A Sweet Encounter
This is the name of my latest short film that I shot entirely in Amsterdam! This year, I was fortunate to go back and live in the Netherlands for two months while I did school online (since we were in lockdown again at the beginning of the year). This was my fourth time in the Netherlands and my first time back in two years! I was so happy to be back and reunited with so many close friends. I got to travel to places like Amsterdam, Leiden, Den Haag and Delft (which is where I lived). I even got to do a couple of trips outside of the country, like to Paris, France and Duisburg, Germany. But I also kept very busy doing lots of editing. One of my goals for this trip was to make a short film in Amsterdam. The city is so beautiful that I just had to shoot my own film here. So, I reached out to a local filmmaker that I met through Facebook and planned a shoot for when I would arrive in Amsterdam. I didn’t really come up with a story until a couple of weeks before arriving. I wanted to make a short and sweet film that would mostly involve lost of artsy shots of the city. I also wanted to incorporate some Dutch into the script, so I got my Dutch boyfriend to help me out with it. That’s when the idea of ‘a sweet encounter’ came into my mind. The only thing left was to find a Dutch actor. My boyfriend wasn’t comfortable acting in front of the camera, but his best friend was definitely on board. He was perfect for the role, even though he had never acted before. We ended up being a crew of just four; two actors (including me), one cinematographer, and my boyfriend who acted as our PA for the day. It was a very smooth shoot that took only half a day. I found the perfect location on Singel straat where there was a bakery that sold stroopwafels. We ended up needing six of them but they were “heel lekker!” The streets were quiet since we arrived early on a Sunday morning, so thankfully, there weren't as many tourists trying to take pictures of the canal as we filmed. I did my best at speaking Dutch in the film. This was definitely good practice for me. The only issue we had was with audio because my lav mics kept disconnecting from my phone. It made it a bit hard to edit later on. It was also a bit cold that day and we were standing outside for several hours. But overall, the shoot was a blast and the film turned out way better than I thought it would. Post production for my film went really quickly since there wasn't that much footage to go through. I used only Premiere Pro this time for the editing and did colour grading in Resolve. I think it turned out pretty good in the end.
I’m so glad I achieved my goal of making a film in the Netherlands. Definitely made this trip more memorable.
You can also enjoy our bloopers!