What I've been up to...for last 10 months (Part1)

Hello Friends,

It has been some time since my last update. I don't know if people still come here, but I quess I could write something. It is spring now. Last time I wrote it was summer.

During the summer-time I worked at some concerts... Metallica, Rolling Stones, to name a few. And UMO-jazz festival too. Summer went pretty fast. It was good to see Metallica play. I was a Metallica-fan... when still in highschool. It was cool to see them. The crowd sang with one voice in classic-songs...not only in choruses, but also in guitar-solos! Finns are big on metalmusic.

I made one kind of experimental film last august. It was one weekend with Salla and Ville. It is called Kiirastuli- Purgatory. I was pretty happy about it. Happy about the result, and the process. It was enjoyable to make it. It is about a guy who dies and then angel escorts him to a next level or phase. It can be seen as a sequel to a movie made in October 2006--Suuri Kohtaaminen (the great encounter)-that was my first short fiction movie ( Well, I made few movies as a kid, but they are a little bit different thing.) I think the acting might have developed in Kiirastuli, if compared to movies I made before that. We did not rehearse. Straight into it.

We spent the fall semester doing documentaries. Our group did two documentaries. One was a so-called epic documentary ( directed by Ville) and the other one was a documentary about one person, like a portrait ( that was the project I directed). Perhaps the most difficult thing was to find a topic. First I wanted to do a documentary about Zen-Center in Lahti or Helsinki. We would film one meditation-session, from beginning to an end. Well, that did not happen. Then I thought about doing a movie about Scientologists in Lahti. That did not happen. We went to a huge beer&lemonade-factory...maybe that could be the topic. Nope. I wrote to people who saw themselves as contact-people for UFO's...but could not find a right type of person before the deadline. So...there were many steps in this process. Finally I met Sari.

One guy in our filming crew was working with people who were unusually short- he edited their magazine. So, I contacted a person who (i think)was the editor of the magazine and she recommended that I contact Sari. Sari is a very positive, strong-willed and energetic person. When she was young she wanted to find out the reason for her condition-diastrofia. Her doctor told her to do research on her own roots. That's where she would find a reason. So that's what she started doing. She found out that it was fascinating work (this research)...and that she was good at it too. Soon she realized that she had actually become a researcher: she was getting job-offers. And she did also find a genetic reason for her condition. So, it can be said that her illness led her to a work she loved doing. This was the guiding idea of this documentary for me: When Life gives you lemons, you make lemonade-kind of thing. Showing how one can turn really challenging conditions if one has a strong will to live, a good attitude to life.

Doing a short documentary required more work than what I expected. However, once I had a subject for my documentary it became easier. Plus..Sari was a good subject because she was open and interested to tell us stories from her life. I wanted to have Sari's husband and her parents in the film too. They all agreed. That was really a good thing too. Sari let us film material in her 50th birthday.
We shot lots of material for this movie. Eight cassettes or something like that. Editing the material was a big job. Our editor did fine work there.
I was happy with the result. I think it was a kind of short film that could be shown in Finnish tv. I thought the duration was good too. Maybe it could've been a little longer, but I think it is fine as it is.
I learned a lot doing this documentary. I quess I would do some things differently now...looking backwards to this project. But, in this field of work, the best lessons are often learned through doing.

The other documentary our group did ( I was not involved in this one though) was about a horse-race in Lahti. There was no dialogue in this movie. You could hear people talking but they were not narrating to a camera. (unlike in Sari-documentary) This group managed to make this horse-race an interesting and beautiful visual experience.

The Fall-semester went fast. I was happy to go to Christmas-holiday after working quite a bit with the documentary. My parents went to Vietnam for last Christmas. We managed to have an early Christmas-dinner before they left, with my brother Tomi and his girlfriend Hanna being there too. At Cristmas-eve I went to my friend's place. Family Leppänen had invited me to spend the evening with them. I had good time there. I also became the Santa Claus at Olavi's place. That was fun too. I made a little dance when people sang. Santa's Christmas-dance. I had a didjeridoo with me. Santa had just returned from AUstralia.
I received some good gifts: One r'n'b music soapopera, a gift-card to local filmstore, one classic movie, a perfume bottle...just to name a few.
Duting the Christmas-time we got along well with each other, me and Napoleon. Napoleon turned fourteen last December. He is becoming an old dog. I wish and pray that he will live a long, healthy and happy life.

New Year's party was at Tuukka's place. There were some lovely people there. We had some fireworks too. There was not much snow though. But we ignored that and celebrated.
I was pretty satisfied with the year 2007. I made progress both in my studies and in with my personality too. Progress with one's personality is generally slow though.
I hope 2008 will be a good and blessed year for me, my friends and for this whole planet.

I will write a part two soon...we are shooting a movie tomorrow, so i gotta get some sleep now. Oh sweet sleep, sweet dreams. But now I am back on the blogtrack again!