TRAIN STATION Director's Corner: Location Location!

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing some observations and experiences from the "Director's Corner" of our most recent film, Train Station. Check out the stories, ideas, and experiences that make up one of the world's most unique film experiences!__________________________________________________________________

How did local culture and mentality influence our filmmakers?

For a film that was made with the help of tens of filmmakers from all over the world, we would also expect local culture and mentality to play a part in some of our film's segments.

To some however it was not something that left an imprint on their directing vision. “I don't believe Greek culture or mentality influenced or is visible in my segment.” Athanasia Michopoulou says.

Aditya Pawar shares the same sentiment: ”There is no local or cultural influence in my segment as you can see most of the aesthetics were from Asian cinema.” 

Yango González, from Columbia, feels his segment is more the result of “children imagination than a cultural interpretation. The kids could be from anywhere else.” as parents from all over the world can attest.

To those that did feel influenced by local culture, let's look into how the influence worked....

Daniel Montoya: “It had a huge influence! We decided to write the script using a lot common phrases from the South.“

George Korgianitis: “Actually, the local culture and mentality, made this shooting/project possible! The willingness, passion, creativity, hard work and good hearts of all local collaborators who helped make it happen, regardless of the effort or economic rewards. I'm really grateful to them all!”

Some of our filmmakers shared some of their culture's best and worst aspects.

“Local culture and mentality reflected on my segment in many ways. From the dialogues to the costume design for the actresses. While "helping other people" (especially women) is a valued morality in Iran, there are some negative behaviours that we do, mostly unwillingly. So, a part of our culture (both good and bad) can be seen in my segment.” Hesam Dehghani says.

Nicola Barnaba talks about one of man's most harmful emotions: “My segment is about jealousy, and in Italy we know a lot about that. So I thought of the worst reaction a man could have is discovering his wife cheating on him.” Spoiler alert: Things don't end very nicely.

Surya Balakrishnan talks about the contrasting aspects of Mumbai, India, and the influence in had on her segment: “The city has a strange chaos, ones loves it as much as they hate it. I think what reflects in my segment is that their relationship is a love-hate kind. One wants to leave, but they can't. One enjoys being together, yet they don't want to. And they want more from it at all times.”

Todd Felderstein: “Los Angeles is a multi-cultural town. My segment features actors from a variety of cultures, ages and backgrounds, all featured in order to tell the story.

Xavier Agudo: “We shot on location at the Street Fair celebration of the unification of Germany in front of the emblematic Brandenburg Gate. So can´t think of any more influential from the local German culture to find in my segment. However I am not German, so I have an outsider´s vision of what the local culture and mentality is. And trying to bring my own mentality and culture into the German one brings an interesting mix of visions in how the segment was produced.”

In conclusion how much culture you put in when you're cooking your film is a matter of taste, and you can make a very delicious film with or without it. Hmm, I'm suddenly feeling very peckish.

Compiled by Train Station director, Adrian Tudor.

Train Station premiered in November 2015 and is currently making the rounds on the festival circuit. Worldwide release coming 2016. Keep your eyes peeled to CollabFeature.com!

TRAIN STATION Director's Corner: 40 Actors, 1 Character

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing some observations and experiences from the "Director's Corner" of our most recent film, Train Station. Check out the stories, ideas, and experiences that make up one of the world's most unique film experiences!__________________________________________________________________

One of the challenges and source of creative energy in our film Train Station was the fact, that the protagonist was played by different actors. We call him/her “The Man in Brown” or “The Woman in Brown,” depending on her gender. The challenge was to create a character recognizable despite differences in language, age, ethnicity and gender, while still giving each of the Browns something unique.

“The Browns in Train Station fall into one of 3 main categories of consequence: 1. Of Betrayal 2. Of Lying 3. Of Doing the right thing. My Brown is in the latter group or segment and does not differ from the other Browns in that group, as their progress is always or ultimately altruistic; nor does my Brown differ from any other Brown in any other segment.” (Craig Lines)

“We change everyday. Every life experience changes us, every decision changes us and we are a different person every day. We learn, we grow up and we change. I believe that the different Browns in Train Station are symbols of our personality through our everyday life. My Brown is as different with the other Browns as we are with ourselves in the next hour!” (Hesam Dehghani)

As a result, the Browns show different character traits: he/she is a guy with a low self-esteem in one segment, and gets spooked very easily in another. He is a good-hearted crook in one, and a child as symbol for his innocence in a different part of the story. However,

“interestingly, none of the film makers during the writing process ever suggested an intrinsically evil or malicious hero. Perhaps this says something about our international cultural influences.” (Craig Lines)

Compiled by Train Station director, Juliane Block.

