Historical real-estate documentary production and postproduction – Casa Musicescu

Mission

Eneredge, a real-estate developer from Iasi, Romania, had just finished restoring the shine to the historical Casa Musicescu. Even though its revival was spectacular, very few people actually knew the story behind it, so Eneredge seeked a way to properly share that story with the whole world.

Outcome

Over the course of a year and a half of hard work, the project that began as a series of interviews evolved into a full-fledged documentary film with beautiful B-roll and visual effects, motion graphics, restored archival footage and photographs, and, the one thing that brought it all together, a custom film score created by local music composer Antonius Slubczakowsky.

Impact

After we showed the final film to our client, they just couldn't believe they watched a 20 minute long documentary without looking away from the screen once. The video was released online and, to this day, still serves as a proud reminder of Eneredge’s crowning achievement.

Details

Services Rendered

Documentary Film Concepting, Development & Production Strategy
Archival Research
Script Development
Live-action Production
Animation & Motion-Graphics Production
Video Editing & VFX
Color Correction & Grading
Sound Design & Custom Film Scoring

Collaborators

StudioAlb was hired for equipment and principal photography
Musket was hired to assist with script, production, Voice-over and hosting
Antonius Slubczakowsky handled film scoring
Essenza Quartet performed on-camera

Even though the story of Casa Musicescu and its revival was spectacular, very few people actually knew of it, so Eneredge went on a hunt for the right partner to help them share that story with the whole world.

And that’s where we at INX Films came in. We figured the best way to share the story of Casa Musicescu is to make it into a documentary film, so we put together a video production dream team by bringing in StudioAlb to provide production equipment and handle principal photography, as well as Musket to help with producing duties and writing, as well as handling the narration and on-screen presentation.

The challenges we faced were not simple to solve: we quickly found a long list of noteworthy events and famous people that were connected to the building, but they weren't really connected to each other in a way that would reveal a overarching story. On top of that, we had a pretty big footage crisis: we found almost no historical imagery of the building, and the photos we had from the actual restoration Eneredge did where also rather few and far between.

The Process

So we got to work on cracking these problems. We decided to start with a series of interviews to figure out the story - we first interviewed Vlad Vieriu, the engineer behind the restoration, who told us about all the issues they encountered and the care with which they had to work to preserve the building's heritage. We then talked with the local historian Sorin Iftimi, who described the lives and events that unfolded within those long-standing walls. And for the bits of information we found ourselves, we wrote a script, recorded it as a voice-over and used that voice-over as the glue that bonded the whole story together. At this point, we started testing the story in an audio-only format with selected audiences until we saw that throughout the sitting no one got distracted, not even by their phones.

But while this was an achievement, we knew that telling the story through two interviews and some bits of voice-over wasn’t enough to make a film. Talk is cheap in cinema. We had to figure out a way to show, even though we had no footage.

So we started shooting our own. Over the course of several days we got shots of the host presenting the house, drone footage of the building itself and the city of Iasi in which it resides, as well as hours of b-roll of both the building and city. We even shot footage of a string quartet performing in it’s main hall, as a nod to the period in which the building was the region’s main musical conservatory.

But while this footage helped tremendously with showing Casa Musicescu’s current state, it still didn’t address the lack of historical footage. This is where INX Films’ VFX and motion-graphics experience ended up playing a very big role. It took almost an entire year to create all the varied motion graphics and animations, as well as to track down the few surviving archival pictures, drawings and maps that we so desperately needed. But the end result was entirely worth it. As the video unfolded, the motion graphics kept evolving in tune with the story, always telling it in a new and entrancing way.

It was at this point that a new idea popped up thanks to Musket's previous documentary-making experience. Seeing how the project evolved into a fully fledged documentary film, we asked ourselves: what if we played to the emotional beats of the story and gave it an original music score? That’s when we got in touch with Antonius Slubczakowsky, a very talented local music composer, who helped us do just that. His custom music gave Casa Musicescu a lively emotional pulse that glued people to the screen, with songs that flowed gracefully beneath the story's varied beats.

The Outcome

That is how, over the course of a year and a half of hard work, the project that began as a series of interviews evolved into a fully-fledged documentary film with beautiful B-roll, mesmerizing visual effects and motion graphics, restored archival footage and photographs, all brought together to life by a custom film score.

The Impact

Looking to tell the the world about your crowning achievement as well? Let’s chat about how you could do that!