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The making of The Network
The Network won a 4-star award at BIAFF 2008
Vatos Locos Video and The Network
Our association (Vatos Locos Video) was born in December 2004 . Ludovic Piette after he got his master in cinema decided to offer to the young citizens of his city a chance to learn audiovisual techniques. We did The Network in 2005 in the first year of the association. The idea was to make some movie trailers only , but when we started to shoot the sequences we all thought that we were able to do something more interesting than a small teaser (that's probably why The Network seems rough-and-ready at times). The idea came from a lot of events that happen where we live in France (you probably saw some news about French suburbs on BBC or ITV last year), but some scenes such as the basement torture or the one in the police station are references to Scorsese or Brian de Palma movies we all like. The actors are all members of the association living in our city Vitrolles. Most of them are students. We didn't really have to face any problems for the shoot because all the places are in Vitrolles and the props are ours. The montage which is a great part of the succes of the film was filmed by one of the employees of the association at the time (now he is a professional but he gave us a lot while he was with us). We can say that the film lives up to much more than our dreams because we never expected such succes. It was our first real fiction so yes we are really proud of The Network.
How does our association operate? Firstly it is open to everybody. If someone wants to join us he just has to pay 10 euros (around seven pounds) and he will be allowed to participate in all our films for one year. But the thing is that we do some 'light' movies during school holidays and the ones made during the rest of the year are made deeper. So first you have to be initiated and involved with school holiday projects.
We do have an office now, and two employees - Ludovic's brother and myself . We all meet there when we have to work on our project. The year-long group develops the ideas and Ludovic is manager.
The association has its own equipement, video camera, computer...and we do the editing also. Some of us are students of cinema at the university. We take some montage training to continuously improve ourselves, and we all share new information when we learn something...it's a family .
We send our films to other festivals . We have won some good prizes and if you understand French have a look at our website: www.vatoslocosvideo.fr
Romuald Rodrigues Andrade, Vatos Locos Video April 2008
Where did the name Vatos Locos Video come from?
The term 'Vatos Locos' is drawn from a film called The Princes of the City. This film, made in the nineties by Taylor Hackford tells the story of three cousins, raised in the violent and proud culture of the gangs in East Los Angeles. Many topics are covered, in particular social difficulties, the mentality found in disadvantaged areas, discrimination, exclusion as well as the concepts of fraternity and mutual help. One cousin expresses his suffering through painting. A second one becomes a police officer and tries to fight against the drugs and violence prevailing in the district. The last becomes a criminal and passes most of his life in prison. These cross destinies admirably illustrate the desire to fight social ills but also show failure, fear and the effect of fate. We also took the term 'Vatos Locos' because it means the "insane cousins" and our association originated with two first cousins, Nasser Idri and Ludovic Piette. Moreover, we like the film a lot, particularly the thoughtful themes that it develops. We wish to imbue the association with the values of solidarity, mutual aid and the fight against contemporary social ills. The term 'Video' comes from our passion and our speciality.
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