It has­n’t quite clicked in that I’m here yet. I was occu­pied with so much back home that this trip for­ev­er felt like it was far away, even when I was fly­ing out the next day. It’s Ascension Day in France — a coun­try made up most­ly of Roman Catholics — so every­one has the day off and most shops are closed.

9:30pm and it’s still bright out.

During the day it’s close to 30°C, and the heat makes cer­tain smells come out in Montmatre, rem­i­nis­cent of Chinese mar­ket­places (though nowhere near as pun­gent). The tem­per­a­ture drops to a brisk tem­per­a­ture in the evening though, and one needs to car­ry a coat or sweater when trav­el­ing at night.

 

I final­ly got to meet Karin. Aside from the fact that she’s a Belgian who’s been in Paris for the last 10 years, liv­ing with her part­ner and two kids, I did­n’t know any­thing else about her. On the oth­er hand, she knew a great deal about me, as she’d found my blog a while back while look­ing for min­i­mal­ist WordPress themes, but did­n’t con­tact me until this year.

How to feel guilty about eat­ing a sal­ad: fill a huge bowl with let­tuce, chick­en strips, toma­toes, a hard boiled egg, cheese cubes, and top with warm, crispy fried gar­lic pota­to slices. They call it the “salade geant”.

We both got through half our sal­ads. We should have ordered one and shared it cause there’s no con­cept of the dog­gy bag here. Maybe I should coin the term “sac du chien”. It’s real­ly waste­ful, but at least they have toi­lets with but­tons for a big or small flush here.

We fin­ished film­ing at our first loca­tion, a sleepy dis­trict just out­side most tourist zones where men young and old play pétanque. She helps car­ry equip­ment, swap lens­es, watch­es for cars and motor­cy­cles when I’m shoot­ing some­thing on the street, and keeps a street-savvy eye on unsavoury char­ac­ters. It’s great to have some­one as an assis­tant, although tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing she’s the exec­u­tive pro­duc­er, which means she’s also my boss.

Pasteis de nata, a tra­di­tion­al Portuguese egg tart. Outside it’s crispy, inside is a warm, rich, gooey cen­tre. Lightly sprin­kled with pow­dered sug­ar and cin­na­mon, as per Karin’s taste.

When she first told me about her vision and con­cept, I start­ed study­ing oth­er direc­tors and films, but even­tu­al­ly real­ized she decid­ed to hire me cause she was look­ing for my style, not some­one else’s, so I decid­ed to stick with my own instincts. This proved to be the right deci­sion; there was anoth­er pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny in Paris that would work with her for a rea­son­able price, but she said they did­n’t have the same per­son­al and artis­tic approach I use to cre­ate my videos, and that was the look she was after.

This total­ly looks like Harrison Ford to me.

Karin’s also tak­ing care of licens­ing rights, venue film­ing per­mis­sions, and per­son­al con­sent forms. I don’t have to wor­ry about any of that, which means I can focus on what I do best and love doing the most: blend­ing into the back­ground and cap­tur­ing the can­did moments.

Sushi bowl from a Japanese fusion restau­rant, with fresh salmon slices (and just the right amount of fat on them) and avo­ca­do. The rice under­neath is cov­ered in sesame seeds, and a sweet sauce is pro­vid­ed in addi­tion to the soya sauce.