Roskilde, pt 1 (iCUP movie)

I actually don’t remember hoe it got started. Something undefined was mentioned during a humid afternoon spend in the shade, it lingered over the empty cans of Tuborg for a while, and was then laid to rest in everyone’s imagination. It was at the point where most ideas die, not strong enough to carry their own weight, or not interesting enough to inspire the next idea.. but 2 days later I found D diligently constructing our first piece of equipment: the Can-on 1 P. Materials: cardboard, duct tape, a felt tip pen and some empty cans. Pretty soon T was making her own model, and in no time after that we had an extra DSLR, a film camera, a video camera, boom mic, sound panel with headphones and a director’s cap. Pretty much everything a mockumentary crew could hope for. I remember being amazed at what the Berlin crew could come up with in a few idle hours, as well as by the expressive power of duct tape.

That was the first step. After that, we didn’t need a lot of encouragement to go and roam the festival site with our brand new toys. We headed to an area know colloquially know as the Penis Gallery. To be precise, it’s one side of a fence, only accessible with a special badge, that has an exquisite view on the other side of the fence, which sees heavy service as an ersatz toilet for the camping ground. Because people tend to pee with their backs to the area they live in, this side of the fence has a great panorama on the variety and colourfulness of male genitalia. Hence the name “the Penis Gallery”. I tried to name it “Dick Alley”, but was colloquially voted down.

So we prowled this area at night, interviewing drunks and eccentrics, lovers and partiers, and other floatsam. People reaction to our fake equipment were pretty hilarious. I think having a boom mic made out of grass shoved in your face makes the whole situation more surreal, and makes for better interviews. what we didn’t tell them though, was that we snuck in a real camera disguised as a 4 times bigger scale model of itself. Maybe not a nice thing to do, but I’ll increase my karma at the next oppurtunity.

For now, I am proud to present to you the fruits of labor of my crowd in Berlin. Half a day of arts and craft, a night of audacious gonzo journalism, and a night of editiing with a dear friend in rainy Leuven. iCUP movie.