The Journey And Introduction

Day 1:

Merhaba and Hello, I am Louis Stoves-Racz here from the beautiful Turkish region of Cappodocia to capture and produce a thirty minute observational documentary about the life and culture of this lunar landscape. As a freelance videographer and recent television production graduate from Birmingham City University, I am always seeking to expand my skills in a variety of conditions. Therefore, the opportunity YTV and Uflah Arts offered with the ‘Global Media Placement’ was that it will provide an extended notion of potentially working abroad.

After a long trek across Europe via many planes and automobiles, a team of YTV bandits landed at a surprising quiet Nevsehir airport around the 11pm mark. During the night on our arrival, group meetings, split in two, were arranged to confirm exactly what the core objectives and features were aimed for in our respected documentaries. My production team’s set brief is to shoot a documentary about ‘Life in Cappadocia’; therefore identifying various focuses about the Cappadocian region in regards to its culture, people and history was vital. Using our schedule and research, we laid a solid framework in how we were to approach our shoot and finalizing that our documentary was to be from an observational and factual based standpoint. Post- meeting, every person hit their pillows harder than a ‘bull in a china shop’.

Day 2:

The next day both YTV teams continued further research and discussion about our documentaries to conclude a well-planned pre-production period. Lunch and bellies full on pita, we met Tuncay, our EU project coordinator for a formal introduction about what this placement was about and a brief idea of the various locations we will be eventually shooting at. Personally, and I think collectively everyone were feeling a sense of excitement in discovering the magic of Cappadocia. Pre-ceding this was a frantic decision to declare what our production teams were to be called, my team went with the simply ‘Luften Productions’ because we do like to ‘please’ with our content. The others called themselves ‘Authentic Media’. The funfest really began when we were set team building activities.

The main challenge being that we had to parade the streets of Nevsehir using a list of 20 things that had to be found and photographed around this area. These things including taking a picture of a Turkish taxi driver with a moustache (not very difficult) and Bosca square. This wasn’t just a challenge but a duel between two sassy crews who meant business, it also helped us to get familiar with our surroundings without the bog-standard (stock techniques tour guides traditionally) adopt ‘here’s this and here’s that’, it was really refreshing! Fortunately, ‘Luften’ came out on top and we were the champions. Tomorrow, we are doing a ‘Cappadocia Tour’, where each production will location scout various places that will inspire the upcoming day shoots.