The Making of an Un(nude)usual Advent Calendar
It’s the 1st of December! Time to open that first window in your advent calendars or, in the case of Mr Bingo, scratch off somebody’s clothes… Since 2018, the artist has been making advent calendars using scratch off ink to reveal his illustrations of people’s naked bodies.
Director Lee Holmes tells us more about the making of our latest Short of the Week, “Mr Bingo’s Advent Calendar”.
I’d wanted to make a documentary about Mr Bingo for a while but he hates talking about himself on camera so he wasn’t exactly keen on the idea. But he was preparing for his new advent calendar project and we got talking about some of the unique experiences he’d had in previous years, so that was how the idea to film the process came about.
I wanted to be as unobtrusive as possible to make sure all the participants felt comfortable, so I decided to shoot, record audio and do all the interviews myself. But I didn’t realise how quick Mr Bingo’s process was - so the biggest challenge was trying to capture everything.
But fortunately all the participants were so open with me and told me some incredibly personal stories, so I’m hugely grateful to them and also to Mr Bingo for letting me come along for the ride.
Short of the Week is our series dedicated to showcasing the best short documentaries available online. Get in touch to pitch yours.
