Nathalie Vollenweider

Portfolio / Film

Facade

This partner film project with Anahit Pourreza (a Zurich based filmmaker and photographervisualizes our daily struggle between emotional interior and external expressions.


We live in a world where we are confronted daily with global cruelties such as war, pandemics, hunger, abuse, and many more, while society expects us to save our face.

This overload of global issues makes us numb to negative news and generates a feeling of helplessness: "Those problems are so big, what can I as an individual do to make a difference? – nothing!" This mindset is probably the most dangerous enemy to change. One drop of water does not lead to fire extinction – but many drops united over a period of time.

Using Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
& Canon EOS 6D

 

Polarity – fast / slow

In this film project, I was playing around with super slow motion and time-lapse to make things of daily life visible, which we cannot capture with our bare eyes. 


It was my first attempt at filmmaking.

To graduate from the College of Art and Design Zurich (GBMS) and achieve the Professional Baccalaureate in Arts, I needed to hand in and pass a thesis and a practical artwork to the given theme "polarity." Most of my classmates used a technique or a medium they are experienced in. For me, this felt like cheating. I wanted to do something I had never done before, where I could grow and learn something new. 

From time exposure in photography, I know that the earth and the stars are moving, but when we look up in the sky, we cannot see this movement. Same for plants growing. Some changes happen too fast, others too slow, for capturing them with our bare eyes. With my concept, I wanted to make such changes visible.

I was able to get Henry Maurer from TimeLineFilm as my mentor and use his studios and equipment. He taught me the basics of filmmaking and postproduction and helped me when I stood in front of a problem I couldn't figure out myself. 

I really appreciate that he was letting me do and explore for myself and let me run into mistakes, such as filming time-lapse with super slow motion settings, or not rendering during the night. Of course, I lost some time with my beginner mistakes, but I never made them again, and it also helped me to think ahead and double-check settings. 

As a freshman, I found it quite ironic that I made my first attempts with RED Epic – "the best video cam on the market," during that time. "The Hobbit" was shot with it and got released when I was filming with this cam in late 2012.

This whole project was so much fun, and I learned so many things that I am still applying in my day-to-day job.  

Using RED Epic and the Premiere Pro plugin "Twixtor"


Using Format