Iikka Vehkalahti Interview
It’s not because he says something new, Iikka Vehkalahti, who is now out of YLE, Finnish public television, active as always with different international activities, one of them being the rough cut service that he has set up together with respected editors like Niels Pagh Andersen, Erez Laufer and Menno Borema – link below. For that reason and because he will be one of the tutors at the first session of the upcoming Ex Oriente workshop series, the organiser of these, IDF (Institute of Documentary Film) has made an interview with Vehkalahti, from which we take a quote, but read the whole, not because he says something new but because he says something important:
What mistakes do the young documentary filmmakers frequently make? It is possible to give some examples in general?
Mistakes are not made only by the young ones, we all make them. There are so many. For example: not to adjust the film to the audience; not to leave any space for the audience to create the final version of the film in their own heads; to play too much; not to stay simple and preserve the complexity of the issue at the same time. Not to be truthful, or not to be open to all kinds of filmmaking tools and methods. I, for example, do not understand a person who, by principle, says: “And I don’t use voice over“. It is like leaving out the music! What would such films as Citizen Kane, Sans Soleil or Sound Of Insects be without voice over? As I said: we all make mistakes all the time and often we make the most fundamental ones in the old age – such as those on the informative level (where are we, who is who, what is the question/dilemma/conflict/quest of the film, what is the role of the back story, etc.), which make the film unclear and messy and at the same time full of too much detailed information. Very often the need just to finish the film already, to get rid of it or too get the film to a certain festival makes the team think: „we have to finish the film now“ and rush it… But in fact, very rarely the film has to be ready immediately.
