Documentary Unit: Project update and new presenter!

Presenter
Kamran
A couple of weeks ago our chosen presenter, Liam unfortunately dropped out because of a paid acting job that crashed with our shoot. This was understandable, as we can't expect him to do this or free when he could be getting paid elsewhere.  So we moved forward and tried contacting various people, and posted adverts on Casting Call Pro. The first day the advert was posted we received 6 applicants, which only increased over time. In the end we had to one of 16. We got back to 3 of the applicants who we were especially interested in and asked them to make a short self tape showing how they would like to open the documentary. This was designed to give us an idea of how they behaved in front of the camera, and their interest in the subject. It was just as well we did chose this path in the end as one applicant had a brilliant application, but didn't reflect as well on camera.
We ended up deciding on one of the guys, Kamran Vahabi; he's studied under a well credited holocaust historian and is genuinely interested in the subject.

Getting holocaust survivors was far from easy, and given it's such a sensitive subject, many survivors struggle to talk about it. I phoned and emailed several places, starting with the Holocaust Educational Trust. I had had a talk from one of their survivors during my A-level examinations, which inspired me to get in touch with them. Unfortunately this is a very busy time of the year for them, so they were unable to help us, which is understandable. I got in touch with several places until I eventually came across The Association of Jewish Refugees. I emailed them on the off chance, and they were able to link me with an association called Jewish Care. I phone up and spoke to the Service Manager Aviva Trup, who was very obliging. I explained the project and she was able to not hook us up with one survivor, but a group of three. This will hopefully work in our projects favour, where we can get our presenter to show the survivors the #holocaustmemorial search on Instagam.

Trina successfully came across a hotel in Berlin named Hotel Big Mama, who were interested in our project and offered us a room for free for the entire period when we’re filming. They also gave us filming permission to film the interviews in the room where we’re staying and in the hotel lobby. If we stage the set a bit to be fitting for Shahak, this should be no issue.



Another thing we’ve done to save money is setting up a GoFundMe-page, to hopefully get people to sponsor our projet. We all thought Simons idea to set it up, we didn't think it would do very well. We set up a reward system to help encourage people; if someone gives £10 they get their name in the credits and if they give 20£ they get both their name in the credits and a copy of the finished project.
Simon set the page up and after 1 day we had 140£, which would be almost enough to cover the expenses of one person. We are currently on £255.



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