We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Enzo Kristensen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Enzo below.
Enzo, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
I believe creativity is something that is born in either a serene or aggravating environment. Lucky for me, both of these go hand in hand within the film industry. From the classic Hollywood actor lifestyle of working a second job while doing casting calls and rehearsing lines in the spare time to producing and running an indie film production on. a shoestring budget. One thing I do believe most of us creatives experience is that when either the passion of the industry is up to your neck with work and deadlines or the quiet nights walking on empty streets, some of the best creative thoughts are born within those moments.
Embracing the process and not trying to force it is what works for me.
I’m currently working on a short film that has taken me on a detour I never thought I would go on.
Production has been on an absolute roller coaster, from restarting production with new crew members within a week of shooting to spending 37 hours on a corn field in Woking while being sleep deprived. This project has been a fight from day one for all of us to get off the ground and completed, and with huge relief, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel with a 2024 release day ahead of us. I believe that because of the challenging circumstances this project has been under, and with the creative mind behind the project, this project will bring something truly magnificent to the big screen this year. I have both hated and loved the process of making this project.
We have used AI to fix blurry footage, had a previous producer try to overtake the project with blackmailing of equipment, run servers for remote work across the globe, and even had to study the engineering of self-hosting a server with ZFS pools.
My friend and director, Maxance Louvety, and I have both had the same mindset when running this production. Keep the standard high, try not to compromise, and keep moving forward. In theory, these are very proactive things to live by, but they come with a price.
Part of the film industry and any production within it is having a creative mind to either tell stories, fix problems, or both. We did, at some point, consider buying stock footage for some of the scenes but decided we could do it better ourselves. We loaded up a car battery and a converted power source for the shoot and travelled to Woking, England, United Kingdom. I woke up at 6 a.m. to pick up equipment rentals for the shoot, and after hours of collection across London from different vendors, I was on my train ride to Woking station. I was picked up from the station, and he loaded up his car with all the equipment and bags.
We drove for about 25 minutes until we reached our location on a beautiful corn field with a large tree in the middle of the field. We parked the car and walked the area to plan out our approach to the early morning shoot while we still had daylight hours.
Suddenly, a head popped up in the corn field next to the tree. It was a bald man in his late 40s, looking around like a rhino in the savanna. We both stopped our walk towards the tree because, at a further glance, the man was completely nude. We looked at each other, and with the few days we had left, we decided to continue to speak about the setup for the shoot, like nothing had happened. Suddenly, the head vanished into the field again before reappearing with another head. A woman in her late 20s, also completely nude, appeared. Clearly, we had interrupted something, and we were not interested in getting involved with whatever that was. We circled around the tree, but kept our distance from the couple. Five minutes later, they both ran off into the distance.
Six hours later, our actor, Chris, arrived at the station in Woking, ready for the shoot. It was mid-July, and temperatures were around 26 degrees during the day. He was wearing shorts and dressed for the heat.
Maxance picked him off as I was setting up the last settings on our camera and gimbal.
That night leading up to the shoot, the temperatures dropped to below 8 degrees. We were absolutely freezing our asses off but kept working to collect local leaves to fill trash bags up for the mountain of trash bags for the morning shoot in the early morning hours.
As the sun rose, we managed to film the shoots we needed. Being present in nature at these hours is absolutely stunning. The golden hours of a pink sky as you see the morning mist across the corn field. You almost forget in that moment how you and everyone else almost froze to death because of the extreme change in temperatures that night.
Praying for the sun to come back also came with its price, being on an open corn field all day mid-summer. Most of us were either sunburned or dehydrated by the sun’s heat because of the drastic change in temperature back to the high 20s. We filmed for 37 hours, purely out of determination, but looking back, I won’t be doing that again any time soon.
I look forward to sharing this project with you all later this year.
Project link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27487507/?ref_=hm_rvi_tt_i_1
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Who am I?
I am a film maker in my late 20s, driven by story telling and the art of creating it. I have been making films since a very early age, and throughout my life, I have always tried my best to express new ideas and concepts to the audience of my projects. I have, in my later years, picked up more abbacus projects. But a proven factor I always tell myself when jumping into any of these abbacuses is that there is always a way to make the idea in your head come to life in one way or another.
Contact Info:
- Website: pantrumpictures.com
- Other: IMDB: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt27487507/?ref_=nm_rvi_tt_i_1
