Turkey now and then

“Travel commercials are usually quite dull and straightforward. They tell you about a country, its people and its food in a mishmash of beautiful pictures, but they present no viewpoint,” says features Director of Photography Avi Karpick who has been shooting commercials in Turkey for the last two years.

The Turkish Tourist Office saw one of Karpick's reels and commissioned him to shoot two 45-second commercials promoting Turkey and Istanbul and proposed that the noisy sounds of Turkey's street vendors and bazaars, calls to prayer and teahouses triggered the visuals. "It's very much to the Turkish Tourist Office's credit that they allowed us to be flexible in our approach and gave us freedom for our own creative input, so we integrated the inherent chaos and noises of modern Turkey with ancient historical or folkloric scenes. Life there is full of ambiguity. Istanbul is a very chaotic, yet very beautiful city and, while Turkey's history is turbulent, its people are joyful, emotional and intuitive with lots of energy and warmth. If you open your mind, it's very easy to imagine the country's ancient past," he remarks.

Under Director Yariv Gaber, the crew were allocated 13 days to film in locations across the breadth and width of Turkey, from cities to remote areas near the Iranian border. "We hired a Hercules cargo plane in an intensive commando-type operation, with a small crew and very little gear", muses Karpick. "We landed in a place, shot - often very early in the morning - and moved on, not knowing what weather or light conditions we'd encounter. Instead of fighting the contrasting situations, I compensated by taking several different 35mm Kodak film stocks with varying characteristics for the ARRIflex 435. If I ran into a low contrast scene, I'd use Kodak Vision 200T 5274 for its improved contrast, in a high contrast situation I'd switch to Kodak Vision 320T 5277 and in foggy, low light conditions, Kodak Vision 500T 5279 was my choice."