Currently, I am on a business trip in China. As I write this, a janitor is rushing around my desk, removing all signs of my presence. The floor is shiny like a mirror. And that is not only true for this office. All prestigious buildings seem to be treated in the same way.
In Germany, by contrast, everything gets outsourced and the charwomen were hit first by this development. Nowadays, the mop and bucket brigade comes only once per day. Preferably after official working hours and with an army of cleaning ladies to cope with a whole day’s workload in less than three hours.
Like ants they spread out and start cleaning the bathrooms around the site. Don’t you dare to be in the offife after 6 pm and need to relief yourself! You’ll need endurance and a fair portion of fighting spirit.
Starring:
Lea Bonnington, Susanne Etteldorf, Ralf Welt
Crew:
Kai Richelsen – Script, direction, DOP, editor
Ayako Chibi – camera
Stefan Falk-Jordan – Grip, dolly, boom operator
Production:
scubavideo, Dec. 2004
Technical Details:
Camera:
Sony VX-2000, some scenes shot with a Raynox XL-3000PRO semi-fisheye wide angle lens.
An important stylistic element of this film is the smoothly moving camera for which we used a three wheel scooter for a dolly.
For the hurdle race it was importent to keep the camera extremely low at full running speed to the actresses. We sat Ayako onto the scooter platform, the camera in her lap or handheld beside the scooter. This resulted in a very dynamic look of the footage.
Audio:
All sound recordings except for the hurdle race were boomed with a Rode NT4“>Rode NT4 stereo mic.
Lighting:
All scenes except for the hurdles race were shot with ambient light from luminescent tubes in the ceiling. When needed, faces were brightned with a reflector.
For the hurdles race we placed a 120 Watt tungsten spot on a high stand to illuminate the hallway from ahead. In addition, 20 tungsten spots of 100 Watt each were placed along the walls.
Post Production:
The morphing at the beginning of the race was rendered by the Eiperle CGM DVE plugin for Apple Final Cut Pro. Motion blur und coloration were done with Final Cut Pro 5.