- Student
- 14/05/2018
Patricide in lecture hall 6
All was quiet on campus last Ascension weekend. Not so in the Auditorium, though. It was the set for film recordings for the TV series “I know who you are” which will be broadcast on NPO 3 as of August. Actor Daan Schuurmans performed the role of professor of criminal law who lectured on patricide (or high treason) in lecture hall 6. Most of his listeners were TU/e students who had registered as extras. “And action!”
For three days the Column Film crew is TU/e’s guest on the campus to shoot for the NCRV-KRO series of 16-episodes entitled ‘I know who you are’. The longest scene of the series is filmed in lecture hall 6 on Saturday afternoon.
Column Film was afraid that too few extras would show up to make the Blauwe Zaal appear suitably filled. It was the location for a debate recorded on Saturday morning. Still, the turnout is not disappointing. The first sixty TU/e students who had registered have been supplemented with extras recruited via a digital marketplace for extras. There are one hundred and forty altogether. If they brought their own laptops they could, in principle, do their own study work all day long.
Dutch
Several international students are also featuring as extras. As everything is taking place in Dutch, they do not understand a lot of the action. “But when they say I have to applaud, I do understand that and I applaud”, says Chinmay Gore, a master’s student of Embedded Systems. Extras had to show up with three sets of clothes, without any conspicuous brands, in uniform colors.
This afternoon’s scene covers eight pages of script and can last as long as five minutes. “And action!”, says the first assistant director. In the first take most things are going well – or so I think. Schuurmans sometimes makes a slip of the tongue, repeats the relevant sentence totally relaxed, and some six minutes later the camera stops. But it needs to be done again. Now the students, who had been ordered to stay calm, have to make things livelier. The take stops after just a few seconds, when suddenly the chalk breaks on the board. Laughter, just what is needed.
Melissa Pruijn, secretary at student theatrical company Doppio, is an extra as well. She finds it interesting to see how different TV is from the stage. She notices that Daan Schuurmans, while pacing up and down on the stage or walking into the hall, is constantly followed at one meter’s distance by three persons; someone holding a boom mic, a cameraman and someone guiding the cameraman when he needs to walk backwards.
“Very cool, as professionally as this is done. We’ve already done this scene five times now, and we, the students, have not even come into the picture yet. That needs to be filmed also.” The extras were expected to be available until six p.m., “but we may be running thirty minutes late.”
Discussion