Fellows Hall
a short film by Roman Gerodimos, Professor of Global Current Affairs, Bournemouth University. Conceptualized, written, produced, and released in 5 days, at the Salzburg Media Academy 2023.
On Saturday 22nd July, one week into our programme, I became fixated on a balcony. It was the balcony of Fellows Hall at the Meierhof building of Schloss Leopoldskron, where we have our plenaries and a lot of our work takes place every year. That balcony door used to be closed for years, but following the recent renovation of the conference facilities, it is now open to fellows. The balcony has an absolutely stunning view — it looks out to the grass and the pond of Leopoldskron, and further beyond that to the Untersberg at the Austrian-German border, and to Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. As we were enjoying a drink after a very intense week of work, I grabbed my friend Pablo (extremely talented artist, filmmaker and professor Pablo Martinez-Zarate) by the arm and walked him to that spot and showed him the balcony. I felt it had a very cinematic quality, although the sheer beauty of the place also poses a cinematic challenge: it’s very easy for any story taking place in such a spot to feel either like cheap soap opera or like a TV commercial. I asked Pablo what it would take to avoid that, and he said something to the effect that you need a kind of tension between the place and the protagonists, but also attention to the architectural detail.
The following morning, on Sunday 23rd, I decided to set myself the challenge of creating a short film taking place in that balcony. I set myself seven restrictions — or “rules” — perhaps influenced by Lars von Trier’s documentary ‘The Five Obstructions’, the most important being that the film would be scripted, filmed and edited in five days so that it could be screened on our final day. To be completely honest, some of these restrictions (e.g. working with non-professional actors, i.e. students) were born out of necessity; others where a choice dictating the aesthetic identity and artistic scope of the film, such as the choice to tell the story through narration over mostly black-and-white stills. Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962) has been one of the most formative experiences for me, not only because it’s a masterpiece, but also because it proves that you can tell the most gripping story with the most basic means and resources, in 26 minutes, through black-and-white stills. So, I decided to model my film after La Jetée.
La Jetée is a sci-fi post-Apocalyptic film in which the protagonist is sent to the past (our present) to change the course of history so as to avert World War III, which has destroyed much of the planet. As the first week of the Academy was unfolding our world was facing extreme weather phenomena, including forest fires in the Mediterranean, extreme heat, hail and flooding in other parts of Europe and the US. And as our programme this year focused on the theme of civic imagination — with students being asked throughout to envisage what a better world might look like in 50 years’ time, and how to get there — I thought this was a wonderful parallel, and an excellent starting point that then allowed me to playfully weave into the script 20 keywords, concepts and ideas discussed during every plenary session of the Academy (I can tell you I was updating the script throughout the second week!). The Salzburg Global Seminar is such a unique space, such a refuge for ideas, and that metaphor of the Schloss as a refuge also became crucial to the plot.
The balcony of Fellows Hall has six very retro plastic chairs, each of them a different colour. I loved these chairs, I became obsessed with them, and decided that I would have a group of six travelers, each of them picking a chair, and in fact the chair would be pivotal to the time-travelling process. Once you have this scaffolding, then building the rest of the script is easy, and I was blessed to work with six wonderful students (who really should consider an acting career) who, during a development and rehearsal session on Tuesday 25th, helped me finalise the film’s ending.
One of the most important points of the Academy is to create a safe space in which people can step outside their comfort zones. And as our students kept doing that throughout the 16 days of the programme, I felt it was only fair that I would do the same. So, as I, in fact, hate the sound of my own voice and could not fathom ever narrating anything, I decided to do the voice-over for the film myself. I have had the enormous privilege of working with Sam Booth for my previous films. Sam is one of the most talented narrators in the world, and I have always felt that his voice is so perfect for my inner voice, so maybe as I was doing this, I subconsciously tried to channel Sam in my own narration, but I also realise that this can easily lead to artistic disaster. I recorded the voice-over on my partner’s phone in the Max Reinhardt Library on Wednesday 26th, using pillows for soundproofing. I also used that day and the following morning to work on the credits and to start to edit and mix the narration with the soundtrack. I chose Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, because I love it, but also because it just clicked so nicely with the first part of the script. Music in my films is as important as the script and the visuals, and sometimes finding the right music takes months, but sometimes you’re lucky and things click together nicely. I chose the Adagio from Bach’s Concerto in D Minor (well, it’s actually Marcello’s concerto, Bach just transcribed it beautifully for the piano), because I love how it provides both a slow, steady rhythm, as well as a very dramatic ending. I recorded that piece in the Bösendorfer of the Schloss later that week. Managing to get 4 minutes without anyone walking in, out, or over the Great Hall was literally the biggest challenge.
We had planned to do the filming in the late afternoon of Thursday 27th. The students had just returned from a deeply challenging and emotional field trip to the Mauthausen Memorial, and I was worried that this may not be an appropriate thing to ask them to do after such a day. But, as I said, they seemed born to do this, so they all showed up as true professionals, in wonderfully unique and appropriate clothes that they had chosen themselves, and we had a great few hours doing the filming. I then stayed up to do the editing. I could have done this on Friday — no one would have known, and I set the rules anyway! — but I was in the zone, and I’ve found that if you don’t ride the creative wave, then you may lose it forever. So by midnight I was done. Seeing the film coming together on Davinci Resolve was such a rewarding and surreal experience, and I had to exercise patience until we shared the film with students and faculty on Monday, July 31st.
My hope is that the film will resonate in some way with people who’ve never been to the Academy or to Salzburg, and maybe inspire them to watch La Jetée, but also to think about our role as active citizens of the world: the agency we have to facilitate change for the greater good and the level of commitment and responsibility that that takes.
Roman.
Watch the trailer of Fellows Hall here:
