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3. The Main Shooting Days and Beyond

The main filming days were almost a week of adventure, each day presenting its own challenges. After the experiences from the standalone filming day with the bison, we were all well-coordinated, and it seemed like it was just a matter of executing the plan and hoping for good weather. The day before, all the equipment was ready in the van at my dad's house, the scripts and routes were prepared, and the Maashorst was set to welcome us in the morning. But then... At eleven o'clock in the evening, while having a last drink with Haroune and my dad, I happened to check my phone. A minute earlier, the sound technician had suddenly canceled. Mental health issues. No indication had been given in the previous days. Damn! What do you do then? Filmmaking is about networking, I've learned: everyone in this world leads a tough freelance life, feverishly working on making contacts and finding assignments. So even at this late hour, there was a chance we could find someone for the next day. We frantically sent messages in all the filmmaker group chats and reached out to everyone we knew. A few people responded immediately, but their rates were about half the film's budget. Haroune eventually convinced his housemate Varya to work for a manageable daily fee. Phew. Success. Half past midnight, time for another drink.

After this episode, things thankfully improved. My cameraman Sietse and I drove ahead and were welcomed at the Staatsbosbeheer office by ranger Marc. From there, we drove through a large wooden gate onto the grounds, bumping along the muddy roads with the Jurassic Park theme blaring from the speakers. We had a large grassy field and surrounding forest at our disposal. Today and tomorrow, we also had permission to make a fire. How nice to have a fire in a nature reserve! You don't get that often in the Netherlands. With a bit of delay, the rest of the cast and crew arrived, and we could start.

The first scene was making fire, the element that distinguishes us from animals. We used the technique with a tinder fungus. This is a woody mushroom that grows on birch trees. The tinder fungus has the special property of smoldering for a long time once it has been set on fire, a prehistoric fire starter. Nomadic hunter-gatherers only needed to carry such a fungus in a handy box to their next camp location and could easily reignite a dry bundle of hay. For us, it didn't go as smoothly. Making fire remains a challenge, and the bulrush fluff just wouldn't catch. The dry pine twigs wouldn't ignite, and I had to resort to a thick gas burner to get a decent shot of flames.

It was supposed to rain heavily and all day, but it turned out that the KNMI radar had technical issues. We had warm sunshine and a few drops of rain. We worked through sandwiches, Snickers, and cans of Red Bull, and continued hard with dialogues and peaceful walking shots. The return journey brought us the challenge of the day. We were chatting on the highway near Uden when I suddenly saw a message on the small LCD screen of the dashboard: "REAR DOOR OPEN." Huh, that can't be right, we would have noticed that, right? How long had it been like this? I looked back. "Holy shit, people! The rear door is open!!" Adrem's beat-up van had been driving with the door open, and I had to quickly stop on the shoulder. Thank goodness none of the gear fell out. We could have caused a serious accident…

On Day 2, we had a larger team, with Freek joining the crew, and we had a spectacular scene ahead. Luqman, inspired by documentaries about contemporary shamans, gave a spiritual performance around our campfire. Accompanied by Haroune's hypnotic flute playing, he performed a ritual around the drawing of a bison on a shoulder blade. Prehistory truly came to life.

A small paragraph is certainly warranted for the scene with the crickets. In the story, the hunters go in search of the bison to create a new drawing. Originally, it seemed very cool to show how tracking works: a long search for signs of animals, such as broken branches, droppings, or footprints. At Staatsbosbeheer, we had become experts in this field, but it turned out to be too time-consuming to film in the final schedule. However, during my preparatory research, I had come up with an idea. I tried to build part of the Late Ice Age world by looking at reports on recent hunter-gatherer tribes, groups of people who still had a traditional lifestyle somewhere over the past centuries. Think, for example, of the Aboriginals in Australia, the San of the Kalahari Desert, or the Inuit of Northern Canada. In this case, I looked at the Cheyenne, a group of Native Americans who lived on the Great Western Plains (until they were deported to South Dakota in the 19th century). The Cheyenne lived off the bison herds. Sometimes these herds blackened the prairie with millions of bison, but sometimes they were nowhere to be found. In several sources, I read about a magical trick they used to find the herds: they would take a cricket and look at where its antennae pointed. This indicated where the herd would be. It was such a unique idea that I wanted to include it in the film; you would never come up with it yourself. Originally, I wanted to film this scene on the standalone shooting day, and I had ordered a box of crickets. Indeed, live ones; people buy them for their reptiles. Now there were crickets in the area where we were filming, but try basing your production on catching such a creature. For a week, the crickets chirped away in the basement of my apartment building, and you could hear them every time you came home. This batch had a hard time, as they ate five of their fellow crickets, even though there was food in the box. A few escaped, and the chirping echoed through the entire neighborhood for an evening. We didn't even get around to filming the scene on the standalone shooting day, so I released the last survivors into the IBB. Unfortunately, I can't put the "No Animals Were Harmed" label in the credits now. The second batch of crickets was thankfully much more peaceful. I secretly grew attached to their sound, and the neighbor said she found it pleasant too. When filming the scene, Marc let us know that the species was actually native to the Maashorst. So we could release them!

