When we were just starting brainstorming about the idea of the film, I was more than sure that the hardest part was the beginning when you need to come up with an idea and formulate it. Later, when we were trying to find a proper case for our film and to contact the people whose approval we needed, I thought: “Wow, this really seemed easier when you’re not in it”. After, when shooting and editing, putting our footage in order and trying to make sense of our chaotic ideas, nobody could convince me that it was not the hardest part of the filmmaking process. Now, when retrospectively looking at the whole process I think of it as something hard and easy at the same time. Definitely, technical issues, the organization and then the structuring process were not easy, yet, I enjoyed every little part of it.
Initially, our main idea was to show the antique store with all its magical atmosphere which could be both visually beautiful and anthropologically interesting. We were very curious to see and show the interactions between people and objects, the source of inspiration and motivation of the owner and so on. By time, we were connecting to the place, which was ironically enough closed by the end of our project. Interestingly, during one of our interviews, the owner mentioned that he would like to move to a bigger place, which he actually did at the end. We were kidding about this by saying that at the end we have got our “happy end”.
During the process, I mostly enjoyed working with camera and capturing the aesthetics of the antique shop, which both of us were highly attracted to. Discovering new angles, new lighting, new objects to capture and generally “playing” with camera was of my big curiosity. Definitely, working with people is much harder, firstly because you need their agreement and even with it you might not always end up with the "spontaneous" and "natural" footage you initially wanted to have. Luckily, the people we captured were usually very friendly and did not mind us shooting them in the antique shop. The owner of the shop was also very open to share with us the interesting stories related to the store. He even gave us a big excursion through the shop, which we included in our movie. Nevertheless, as much as I enjoyed the process of capturing, to that extent putting the footage into “structure” and “making sense of what we had” was really hard for me. During editing I could easily choose among the footages, but I always had hardships to put them in the order and see the film as a whole.
However, despite all the technical issues and problems related to the process, I learned many things from this experience, and now I know which were the strongest and weakest sides of me when it comes to filmmaking.
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