3. Production Days and Beyond
The main filming days were almost a full 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.
At the start of this year, I had visited these caves 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 did light 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 might 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 valuable artifacts in two places at the Maashorst: a small knife near 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 the wheels, 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 one hell of a film.
July 7th 2024