first day..

The only thought in my now is something like this " okay, I managed today. But there is still 10 days to go...". Not like everything didn´t go quite well, but my head is a mess. lets hope some sleep will clear my head a little bit.

Go outside

Yesterday, while walking around the town of Karhula (soon to be the locations for my short movie) I noticed that thigs are much more simpler outside. I can sit on my chair, eyes nailed to the computer screen, trying to figure out what the lead characters can do while walking in the streets of Karhula, and I can figure out something, but of course the real and good ideas come from the real world, by looking, listening and feeling. This is a very simple fact, but it is easy to forget. Fortunately I remembered it yesterday, and came up with solutions to few scenes which I didn´t know what to do with them.

Today I spent few hours at the marketplace, watchin people and walking around. It was a bit cold, so it wasn´t so fun, but I filmed something with my videocamera, and I hope I can get the same documentary feel to my fiction short movie. But it might be that we don´t have too much time to just walk around with the crew and actors and just to shoot something. But I´ll try, no matter what they say.

It´s also this that I really want to live in the situation, to shoot what ever comes in mind, but it´s hard if someone in the crew doesn´t understand that. Fiction projects are often carefully planned and therefore they are just fiction, with no touch to the real world. (well this is not true in most of the movies, only in student films maby, and of course they must be carefully planned and plans followed.) I mean that they might end up as very stif with no air to breath in. Someone may consider this to be a succesful outcome.

I have also made carefull plans, but I´m aware about the fact that things won´t work as planned, and I´m more than willing to change the plans. This kind of attidute is almost everytime misinterpreted to not knowing what you want. That is so wrong I can´t even say how wrong it is. I mean, when I live my life, I don´t know what I want or what the result of my actions will be, but I know the direction where I wanna go. I know what I want this short movie to be like, but there are alternate routs to get there. I realize that this kind of thinkin is hard to everyone else making this project, but since this is a very small project, why not make it the hardest way there is? :)

Lately I bought the movie Before sunset, by Richard Linklater, on dvd. I´ve seen it before and liked it alot, but I´ve now watched it three times and I´m so amazed by the way it has been made. The camera follows the characters who are talking non-stop, it seems that it is a documentary, but of course it´s not, camera angle changes, you see these little details what they are doing or thinking, they go on a boat, talking, camera angle changes, and the light hits so perfectly to Celines hair..for example. There are so many amazing details and the use of camera, not to mention the perfect performance from the actors, and it´s all controlled, yet feels totally real. Watch it.

I´m so tired right now...

Doing things, random thoughts.

It is very hard to do things. There are many dangers in that. The first danger is that one doesn´t realize the amount of work the smallest thing requires. And why that small thing is worth a lot because of that.

When one realizes this, one can appreciate and understand things much better, but the second danger is, that after realizing how hard things are, one gets overwhelmed and stops doing anything. The amount of thinking and working seems to be too much, in things like cinema or other projects, where the idea and work required may sometimes seem insane. This mustnt happen. If the script says "the boat must go over the mountains" then the boat goes over the mountains. It requires a lot of planning and physical power, but if that is something that stops people from doing something, why do anything? altough the reasons for doing this may seem totally worthless and insane. Physical and mental strenght is something to be used, not to be preserved somewhere for better times.

This is where the third danger comes. All this, the boat over the mountains, at the end it is just a vehicle for something else, it is not the soul purpose of the movie. People do that just to express some though or feel, cause thats the main thing. So after all that work, one realizes that it isn´t so great, it is not so important, if we can´t understand for example, what the lead character feels, or something like that.

It´s the same thing with running, I suppose. Why go running? And when running, if you stop when you feel tired, why did you start at the first place? Altough you didn´t go running just for the sake of runnin, maby you needed some exercise. That can be achieved in many ways, but you decided to run, so don´t stop until its absolutely necessary.

3 days ´till shooting

So, this Friday will be the first day of shooting of my first big short movie project. I´ve planned this since December, the script is much older than that, although you couldn´t tell from the looks of it. Shootings will take about 11 days. Almost all of it will be on location, just 2 days indoors. Let´s hope the weather is what we need. If it isn´t.. well that remains to be seen.

I´m the writer,producer,director,cameraman and editor of this upcoming movie. When I got some money from the South-eastern Finland artcommittee things started to roll. I put out some adds to find some actors. But after a while I found some promising ones trough a friend or something.
During the spring I wrote the script again and got shooting equipments from a firm called Mediacenter and a drink sponsor from Laitila, beer, cider and lemonade. Slowly I gathered a small group of people around me.

I couldn´t work very much on this, cause I study at the University of Arts and Design, in Helsinki. So that took a lot of my time. Also I did 2 musicvideos while doing this. Manitou - Fools in Control in the winter and Total Devastation - Aware. So I did everything like a part time job, almost all by my self. Expect the clothings are designed by Netta Kervinen, who has done a great job with them, which I couldn´t have done. So of course that is a really big part of the pre production. And I´ve had help from my brother Matti Rautaniemi.

Anyway. Today I woke up when one of the soundguys called and told me that we didn´t have any sound equipments, cause there had been some mistakes in the renting business. So now we have to find the soundequipments fast, but if we cant get it anywhere else, we must rent them from Helsinki. ( we shoot in Karhula about 120 km from Helsinki, not such a big deal) Before we could have get the equipments for free, now we might have to pay. That sucks. This will resolve tomorrow.

I also noticed that the beach we use as a location, has a gate so people can´t drive to the shore. After a few phone calls i managed to get a key to it. I also coloured some pants using black tea leafs! and built some reflecting thingies from folio and styrofoam.

I think the hardest part is still to get the message trough to people..cast and crew. It always feels like no one understands anything I say. But no one has quit or anything, so I think we´re okay.

Nothing more today, this is my first post, lets hope it gets more interesting when things get a little more messed up when we start to shoot!