“8mm Ballad” is on Vimeo now!

After a series of unfortunate events (Including me trying to figure out if the film is inserted correctly inside the camera while locking myself down in a hot/humid toilet in a total darkness.) I am excited to announce that my cinematography final project “8mm Ballad” is out online for public viewing. The short is based on a personal experience and tells the story of a guy who converts 8mm films into digital for living and one day, in this process, he falls in love with a woman in one of those old films.

Shooting on film, watching the dailies, getting stuck in a dark restroom for countless minutes to replace the film and finding out that a major part of my story wasn’t even filmed because I hadn’t inserted the role correctly inside the extremely hard to function Arri-S 16mm, were all a part of ups and downs of this experience but probably the most amazing moment took place later at school, behind the moviola editing machine, where in the middle of the night and as we were all desperately trying to meet the 9am deadline the next morning, I realized that I can’t cut the film like everyone else, because my hands get stitchy when I get tense (No it doesn’t happen during sex don’t worry!). It was at that moment that everyone gathered to help me out make the cuts and put together this film so we can make something out of it.

The process thought me that making a film requires team work. I was lucky to have the help of my wonderful friends Alen, M.J, Vahag, Rudy and of course Arbi who never failed as an actor despite all the challenges in the filming process. I was also lucky to have Narineh’s grandma acting in this one. Her wonderful calmness and generic resemblance to Narineh who acted as her younger version created a very genuine moment at the end of my film.