Samuel van Ransbeeck (Belgium)
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Interview: 10 questions
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background
. I am a Belgian student living in Portugal as a student of composition at ESMAE in Porto, Portugal. Currently I am pursuing my Masters degree and I will finish my studies in july 2009. Before coming to Porto I studied in Leuven in Belgium but because of an erasmus scolarship I could study 1 semester in Portugal. Because I liked it so much and I learned alot, I decided to return there and continuie my studies as a regular student.
2. When, how and why started you filming?
as a ‘classical’ composer, I think that we are not good in selling our goods. The popular music scene always makes music videos to sell their music. I think that classical music should not stay away from that. Besides this pragmatic approach, images can make the music more interesting to hear and easier to identify with.
3. What kind of subjects have your films?
My music is music of the coïncidental encounters, meaning, there happens something musically, a short muiscal events and it passes away. It is like meeting somebody on the train, to who you say hi, a glimpse in the eyes, then fading away.
4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
As I only made two videos, or better, have been collaborating in two films, I am still exploring. What I wanted in my first video, and what was also the idea of the visual artist, was to make a dance scene, the faces unrecognizable, but with expression. There had to be anonimity so the viewer could identify with one of the protagonists. For the Dispersion movie, which was selected for the festival, I wrote the movie after the film was finished, thus giving another approach to the music. The film used sparse images and called for slow moving sounds, which I tried to create to accompany the images.
5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
An normal SONY handycam has been used to do the filming. Music was made with selfdeveloped software (Stockwatch), Propellerhead’s Reason and Digidesign’s Protools. The movie editing was done in Finale Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.
6. What are the chances of new media for the genre film/video in general
and you personally?
I hope to make more videos to accompany my music or the opposite, write music for movies. Making the final cut was not that hard, for a first time doing thyis, I did’t lose time in learning the program procedures.
7. How do you finance your films?
The films were made with equipment from the school, so there was no real cost involved as the actor was also the director of the Dispersion movie.
8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?
if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?
Both film projects I did where done in conjunction with visual artists.
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
Insterstella 5555 from Daft Punk and the videos of Michael Jackson influenced me alot and gave me the drive to make videoclips.
10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
I hope to make more videos for my music or write music for films.