Spring/Summer of 08

Dear Friends,

It is a rainy day here in Lahti. I hope there will be couple more of those sunny days before the autumn really arrives! The months roll by fast. Summer especially seems to pass qiuckly. Hope Life is going well for you my friend. I am doing allright here. After summer I always seem to be filled with new ideas of what to do and how to organize my life... This year is no exception to that.
Well, back to the blogtrack now...

Last Spring, after finishing the documentary, we started working on our next fiction-pieces. We also had a course on scriptwriting(writing screenplays),which I really enjoyed. It was inspiring. I did not finish any screenplays, but I did work on couple of stories, that I might return to later on.

Everyone in our group wrote a synopsis (core idea, a brief description of essence of the film) for Fiktio3 -fiction3. Then our teacher decided which one he liked best. Well, I protested at this point, because originally we were supposed to have a collective chat about this. Now, the time was running out so we had to make quick decisions. So, our teacher left it in our hands eventually to decide which ideas we'd like to pursue further. It was a tough call, because we had so little time.

Me and Ville (the other director) read everyone's synopsis' and poured some sweat over which ones would be most interesting to do. After scratching our heads for awhile, we decided to go along with the ones that our teacher had also picked. Ville took Mari's synopsis and I took Antti's. Then I started to work with Antti. He would write a version, and I would make comments and suggestions to it. We kept going like this for some time and then had a meeting with the whole group. Everyone (including Erkki, the teacher) could comment on it now. The script got more polished all the time, and I started seeing it coming together. First, the idea of the movie seemed hard to realize, but after awhile I understood it well(in my opinion).

This was the first movie we made with professional actors, so that made it more interesting. And, of course, the quality of acting would be a bit better now. (I like to work with 'amateurs' and other students too, mind you. It's just different.) I found the actors from the City Theatre of Lahti. We did not rehearse much, had one read-through and a chat. That's all. Next time, I want to have a rehearsal.
Actually, this was not the first time we met paid actors and worked with them. We had had a short course on Directing Actors earlier on. But it was short. Plus there were teachers present there. It was good that we got to have that experience before shooting this film. This time we'd be left to our own devices :-/

Before the first shooting day, I still had few questions in my mind about the film that I had not fully resolved. I hoped that once we would start shooting, I would see the direction clearly. Well, I think it happened pretty much like that. The film focused more on drama and less on suspense. We shot for three days in my own flat.
(at that time our cinematographer, Italo, was still living in the same place too.)
We stayed well in our timetable and managed to get all the material we wanted.
Plus, maybe most importantly, I think people had good time doing this film. Well, I know I did. Before the first shooting day I was quite nervous. I wondered if had prepared well enough. I woke up couple of times early in the morning before the alarm stomach filled with butterflies. But once the process started rolling...then I just went with the flow...

During the spring there were other projects too. One was the 'Feeling'(tunne)-video. The task was to make about three-minutes long video that would express a certain feeling/emotion. I pondered for a long time what I would like to do with this one. My first idea was to make somekind of supernatural, paranormal, film. A Ghost comes for a visit or something like that. After that I thought I'd make something abstract. I abandoned that too. Eventually, I made a pretty straight-forward video in my own flat.
Drama, again. Guy is meditating, but he finds it hard to relax. Then an ex-girlfriend /ex-lover shows up for a visit. This stirs up lots of emotion in our main-character.
That inner peace is even more distant now, but by expressing his emotions he finds balance. That kind of simple story. I was satisfied with the result. This time I did not work with professional actors, but I had good time doing this film. We shot most of the material in one day. Afterwards I edited the piece myself.

Our school also offered us a document-project for the summer. We'd get paid for it too. Not much, but still...it was my first paid film-project :-) Our task was to make a film about fishing for teenagers. Well, to be more precise...to make a film that would get young people in high school to become interested in being a fisherman/woman.
I don't go fishing myself, so I had my doubts if this would be a good project for me. I decided to go for it. It would be more experience for me. We are still working on this project, so I won't write more about that now.

I didn't work that much this summer. For one week I went to youth-camp and shot some short films with teenagers there. So, I was both a youth-worker and a director. Good combination, I liked doing both. The days were long there...I'd wake up early and finish ten o'clock in the evening. Few youngsters very quite motivated about the project, so that was good. I'm gonna edit the films now and send them a dvd later.

I was a roadie in Celine Dion-concert. We did not get to see the show because it was sold out. That was annoying. I always want to see the show, if I have been building the stage all day.
In early July, I went to a soccer-tournament in eastern Finland. Leka-Cup at Juva. We gathered together with our old junior-soccer team Palokan Riento-81 and took up the challenge. It was great fun. I am glad I went there. I was afraid that I wouldn't be up for it, but it went really well actually. I shot one goal and our team came second in the tournament. It was cool to play with the old buddies again. Maybe we do the same thing again next year. Then only the gold can be our goal.

Now, my work is calling me back to the editing-room. Much love&light to you all. Enjoy the remaining warm days if you read this in Finland. If you are in Australia or somewhere else...well, all the best to you!

Lauri Anssi M

ps. If you are interested in seeing films i've been working on. Contact me and i can make you a dvd. None of them are subtitled yet, but i am working on that right now.