens to the 3D movie.
This makes me feel good to some extent,
and it makes me feel responsible.
It makes me feel I can !
We prepare to shoot the intermediary frames...
A foreground of people talking calmly,
two side frames with people shouting at each other,
fingers pointing, details...
This is not a joke...
All this setting with a crane, stereoscopic cameras, chromium,
settings and 3D specialists really happened in Romania.
The production team had some work to do.
First of all, they had to understand what this 3D is all about.
In the beginning, we were all scared of the 3D, everything was complicated.
The only one who had some previous experience
was the photography director, Zsolt Magyari,
and he held a seminar about 3D and it all seemed to me very complicated.
What you can do with the 3D...
When your image is projected, you have to take care
to have the background and everything behind the background
look very well.
The crew for the short-film "The Cork Excuses the Means"
had the last generation technology.
The cameras were brought from Germany
and this is the equipment used worldwide
and for the Hollywood 3D productions.
We are talking about two cameras that are connected
by a very complicated device, with a semi-transparent mirror.
This is a more special technique.
To create a fantastic world, a dystopian one,
without a precise coordination of the map,
the director Mihai Ionescu needed imagination.
He thought of a fairy-tale town, as if from "Alice in Wonderland".
What was left of it can still be found in the backyard at Castel Film.
The guide, Mihnea Mihailescu, the scenographer of the movie.
We are in a bit of a story here...
We are in the exterior setting.
It is meant to be a small town of usual people.
The houses are nice, clean, but a bit strange.
This was called the hairdresser's house,
because we created a window and inside a small hairdresser's space.
Mihnea Mihailescu created the setting for the 3D production
for one year and he needed one full month to put it together.
One month from the moment to began cutting the trees
and pouring the concrete that supported the cubic stone streets,
for building the structure, painting it, everything.
There were lots of days when we had to teams of actors...
If it were raining, we would film inside with certain actors,
if the weather were nice, we would film outside.
The Romanian actors are not used to work
for such productions because nobody has ever made any...
It is a curiosity at the level of their perception.
Many times, they would ask me if that have to exaggerate in interpreting...
After the shooting was over, the difficulties continued.
At the beginning the movie went in post-production
at the Chainsaw Studio...
The difference between 2D and 3D is that the viewer makes an effort
to follow the subject, because the mind
has to converge two different streams, two images.
This material will go to MediaPro Magic,
where they will put all the special effects
and computer generated images...
Then they come back here.
Before making the final version of the movie,
the production needs soundtrack and sound design
so they go to the sound studio.
We are going to play with the space of the move,
we will do it in surround...
Each character has his theme...
Each street... Each moment, be it day or night has to have
something to say, a certain atmosphere, something.
The producers of the movie bet on the story.
The story is more secret that a governmental secret.
We know something, not very much, but we will not tell !
The movie is inspired by the real world.
It is extrapolated, taken to a fantastic world,
to a surrealistic world.
It has no time and it is a satire.
It is a tragic-comical happening that is treated in a surrealistic way.
For the time being, "The Cork Excuses the Means"
is "work in progress"...
We showed you only a small part of the 3D wonder
that the people behind the cameras made.
In ne next shows we are going to talk more about
the spectacular settings, we will see how the music was written
and we will see together with a special visual effects
how the world in the head of the director Mihai Ionescu
becomes reality.
There's a long way ahead for this movie,
but we will stay with it until the lights go off
and we have to put on the 3D goggles.