Plank

Dir. Billy Pols




 Plank takes a close look at Nassim Guammaz . He is a 15 yr old skateboarder. Its a very personal film, looking at him and what skateboarding means to him. The film maker has a real presence in the film; we see he shadow, hear his voice and at one point we even see him briefly. I think this makes the audience connect with Nassim even further; by seeing the film maker its as if we are seeing snippets of what actually happened while the film was being made, unedited moments between film maker and contributor. We are seeing how Nassim interacts with the film maker, and therefore we see another side to his character.

I also really love how the film ends, with two heavily contracted shots within his school. The first tracking shot is my favourite.; I love how it slowly tracks behind everyones heads and then Nassim jumps on to the fronts desk, dust rising, while we see the teacher in the background, in slow motion continuing the lesson. Its clearly very stylish but I also think that its really original way of demonstrating how he feels about school and education and how this relates to what he wants to do with his life.

I think this relates to ideas for our own film because like Plank, we are focusing on a few individuals who are really passionate about something; we are taking a glimpse into a really specialised field and aiming to shed a bit of light on it. I think if we can also achieve a strong personal element in our film, it will be successful.