A Day in the Life of Ezra Xenos

06.13: We have two young children, so we’re always up early. I don’t check my email until after the four of us have had breakfast - and I’ve had coffee. I quickly peek at my email while the girls tear the house apart. Our directors shoot all over the world, so news comes in at odd hours.

08.03: My wife heads to work early so she can leave on time to pick up the girls at the end of the day. I spend my morning negotiating with a three and one year old to get dressed and out the door on time (makes dealing with work the rest of the day seem easy by comparison).

08.48: Getting to the office involves a 12-minute bike ride. Through a park, past the Rijksmuseum, and then I’m in De Pijp - the neighbourhood that Halal calls home. Our office is a former school building in the heart of one of Amsterdam’s most vibrant districts.

09.03: First up is a check-in with the production team on one of our commercial projects with director Mees Peijnenburg. We run through everything; latest boards, casting, locations, etc.

11.04: Meeting downstairs with our documentary researchers to discuss an upcoming film being directed by Johan Kramer, they’re a little camera shy. The documentary department is on fire right now, they’ve got four exciting films out to festivals and more on the way.

12.32: In the edit suite to record a scratch VO. Being the only native English speaker in the office, editors are subjected to my voice far more than they would like.

13.21: We eat lunch together, like most Dutch companies. There’s a lot of bread, and a lot of stuff to put on bread, which to Dutch people constitutes lunch. It’s ‘gezellig.’ I’m running late because I was on the phone, that’s not rare.

15.30: On my way to another meeting - there are a lot of meetings - I stop to chat with director Emmanuel Adjei, who’s in the office to work on an application for funding on an upcoming narrative project. Emmanuel, like many Halal directors, moves back and forth between commercial and fiction projects.

16.31: Another meeting. This time to discuss the fun collaboration with oneshoteditions. The idea behind this initiative is that photographers shoot a roll of film and people buy the prints on spec, with no idea of what they’ll get. Once a set of prints have been made, they destroy the negatives. For the third edition they’ll be featuring three of our photographers.