Unfold: A Fashion Film Lab is an interdisciplinary talent development project that aims to encourage the production of fashion films on the local creative scene. For the first phase, the participants will be working in teams of two, a filmmaker and a cinematographer (DOP). After being assigned a fashion designer from the Romanian Design Week selection, the teams will work step-by-step, in order to develop a fashion film treatment. During the five days of workshop, they will receive training on styling, cinematography, directing and lo-fi aesthetics. The trainers will also provide feedback for each project. In the process, the lab’s students will explore the boundaries of their disciplines and the creative possibilities this relatively new genre has to offer.
For the next stage, the teams will have a month to produce the fashion film according to their treatment. Bucharest Fashion Film Festival will provide production support on various levels:production coordination, technical equipment, location & talent scouting, make-up & hairstyling, depending on each project’s specific requirements and confirmed partners.
The resulting fashion films will be screened as part of the main exhibition of Romanian Design Week (May 18th-27th), next to the clothing pieces they were inspired by, in order to better emphasize the concept behind the collection.
In the beginning fashion film used to be a video look-book for a designer’s collection, but over the years, they have developed into visually striking short films. Nowadays, a fashion film is usually a short film sitting at the crossroads of an arthouse film and a commercial, aimed to communicate the tone, movement of the garments and the concept of a collection. Nevertheless, the fashion film “format” is very permissive and the possibilities are endless:it can have dialogue and a narrative, or it can be more experimental, it could be commissioned by a brand, or it could include the creations of many designers etc. Fashion films are a cinematographer’s dream – moody, stylized and typically targeting a niche audience.
