The Silence of the Fish – Education / Short Film / Concert in Iceland Erasmus Project

Project Title

The Silence of the Fish – Education / Short Film / Concert in Iceland

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

The short film SILENCE OF THE FISH is a film about the difficulty of communication under extreme conditions and addresses topics such as isolation, loneliness and mental health.

The main activity of the project is the film shoot itself and that has been carried on. This is the part of the film production which includes the most amount of people and is the pinnacle of the filmmaking process. The film shoot took one week in the countryside of South Iceland near Vík. The preproduction took place in the 4 months before the project but a dragted script was in place at the time of application to Erasmus+. The preproduction included work on budgeting and scheduling for the production team, as well as crewing, casting and preparations with key artistic crew such as the Cinematographer and the Production Designer.

Filming went according to plan, we shot the film in 6 days which is pretty average for a short film. There were some difficulties that occurred mainly with holding time schedule, but that is often the trickiest thing on a a film shoot, and with a crew that has not worked together before consisting of young professionals that is often the greatest problem. The problems that occur when you are behind schedule in a film shoot, and we experienced, are unnessary waiting periods for actors and drivers, and loosing light, and as we were shooting in late October, it was definitely a risk, although we managed pretty well with the light.

Each day was not tremendously behind schedule but it was surely a learning experience for us all and trains us in the skill of managing a production shoot on time. There are many people on set and everything has to be well organised and time management impeccable, especially when running a very large set in a hight budget film. That is the reason that there is a specific department managing the schedule and time, the Assistant director department with the 1st assistant director as well as sometimes 2nd and 3rd assistant director dividing taskts. In our case we have two great people, a Dane and an Icelander, that just hadn’t worked together before, so it took us about first part of the first day to sync them, boost the comunications and work better on schedule, a bit of “beginning difficulties” that were solved in a proper manner, as is supposed to be on a professional production.

The crew flew in from Denmark though there was one German and one Faroeish actress. It was a beautiful and inspiring international production where the working language was English. That was a very valuable training as some of the crew were not used to working in English, but everyone was proficient so it worked out well.

After the filming, the post-production process began. That part of the film was supposed to take place in Denmark, as the production and shooting mostly took place in Iceland, also as Hilke, the director was a part of a film development project for young filmmakers at Filmværkstedet in Copenhagen, we were secured working space there. We had a Danish editor attached to the film (Hannah Elbke) that we waited for quite a while for her to find the time to do it, and then eventually she was unfortunately not able to take on the project. That meant a new search for an editor began that took some while as well so the post production went quite a lot behind schedule with the editing not starting until mid year 2018. The composer of the ilm Herdís Stefánsdóttir, who is a brilliant young Icelandic music artist, had already started working on the music and was finished in the later part of 2018.

After locking the edit, but that is very important before any kind of sound, music or color correction is worked, the search again started for sound designers and color correctors. That was again quite problematic as our budget was not high in the filmmaking understanding, and the salaries in Denmark are pretty high and the post production offices are very busy, so again that was a process to attach the right people. We ended on contracting two talented, young Finns that took on the project late year 2018. At the same time a German post production specialist, Andreas, was contracted to do the color correction and produce the DCP (Digital Cinemta Package) that is a mandatory format for screening the film at festivals, but has to be produced correctly by a professional.

When the post production finally kicked in it was a fast process that we were happy with, but unfortunately delayed the schedule of the film itself. The film was ready early 2019 but most major film festivals we were focusing on weren’t taking place until fall 2019, and that is when we have our world premiere, at Reykjavík International Film Festival in September 2019.

A part of the project is also creating a website for young people on mental health matters, that is now drafted but will be maintained and updated with time www.mental.com

LINK TO FILM : https://vimeo.com/309871552
PASSWORD :SAGA

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 23800 Eur

Project Coordinator

Yfir heiðina -ungmennasamtök & Country: IS

Project Partners

• VILVISION