Happy Monday!
Mamy dla was kolejny numer Newslettera Marquet Films!
If you didn’t understand that, it’s because it was in Polish. Right now, we’re attending the Cameraimage 2025 Festival in Torun, Poland. Why? Because there’s no better bonding experience than going to a small village town and watching films with the finest cinematographers the world can curate, that’s why!
On the topic of festivals, we recently had TIFF two months ago, and we had the pleasure to attend quite a few premieres. One of those was for Sentimental Value, by director Joachim Trier. We were invited by Elevation Pictures to be on the red carpet and interview many members of the cast and Joachim himself (you can check out the Marquet Films Instagram to find the content we made for it).
But here’s the story about how I almost single-handedly ruined the entire experience with a simple button on a camera.
Let me set the stage. It’s an hour before we leave to go to the premiere, and Adrien is giving me a crash course on how to use his camera. For those who don’t know me, I know little to nothing about how to actually use one - I just write. A little ironic, I’m aware of what industry I’m in.
The most important instruction he gave me was about the button that placed the camera in automatic focus. He said to make sure the interviewees were in focus. Duh?
We set our sails and biked to the premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre downtown. Soon, we found ourselves standing between the TIFF media team and CTV’s Etalk. We were both trying to keep our composure as I held the camera in my hands and Adrien was ready to interview, holding his Tech Deck microphone in-hand (a story about that will come in the future).
Suddenly, the likes of Joachim Trier, Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning, and Renate Reinsve were standing centimeters in front of us. Adrien was a natural and made everyone laugh, speak thoroughly about their film, and overall killed it for his first time.
We watched the film, went to the afterparty, yada yada yada. The next morning, we were reliving the night before, what an experience and a memorable one at that. Then came the worst of it: we had to watch the footage back.
The first clip, out of focus. The second clip, out of focus. The third clip, out of focus. Holy shit, did my heart drop, and I felt like I just screwed us completely. It felt like each time we clicked a new file, I wanted to slam my head on the table - and to be fair, Adrien probably wanted to as well.
I honestly believed all of the night before was for nothing. We looked at all of the clips in great detail, and alas, not all the footage was unusable, and Adrien was able to find some of the great moments we had the evening before. PHEW!
Safe to say, I think I lost my privileges behind the camera, but that’s okay. The lesson here is such as the art of filmmaking, shit happens. That’s it.
We hope everyone is doing well, and we’re excited to share the experiences we’ll be having at this festival here in Poland. I’m sure when we film, I might not be first in line to handle the camera :)
Z wyrazami szacunku (With kind regards),
Pat and the Marquet Films Team