In any case, the filming went steadily, and we proudly concluded the days at the Maashorst. My dad made us a wonderful dinner, Angelique took a bath while we started the drinks. The next day, we officially became an international production: we went filming and stayed overnight in Belgium. Day 3 took us to Hoge Kempen, a beautiful nature reserve east of Maastricht. I chose this area because it had elevation changes and expansive landscapes (the Maashorst was beautiful but flat) and because there were spectacular birch trees. With Google Maps and a compass for good measure, I led everyone on a hike over the hills to the picturesque tree groups. Luqman and Haroune had to endure quite a few thorns in their feet, but the shots turned out beautifully.

The last day was entirely dedicated to the cave scene. It rained heavily all day, but that didn't matter, as we were filming indoors. Archaeologist Jeroen Snelten had shown me a series of abandoned marl caves just over the border near Maastricht. They were abandoned in the sense that no one really maintained them; you could walk right in from a trail. These caves had been carved out in the 19th century for marl and flint extraction, and only shepherds had ever used them to shelter their sheep. The tunnels were hewn in such a way that the walls and ceilings still looked quite organic, certainly good enough for what we wanted to convey. Earlier this year, I had visited them with a few friends to thoroughly test the location. We made a fire and did a few charcoal drawings. It was a lot of fun, but before we knew it, the smoke became so thick that we had to rush outside, feeling completely nauseous. It was fine for half an hour and then became unbearable. That was far too short for our film plans, so I got the tip to build a flicker box. This is a special box of lights that simulates firelight. My brother is very handy with electronics, and together we spent an afternoon connecting thick light bulbs to fluorescent starters and mounting them in a box. It worked perfectly; we could film all the dialogues with beautiful firelight without risking carbon monoxide poisoning. To complete the film magic, we lit the fire at the very end of the day. We left our cave drawing as it was, as well as the hand stencils I made. Since I didn't add anything further, some walkers will now occasionally come in and get the idea that they've stumbled into a prehistoric cave…

Super super proud, I called out one last time, "It's a wrap!" The filming was truly over. Happy but also a bit sad, we concluded the shooting days with a showreel and a good drink. We had worked so closely together and built a great bond, and it was a shame that the adventure was over. For the occasion, I had arranged a bottle of Żubrówka Bison Grass Vodka.

The return trip also had a surprise. Haroune had lost a borrowed artifact in two places at the Maashorst, a small knife with the bison and a spear thrower + spear at the fire location. We decided to drive by with the van to try to retrieve these items. However, Google Maps led us down an obscure muddy forest path. We looked at a large mud puddle and thought we could handle it, but we ended up hopelessly stuck. We couldn't move an inch, not with branches underneath, pushing, or anything else. After a long period of calls, it turned out that the insurance didn't cover this. Fortunately, we found a farmer who pulled us out of the mud for free.

Once all the equipment was finally returned, I was sick for days. The film had given me one of the best months of my life, but it also put significant strain on my body. I didn't mind. The long post-production phase had begun. I kept looking back at the footage with my mouth open. Wow, I really did this! The first rough cut was ready after a few weeks. Some scenes came straight from my dreams, others required a lot of tweaking, but I gained confidence in the overall project. An editor is currently working on perfecting the details. The premiere is at the end of September, and there's a chance it will be at a very beautiful location. It's going to be a special film.

2. The First Day of Shooting

In the run-up to the first, standalone shooting day, I was busy with preparations every day for three weeks. I've rarely been so busy, but I've also rarely been so happy. Because the film was really going to happen!! Looking back on those weeks, I'm sure that filmmaking is for me, as I bore the pressure on my shoulders with great love. My drive remained.