Train Station premiered in November 2015 and is currently making the rounds on the festival circuit. Worldwide release coming 2016. Keep your eyes peeled to CollabFeature.com!

TRAIN STATION Director's Corner: Rising Above!

Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing some observations and experiences from the "Director's Corner" of our most recent film, Train Station. Check out the stories, ideas, and experiences that make up one of the world's most unique film experiences!__________________________________________________________________

How did our filmmakers manage to solve some of the problems independent filmmakers face? The main problem everyone faces is the lack of budget.

“But the smaller the budget the more creative you have to be to solve your problems.” says Aditya Pawar.

And where there's no budget you can always count on your friends to help you out as some of our filmmakers can confirm.

Nicola Barnaba: “We didn't have a budget, but a lot of good friends came without problems.”

Rafael Yoshida: “I shot with zero money, but got help from friends.”

Kevin Rumley: “I had to be creative and find ways to make a cheap shoot look amazing and I think I did it.”

Taking the independent filmmaking route also means dealing with limited access to locations or having an uncontrollable environment.

Xavier Agudo: ”We were shooting on a real live street fair with an environment we couldn't control at all. I inserted my actors into this real life environment and let them interact with it. So we had to be constantly aware of things that needed to be adjusted, react to unexpected situations, deal with a crowd surrounding the action and trying to look as invisible as possible as a film crew.”

Some of our filmmakers had to film their segments on one of the battlefields of modern civilization, golf courses:

“Most of the golfers were okay about us being there and we had to keep moving out of the way when the tee was needed for real - which was fine - but there are some complete twats who play golf and we had to grit our teeth when dealing with them as they thought we shouldn't be there. There were a couple of golfers I'd've liked to kick in their balls.”, Craig Lines recalls. This does look like a dangerous place to be.

Daniel Montoya said shooting on a golf course: “put everybody at risk of being hit by a ball. Funny thing is that as in the previous segment, the golfer gets hit by a ball, we ALMOST got hit many times, so, sometimes we were shooting and somebody far away will yell at us to get out of the way and you could see the whole crew and actors moving from side to side running, I'm sure it was entertaining for the regular golfers at that place.”

The moral is stay away from golf courses. And for your own sanity's sake don't look up golf casualties, the statistics will terrify you.

Sometimes a lack of budget means you have to cope with extreme weather conditions like some of our others filmmakers can attest.

Athanasia Michopoulou who shot her segment in mid-July in Athens during a heatwave recalls: ”It was a physical challenge for everyone involved to be filming under the sun at 44 degrees (Celsius). Because of that, we also had problems with the camera which was overheating and we had to stop filming to give it time to get back to normal levels. lots of water, sunscreen and an umbrella saved the day!”

At the other extreme, Hesam Dehgani remembers what shooting his segment was like: “We started the pre-production a few weeks before January. Tehran gets very cold and snowy that time of the year. When we set the shoot dates, all weather forecast websites were telling that we'd have heavy snow in those days. Almost 80% of my segment were happening in outdoor locations so we were a little bit afraid if everything goes well. Fortunately, there was no snow in those days (but the weather was like -10 degree centigrade). The snow started right when we wrapped the shoot!” Hesam managed to dodge one of indie film's most sly adversaries, the weather.

Yango Gonzalez struggled with another formidable opponent: “I had to shoot but it was the rainy season (we have a lot of rainy seasons in Bogota). Just two days before shooting it was raining the whole day. I made a ritual that I've made for other films and that always works. I went to the street where we had to shoot and I made a salt cross and I lit a candle.”

If you have rain problems when you are shooting your film you might want to try this… if you dare awaken the rain spirit.

Compiled by Train Station director, Adrian Tudor.

Train Station premiered in November 2015 and is currently making the rounds on the festival circuit. Worldwide release coming 2016. Keep your eyes peeled to CollabFeature.com!