It’s been a long time since I posted on my DOGUMENTARY blog, because the thesis is done, the DVDs are sent out to everybody and I’ve been blogging on my main website since.

Because this is going to be my last blog entry here, I have two goodies for everybody who reads this:

1. You can download my bachelor thesis here as pdf: “Dogumentary – Dogme Rules for Documentary Films“
2. You have a chance to actually watch the Dogumentary in full length on my website, but because of legality issues you have to send me an email request first and then I will send you the link as well as the password. So if you are interested in seeing the film, send me an email at “jan at red-gecko-productions . com” with the subject “Dogumentary Password”.

If you do read my thesis or watch my film, please leave some feedback on my new blog post about Dogumentarism at http://www.red-gecko-productions.com/redgecko/blog/

Please visit www.red-gecko-productions.com to see what I am up to right now.

All the best,

Jan

After months of work I am finally at one of the last stages of my documentary: Burning the DVD, printing the DVD labels, printing the DVD booklets, putting everything in the DVD cases and sending them out to all the participants of the project.

I am back in Toronto and I will attend the weekly meeting on Sunday, so everybody who is there will get his copy right away. All others will get it with the mail…

Thanks again to everybody who supported me in this project!

I was overwhelmed by the positive comments and the huge audience that showed up for the screening at my University in Stuttgart! It looks like there are a few documentary enthusiasts studying there after all

Thanks for coming and making that a memorable evening for me. Now let’s see if I can arrange another screening at my partner University in Toronto for the “North American” Premiere…

I was overwhelmed by the positive comments and the huge audience that showed up for the screening at my University in Stuttgart! It looks like there are a few documentary enthusiasts studying there after all

Thanks for coming and making that a memorable evening for me. Now let’s see if I can arrange another screening at my partner University in Toronto for the “North American” Premiere…

“Dogumentary” was born out of a discussion among a group of Danish documentary filmmakers who felt that too many elements of fiction filmmaking were encroaching on the documentary form, and that a more modest, stylistic approach might bring them closer to the truth. Film director Lars von Trier imposed a series of restrictions on the filmmakers, similar to Dogme 95 for fiction films, in his mission to bring documentary film back to its core.

For my bachelor thesis I shot my own “Dogumentary” in summer 2009, always questioning if it would make my film more authentic. Therefore I strictly followed the nine rules of the Dogumentary Code to find out how my characters and myself will react to such a observational method of documentary filmmaking.

In this documentary we experience first hand what CouchSurfing is all about: Meeting people. We accompany CouchSurfers in remote Newfoundland and the big city Toronto in Canada having exceptional experiences.

After the screening I will be there for a short Q&A about the making of the film, discussions about “Dogumentarism” and will also answer questions concerning CouchSurfing.

Genre: Documentary
Length: 60 Minutes
Language: English (no subtitles)

More information about the project:
http://www.red-gecko-productions.com/dogumentary/blog

Dogumentary Code:
http://red-gecko-productions.com/dogumentary/blog/?page_id=31

Facebook Event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=297029296861

Screening Details

Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Time: 7:30pm – 10:00pm
Location: Hochschule der Medien (Altes Treppenstudio)
Street: Nobelstrasse 10
City/Town: Stuttgart, Germany

View Map

It is a strange feeling being so close to the end of this project. I learned so much in those months, during the production, researching in Copenhagen and in the end reflecting all the knowledge and experiences that I gained. I just printed my thesis one more time and hopefully won’t find any mistakes anymore, because then I can finally send it off to be printed and that means that was my last chance to make changes.

Also part of my project is, of course, my documentary. I found some time in between writing, which I really needed to get relax my mind, to be creative again and design the DVD booklet as well as the DVD label. I have to say that I am very pleased how it looks like now. Additionally I created a DVD menu in the same look as the booklet that is very simple and includes the main Dogumentary and several Special Features. For example the research video “What is CouchSurfing?”, which can also be watched on vimeo here (http://vimeo.com/5043317), a scene that was not part of the final edit, so to speak an “Deleted Scene”, of CouchSurfers having “Kangaroo Bolognese” and last, but not least, a summary of the “Dogumentary Code” including the rules that I have followed in the making of the film.

So now I have to do another run through my thesis using my eagle’s eye to find more mistakes. Well, hopefully not, because then I would finally be able to take care of all the things that I postponed to after the thesis. One more thing to say, before heading back to my desk: I am planning to have a private screening for all students (and CouchSurfers) that are interested in watching the Dogumentary at the end of February. So keep having a look on the blog, I will let you know.

The last one and a half months I spent inside, sitting at the desk, reading, researching and writing on my bachelor thesis. This week I want to get it done, so I will have one week to make corrections and print the thesis. In total it is going to be 60 pages long even though I was expecting less.

I am back home in Heilbronn and started organizing my research material today. This morning I printed at least 200 pageor more s from or my internet research, in addition I have to go though the copies I have from books, newspaper articles (still have to be translated into English from Danish), other essays and a couple of books.

So now I will start reading everything, looking for interesting quotes that fit in my thesis, revise my Table of Content as I go along and hopefully start actually writing by the end of this week.

This is how it looks like so far:

1 Overview

2 Film-historic Background (Theory)

2.1 A short history of the documentary film

2.2 Dogme 95 and its influence

2.3 Dogumentarism

2.4 Influence of Dogumentarism outside of Denmark

3 Dogumentarism Experiment

3.1 Plan and Conditions

3.2 Development and Problems

3.3 Conclusion

4 Why did Dogumentarism fail?

5 The Future Development of Documentary Films

I guess you are asking yourself: “What is he now doing in Copenhagen?”, but there is actually another reason except the travelbug that bit me a while ago. Here in Denmark is the place where the whole Dogma movement started in 1995 and also the Dogumentarism rules were announced. So I am here to do some research, but there was a little free time to take pictures as well:

My mission in Copenhagen was to find out what happened to the Dogumentary films that have been produced, but I was only able to get a copy of a film in Danish. It looks like they were not very successful after all. Yesterday I found some Danish newpaper aricles explaining that even though the Danish television produced the films, they supposedly were to bad to show. And the whole movement died after that. So there is not much information out there, just here and there somebody mentions the rules.

Tomorrow morning I’m flying back to Berlin and then head back home to Heilbronn, where I will start going through all the material that I collected here, and statr writing in my thesis. On one hand I’m not looking foward to do a lot of writing, but on the other hand it is about a topic that is really intruiging to me. Especially after somebody of the Danish Film Institute told me today that I might be the first person who is writing a complete essay just about Dogumentarism.

This week has been one of the busiest weeks for me this year. I finished editing the documentary and the final length is 1 hour, 53 seconds and 1 frame (including the credits). So I am happy to say that I made my goal to get as close to 1 hour as I can

I also had 2 little screenings this week for the CouchSurfers that I filmed and also for friends and supporters of the project. And I have to say that I got an overall good response. And even that it looks like an accumulation of the best takes in a raw edit (like my professor said), nobody was distracted by the black frames or the hard cuts.

Now on my last day I have to export the film for Germany in PAL and for Canada in NTSC, make an HD copy and lots of backups before I am returning my keys and access cards later today. But that doesn’t mean I have time to relax, no. Then I have to start packing because my plane to Frankfurt is leaving tomorrow night, which means that this is my last blog entry from Toronto.

Thanks again to everybody that supported the film, everybody that let me film them, the people who hosted the screenings and especially Michael Murphy and Dana Lee from Ryerson who gave me all their support in making tis film happening.

See you in Germany