So what still needed to be done before we could actually head to the Maashorst? Well, we had to fit the costumes, scout the location, maintain the crowdfunding, arrange boots because the area turned out to be partly underwater, update the script, rehearse the script, make a shooting plan, create a shot list, rent the recording equipment, inquire about extra costumes since we apparently didn't have everything, think about what we were going to eat, create a transport schedule, compile the material list, order crickets, make the call sheet, feed the crickets, hope for good weather, make a rain plan… because we had a small production team, a lot fell on my plate. Usually, multiple people would handle all this. But I enjoyed doing it and learned a lot.

On May 1st, my cameraman Sietse and I picked up all the equipment in a shabby rental van. We had a big Panasonic with an incredibly cool lens, a gem from the 1970s as long as my forearm. Then came the day, May 2nd. Big Day. We had incredible luck with the weather. Bright, warm sun until late afternoon, with a few clouds. After that, a big storm was expected. But we had time.

The production got off to a somewhat rough start. The actors were getting their makeup done at my dad's place in Vlijmen, but there was a problem with the costumes. It wasn't clear how the leg pieces, based on Ötzi's clothing, were supposed to be attached. I had made notes about it, but I had already gone ahead with the rest of the crew to set up the base camp in the Maashorst. Unfortunately, this delayed us by about forty-five minutes, and we started filming an hour later than planned.

With everyone in boots, we set off through the nature reserve, guided by rangers Marc and Arjen. Due to the heavy rainfall, a layer of water had covered large parts of the Maashorst. A curse and a blessing, because although logistics became more difficult, it provided an opportunity for beautiful shots. We walked to the first filming location, a real bison carcass. Staatsbosbeheer had had it shot a month earlier because it was old and sick, with no quality of life left. In this nature reserve, they let the carcass decompose in a discreet place. When I went with actor Luqman and cameraman Sietse to scout the location with the rangers, they showed us the fresh carcass, still teeming with maggots. The appearance was so striking, giving such a strong sense of death, that I wanted it to be part of the film. When we filmed there on May 2nd, the carcass was "dry," meaning there was only skin and bones left (and a lot of flies).

Filming finally began an hour later than planned. It was so warm that we couldn't use the fur coats, beautifully made from muskrat fur.

The first scene was simple: the two main characters meet at the carcass. A greeting, a hug. But with the first shot, we already encountered one of the difficulties that arise when trying to create a 'natural' prehistoric environment: we had set up a beautiful wide shot, just like a painting, but in the corner of the frame was a ringed log. A straight strip of bark had been removed with a saw, a very typical modern mark. Another camera angle was far less beautiful. Choices had to be made! We solved it by placing a large branch in front of the log, and you had to look very closely to discover the straight ring.

An interesting dynamic emerged between the script and the performance during the scene rehearsal: the script was the guideline, but adjustments were made when something didn't feel natural. The actors frequently contributed their own ideas regarding dialogue and performance, and the scenes gradually changed, improved, and enriched. My goal of giving the film participants co-ownership succeeded!

With the morning scene completed, we still had plenty of time to film with the wisents. We could take all the time we needed, which was necessary, as the animals did not immediately cooperate as expected. Moving with nature was our motto. They were, frankly, just in a lousy spot. In front of a fence and poles. And behind the fence, a man in a purple jacket was taking pictures. He was having the time of his life being so close to the herd, but I gritted my teeth because it wasn't certain that we could capture the money shot. A money shot is the most important, most spectacular shot you film for a movie. For us, it was the shot where you see the actors alongside the bison, the magical moment where the presence of the animals is truly realized. But if the herd just didn't want to stand in a nice spot, there was nothing to be done about it.

The herd manager, Arjen, said we could walk around. After half an hour of trudging through the water, we could get behind the fence. But the animals might have moved to a completely different spot. I suggested we wait. Apparently, we could walk a bit further into the field from here, hoping for a better angle. The wisents had now seen us and were used to us, so we could get a bit closer.

