Only Me is a 55 minute documentary about The Platters directed by Ellen Blom and produced by Viewpoint. It premieres the 9th of April 2015 at Dutch broadcaster NTR Het Uur van de Wolf.
The story is about The Platters. Being one of the most successful groups in history with big hits like “Only You” and “The Great Pretender” one could assume a world of glitter and glamour. The reality is quite harsh in comparison to that image as manager Buck Ram chose to hire the singers and pay them a fixed fee. If a singer was forced to leave the group or choose to leave himself Buck simply replaced him or her an moved on. He didn’t take into account that all the people who left would start their own Platter groups…
Longtime director Ellen Blom and I teamed up to do the research in 2013 for this film. Soon we found multiple characters in several parts of the USA that could support the story. The main questions where “Who are the real Platters?” and “How do you become a real platter?”. We wanted to let the viewers decide for themselves so I chose te be quite objective in my camerawork this time.
Shooting all over the states in multiple trips asked for a small package. But the quality needed to be fit for a big screen and the camera needed to cope with a vast a mount of available light situations. I chose the Sony F55 on this one paired with a fujinon 19-90 to be able to work fast during all the music performances that we shot. The story is told mostly in fixed frames using a tripod only. That resulted in a almost fictional look that supports the main question: what is real and what isn’t.
