Permits, more permits, documentary, and funds!
on November 12th, 2009, by Ton
One of the more complex producer’s jobs is to arrange for an international team the legal paperwork to be allowed to stay and work in the Netherlands. According to the authorities, we have five ALIENS in the team who need to get official residency permits. The process is as follows;
– make appointments with IND (immigration services), get 30 page forms for each alien to fill in.
– take aliens to a place where you can get real approved passport pictures (no smiling!).
– take aliens to the Amsterdam city office to subscribe as a resident (needs passport, picture, rental contract of an apartment chamber of commerce stuff, etc)
– take aliens to the IND offices and wait 2.5 hours while IND employees try to fit aliens in a category… but wait, there it is, a miniature exception clause for artists who work temporarily in the Netherlands!
– then being sent back to office to redo the paperwork based on new clause.
– take aliens to the IND offices again, and * hoorah * they get a 6 month temporary residence granted!
And this is the short version of the whole process 🙂 You can imagine the above took about 3 days of time & energy of the team… this week.
Anyway! Another great news is that we’ve found a documentary filmer – Ali Boubred – to hang out in our offices to record action and edit it all. He will soon introduce himself here too.
Oh, and we survived the final step in the process with the Dutch Film Fund today… today I went there with Esther and Colin to defend the latest script changes, production details and some finances. The board will decide within 2 weeks…
Pictures: Nathan, Campbell and me in train. Made by Colin’s iPhone. It were cold rainy days indeed…
-Ton-
November 12th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Oh!!! Documentary guy!!! YEAH!!! 😀
It takes awhile, but everything is proceeding well indeed!
November 12th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
I know how you feel, having moved from the US to Finland. Waiting hours for things to happen is not exactly fun.
I was wondering why the blog wasn’t updated. 😛
November 12th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
an I thought that the bureaucracy is only in my country! :))
November 12th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Paperwork.. paperwork.. paperwork.. always gives me shudders…
But good to know that the aliens have been registered.. Peace :-D\/
November 12th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Yeah, the Foundation should definitely work to let Netherlands have a “Temporary residence permit for cool Blender Institute artists” law.
November 12th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
…so cool. I mean, so…part of the experience. Err – don’t get me wrong, I know how annyoing paperwork can be (ived in the USA for a year and went to China for over a months – always had people to help ;)…but it’s really part of international filmcrew making film process.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Bureaucracy: It’s the single biggest obstacle for real interplanetary traffic. I doubt if we will ever reach Mars, let alone having Martians in a future Blender team.
I hope the film fund will take that in consideration.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
phew…
Is there any formular we could fill out, in order to
a) ban the person who invented bureaucracy
and/or
b) get rid of all the bureaucracy on this entire planet?
November 12th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Seems Ton is the guy who needs four arms to handle all the paperwork for its crew 😉
You should ask some indian guru for some medicine Ton, perhaps it works and than you can fill out all the forms. I would also consider for some medicine to get more eyes, so you can read all the forms faster (hihi)
Great Ton that you do all the little dirty work (driving the guys around and organizing all this bureaucratic chaos)
Long lives the four-armed Ton !!!
(I wish I could draw as good as the sketches here in the blog – than I would draw it)
November 12th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
oh yh.. “The four armed shaiton… 🙂
November 13th, 2009 at 12:34 am
…”take aliens to the IND offices and wait 2.5 hours while IND employees try to fit aliens in a category…”
It’s normal to wait 2.5 hours when you’re working on a 2.5 blender version :p
November 13th, 2009 at 1:07 am
You should have claimed to work on Blender 0.0.0.2.77, then it would have taken a second 😛
November 13th, 2009 at 1:32 am
nice one kram1032 🙂
November 13th, 2009 at 2:37 am
Confirmed! I always *knew* Nathan was an alien… 😉
November 13th, 2009 at 2:37 am
Bureaucrats suck! Good thing you got the ALIENS sorted out though. Nice that they can stay on earth for 6 months.
November 13th, 2009 at 2:40 am
Wow! Go go go, Ali Boubred! Thanks for the update, Ton.
-Reyn
November 13th, 2009 at 5:03 am
confirmado; los “ALIENS” existen xD
mmm… un mundo nos vigila xD
saludos 🙂
November 13th, 2009 at 5:55 am
So if they are all registered as aliens…
That would mean the ‘Making of’ and docos are all classified as Sci-fi flicks???
or just another x-files episode – watch out for Mulder and Scully.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Well if you ever have any troubles I guess we could put into our hats and buy a ship so you can do future projects in international waters
November 13th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Aliens! awsome, is there a blender studio in District 9?
November 13th, 2009 at 9:57 am
hahaha…. if they get rid of the IND, the Netherlands will probably be the coolest place on the planet
November 13th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Just think if t hey could have made Durian oop I mean Sintel 😛 without all having to be in the same place, they would not have had to deal with all that paper work. Pity remote film making and the internet is not quiet fast enough yet to do that.
Anyway congratulations of not being Aliens anymore! And good luck to the documentary film makers, that poor guy is not going to get any sleep!
November 13th, 2009 at 11:28 am
At least the papers are possible to fill in…
I remember asking a working Permit in France once, had to dig up my parents marriage certificate (what the hell for?!). And watching them take a coffee break while doing your papers certainly doesn’t help the mood. I suddenly understood the need for guards too, as a calm person even I wanted to rip off their heads when, after handing in 14 wads of paper, I had to go home because they forgot to hand me the second list of stuff they needed from me when I went there….
November 13th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
horrible.. just horrible.. glad it go sorted.. eventually
November 13th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
How on earth did you manage to have Nathan not smile?
November 13th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
lol.. ALIENZ!!!
November 14th, 2009 at 6:09 am
look like happy in working .
imagination feel