And yes! They moved away from that stupid fence! Although it wasn't the most stunning angle, we got the actors in frame with the herd. Arjen said we could get a bit closer and film from a hill in the middle of the field. We went only with Arjen, the actors, Sietse, and myself to keep our presence as minimal as possible. The angle was even more beautiful here, and the herd had positioned itself in a breathtaking spot. In shallow water, in front of a clean forest edge with artistic pines and birches. And they seemed to be showing off, looking proud, splashing water around as they walked, and one of the animals made a leap. I did too. I wouldn't have dared to dream it. We could get even closer, and then even closer again. We were only 50 meters from the wisents. I had tears in my eyes because it worked; after all the preparations, the magical shot had succeeded.

And then they were done with it. It was over. The whole herd started walking toward us. Not a trot, but a walk with a clear message. It looked spectacular, but also in a way that made you think, "Well, I don't want to watch this for too long." It was unbelievable, but in the same minute they started walking toward us, the sun disappeared behind the clouds and the wind started to blow. The storm was approaching. We packed up and left. It was 5:00 PM; the workday was over. It's a wrap!!

May 2024

1. Origin Stories and Inspirations

Prehistory has always been a source of fascination for me. History books at school wrote about it in such a mysterious way, as if it were a lost time about which we know so little. Moreover, it was strange how this period lasted for hundreds of thousands of years but received only a few pages in a history book that covers all of history. All the subsequent periods received much more attention. This touches on the essence of what makes prehistory so special. At some point, people walked the Earth who were as intelligent as we are and experienced the world just as vividly; yet, they left almost no traces behind.

This fascination remained in the background among many other interests until three years ago, when I saw a few things in quick succession that led me to the idea for *The Legs of the Bison*. First, I read *Sapiens* by Yuval Noah Harari. A very well-known book that tells the story of humankind, from apes to atomic bombs. The first chapter fueled my curiosity immensely. Harari portrays the hunter-gatherer past as a wild, undiscovered time in which much more happened than we can ever imagine. Although archaeologists have been digging into this past for 200 years and research techniques are continually improving, we still miss the vast majority of the puzzle pieces. And some pieces are forever lost. I had to learn more about prehistory.

Next, I watched the powerful documentary *The Cave of Forgotten Dreams* (2010) by German filmmaker Werner Herzog. This film gave me a composite impression: we can barely imagine how long prehistory lasted and how much of it is lost, but sometimes there is solid evidence of people who lived and experienced the world as vividly as we do. Herzog received unique permission from the French Ministry of Culture to film inside the Chauvet Cave in southern France. This cave was only discovered in 1991, in pristine condition, and contains hundreds of spectacular animal drawings. The location was immediately closed to the public to prevent the same deterioration issues that occurred with the famous Lascaux cave. The documentary not only features beautiful footage of the artworks (some over 30,000 years old) but also provides much food for thought. Accompanied by dreamy music, Herzog reflects on what we see, on the lost world in which the artists lived, and on the incredible things scientists have discovered. For example, he says in his iconic voice-over: "…there are figures of animals overlapping with each other. The striking point here is that after carbon dating, there are strong indications that some overlapping figures were drawn almost 5000 years apart." He then reflects: "The sequence and duration of time is unimaginably fast today. We are locked in history, and they were not." 5000 years! How can you imagine such a period? I first thought of the past five years. Then I could get a fairly good idea of how long the last 50 years were. The last 500 years are already difficult. And then 5000 years… How much happens in such a long time? How many cultural changes occurred between the people who made the first drawing and the second? From these dark seas of time, the paintings of Chauvet emerge as sudden flashes of light, like a spectacular display of human presence.

Another scene that strongly impacted me was about music. In southern Germany, some flutes dating back 35,000 years have been found. These are the world's oldest musical instruments. Researchers made exact replicas of these flutes, and they turned out to be tuned to the pentatonic scale. For those who aren't music nerds: this is a chord still used in much music today. We don't know exactly who made the flutes, what tunes they played, or why, but we can certainly establish that someone played the flute. With such a find, prehistory suddenly speaks very vividly. I could hear prehistory. I could play a tune with the same scale. I could envision a flutist in a prehistoric field. Still a fantasy, but with a solid basis. And so, that flute became part of my film, and one of the characters became 'the flutist' (a fun fact: in the documentary, an archaeologist named Wulf Hein plays his replica of the flute. I managed to find the man online and asked if he could help with the film. He then made a flute for me, but it got lost in the mail…).

