Day Seven
In the sun-dappled loveliness of the Children of Bassac rehearsal room up on the third floor of The Building, Mr Moon kickstarted the day with a super-duper intense mini-intro to Boomtown, amid our throng of first-round of filmmakers. With Amazing Smey as co-pilot, he explained the wider context of the film (multi-authored, global web film about our new urban civilization, etc etc) and introduced them to the basics of shooting something that looks and sounds good (light, sound and a steady hand - easy peasy!). Armed with a few technical pointers and two cameras to circulate amongst themselves, we left them to it, with plans to catch up later and see what they shot.
Lunch was rather interesting. We had the pleasure of meeting this Polish force to be reckoned with type visual researcher known as Maria Stott. She’s been active in Phnom Penh for years and has just completed a photography workshop à la Born Into Brothels with kids living in The Building. She gave us lots of fascinating and sometimes intimidating insights into the wranglings of censorship and privacy laws in Cambodia. Coming from the world of sharing / caring Creative Commons and such, it was a sobering reminder of the two-world collision in which we find ourselves with Boomtown Babylon…
As the dusky sun cloaked the city in gold, we met up with the boys to look at their material (the girls were at school). Beautiful things! There’s something so intimate and fresh about self-shot stories, and the incredible potential for capturing *reality* in this way. Super-excited about the growing web of self-told tales from The Building and what’s coming next… Tomorrow: the girls!