A later scene shows the drawing that inspired my film's story. We first see animal drawings suggesting movement: rhinos butting heads and lions appearing to look around the corner at prey. All on undulating rock walls: "For them, the animals perhaps appeared moving, living… The walls themselves are not flat but have their own dynamic, their own movement, which was utilized by the artists." It often seems in such caves that the artists chose surfaces that contributed to a 3D effect, emphasizing body parts and allowing a wall to tell a story. And then Herzog showed the bison with eight legs, a drawing that certainly contained no anatomical error: "We should note that the artist painted this bison with eight legs, suggesting movement, almost a form of proto-cinema." What an extraordinary painting! My imagination ran wild with what the possible origins of the drawing might be. How might that prehistoric person have come up with such a depiction of the bison?

Finally, I read another book, *The Dawn of Everything* (2022) by David Graeber and David Wengrow. These authors present a grand new view of history, based on the latest archaeological insights and a deep look at indigenous peoples, with a touch of anarchistic activism. The cliché view of prehistory is that people lived in "small, egalitarian roaming bands." Free and unrestrained, with little possession or hierarchy. Until agriculture disrupted things by introducing permanent settlement, property, and thus social inequality. This view, which dates back to Rousseau, is now outdated by archaeology and is also contradicted by contemporary descriptions of indigenous tribes in North and South America before Europeans arrived in 1492. Hunter-gatherers apparently did not always live 'on the move' but sometimes spent large parts of the year in one place. Some areas were so rich in food that habitation became (semi-)permanent. Without people becoming farmers right away, by the way. There are settlements in Ukraine where thousands of people lived in stone houses with no trace of agriculture. Many tribes likely had a rhythm where they roamed in small groups during winter, when food was scarce, and then gathered every summer with hundreds of individuals or more when food was abundant. Thus, summer was an opportunity for cultural festivities, partner exchanges, political experimentation—a temporary intense gathering of people. This idea simmered in my imagination, and I couldn't put down *The Dawn of Everything*. How would such a gathering take place? What wild parties might there have been in the distant past? No large 'festival grounds' from the Ice Age have been found in Europe, but that doesn't mean much. After 30,000 years of geological upheaval, no trace of such a gathering may remain. Just think that Europe's coastline was often 100 meters lower than it is now before the Ice Age. A large part of southern France is currently underwater where there was once habitable land. So, the festival ground might be off the coast of Nice or might be completely destroyed. Or we just haven't found it yet. In short, prehistory has never been so intriguing, and with the rich knowledge from *The Dawn of Everything*, I had a theoretical framework to tell a story. I was convinced: I had to make an epic film set in the Stone Age. A story developed about a young hunter who injures his shoulder and can no longer hunt. He would reinvent himself as a storyteller, artist, and shaman, and complete his journey during the great summer gathering.

Making a big studio film is, of course, easier said than done. I started the screenplay with full enthusiasm, but I soon found out that a studio doesn't just drop millions when you send in an idea (and sometimes they don't even let you send anything in). Then Freek (whom I had been making videos with in high school and who now directs for *Het Klokhuis*, among other things) gave me the golden tip: why not start with a short film first? It's manageable, and you can practice all the concepts. With a small budget and not too many cast & crew. It's all doable yourself, a stepping stone to something bigger. This made my dream achievable, and the first steps could be taken. Plans quickly began to take shape, and I derived immense pleasure from setting up this film. A shorter, much simpler story started to fit the short film format. I approached a dozen archaeologists, who gave me lengthy advice, and filled notebooks with ideas. Regular coffee meetings with Freek. I realized that a lot had to be done, but I kept it manageable by proceeding as follows. I made a list of things that ultimately needed to be arranged and then asked myself, "What is the most difficult thing? And what do I really need before I can move on to other things?" One of the first difficult things was finding a cave. Do you have a cave at home that I can use? No, neither do I, but it would be really cool to make a film about a cave painting actually in a cave. The managers of the marl caves in Limburg were, to say the least, not open to a film project like mine. France or Germany would probably be too far, and the caves there aren't just lying around. But through my grandfather, I met an incredibly friendly archaeologist, Jeroen Snelten. He not only had good general advice but also knew of an abandoned marl cave in Belgium where we could film without problems. And indeed, we visited the cave with my father, and the cave was abandoned, had the right shape, the right walls. And hardly anyone comes there.

So, step by step, the film grew, and now we are in the crowdfunding phase with the first shooting day just a month away. It's incredibly exciting and amazing that everything has come this far!! If you've read this, thank you so much for your donation, and I hope to see you at the premiere!

April 5, 2024