Every year for the last eleven years on February I find myself traveling in a cramped plane to Berlin Film Festival. More than for the festival, I actually come over for the European Film Market, which pools together all the film producers, distributors, sales people, financiers and, well, the general film folk. Of course, since it’s at the same time as the prestigious Berlin Film Festival, there’s also the lauded filmmakers of the year – the actors, the directors and the producers, who scoot from premiere to press events in the black Audis, evading the gazes of the festival-goers, save their quick strut at the red carpet. And yes, there’s also the actual film lovers, the ones that crowd the theatres, flock in front of the red carpets and line up in front of the box offices in hopes for tickets. There are also the critics and the film journalists, mostly too busy to party since they have ten films to catch up today, elbowing their way into the junkets and round tables, or if they have the money, one-on-ones with the stars. And then there are those on the fringes; the VR people, the production service people, the tech folk branching into film and those who just want to have a whiff of the glamour of film world. It’s an unruly mess, and every year they gather up to do what we call the film business.
Berlin was this year warm and snow-free.
I’ve obviously been going back to Berlin ever since we started to work on the Iron Sky franchise. The first Iron Sky was released in 2012 at Berlinale, as part of the Panorama program. Later on, we’ve been back whether to finance the sequel, or the Chinese one, or just to show our faces in case someone would forget who we are. Every year we come with a different constellation: sometimes, it’s bigger group – cameraman, marketing, producer, production coordinator, director, director’s wife, you name it. Sometimes, we show up with just me and Tero, just for few business meetings.
This year’s team was producer Tero Kaukomaa and my lovely wife Annika, who’s also writing a book about the production of Iron Sky The Coming Race.
Typically, one stays in Berlin from Thursday to Monday-Tuesday. I’ve once done the whole 14 days, sometimes one week, but this time we decided we go with a small crew – me, Tero and Annika, and we stay only for three days. A grand decision indeed. We didn’t have too much to do, since Iron Sky The Coming Race was delayed until the fall, and Iron Sky: The Ark was just starting its’ post production, and other projects were on such a speculative stage. Mostly, it was negotiations with ISTCR partners on the road ahead and planning the release later this year, but there was also one meeting for a potential new project lined up for me.
Positive attitude.
Choosing the place to stay is imperative during the Berlinale / EFM time. The hotels are all quite packed, but luckily, Berlin has loads of hotels around Potsdamer Platz, the place where everything happens, and now for few times we’ve stayed in a new establishment just few hundred meters away from Potsdamer, called Grimm’s. It’s decently priced, functional, has a comfortable lobby and a good breakfast.
The three days at the festival went by quite comfortably. On the first night, there was the Finnish party. I came a bit late there, in the middle of some kind of a performance and a short film, which was left a bit empty to me since I didn’t really get the context. I was also feeling extremely unsociable for whatever reason, and decided to park my ass in the far corner of the room, so that I wouldn’t have to speak with everyone I don’t really know. Not surprisingly, many came around asking how was China (it was rough, I answered, but I think we got a good film in the can) and when is Iron Sky The Coming Race Coming (later this year, no date yet chiseled in the stone), but since I wasn’t feeling really party-ish, we decided to bail out relatively early.
Cocktail party
The next two days were a bit more animated; I enjoyed some receptions, sat down through a bunch of meetings and even got a chance to catch up with some friends who were visiting Berlin. Leaving home after three – well, three and a half days – was definitely the right choice. Tero had the most important key meeting on Monday, and we were a bit worried if he’s gonna make it, but he did appear just around the time we would’ve had to leave anyway.
Few things I noticed this year’s Berlin, I guess, were that the festival was a bit more silent – there was no big stars in town, so a lot of media were not there, and many companies had much reduced budget anyway, so no crazy marketing stunts that I spotted at least. Also, prices in Berlin are definitely hiking up. What used to be 5€ for taxi is now 10€, what used to be 10€ for a buger is now 15€…
Film business.
It’s always hard to say whether or not the festival was “good one” or “bad one”. I remember being very result-oriented on the first years, but nowadays, watching as Tero goes around without very clear plan but knows exactly who to meet and where, the results are really not easy to say. You’ll see in five to ten years who are the faces that jumped onboard with you from where, and anyone can be your most important partner, so treat them all with respect.
Back about a month ago we had the last two shooting days of Iron Sky: The Ark here in Finland, and here’s how they turned out.
Jack Brown (Rhydian Vaughan) addressing the Illuminati. Photo by Tomi Tuuliranta
The first shooting day at Academy Ballroom dawned snowy and dark in Turku. My hotel, Hamburger Börs, was located just a shortish walk away from the location, so instead of packing my ass into the car, I decided to walk by the river and enjoy the few peaceful moments all by myself.
Lei and me talking about the scenes. Photo by Tomi Tuuliranta.
Last night, we had had a nice dinner at one of the many fine establishments by the Aura-river. Lei and Chris from China had arrived already few days before and Stephanie Paul from the States, Malla Malmivaara from Helsinki and Rhydian Vaughan from Taiwan, as well as Malin Levanon from Sweden and James Quinn from Frankfurt – and of course, Tero Kaukomaa, whom I had also casted for a small role – all had made their way to Turku for the shoot.
Jack Brown (Rhydian Vaughan) and Malin Levanon (Duchess Sofia). Photo by Tomi Tuuliranta.
Lost in thoughts, I arrived to the Academy Ballroom and recognized the first thing every film set has: trucks being unloaded, and loaded, and then unloaded again. I wiggled indoors between vehicles and arrived, again, to the hustle and bustle of a film set. Light crew running there, extras chatting here, camera crew over in that corner… But instead of being a weird giant to stare at, nobody bat an eyelid as I walked in. I was just another mid-thirties white guy with a hoodie… And I understood everything. This was a big thing for me; I didn’t feel like there’s me and my shit and then loads of random noise not meant for me around: instead, everything, every conversation, every detail was about the production, and I was able to follow them.
Directing. Photo by Tomi Tuuliranta.
See, this is new to me. I’ve really never shot in Finland, at least not professionally and at least not a feature film. Mostly, I’ve been shooting in Germany or Belgium or China, where the native language is still gibberish to me. But strangely, being able to understand more what happened, it didn’t add to my stressload, actually removed a big chunk of it. I wasn’t a stranger in a strange land, I was in my home turf, and instantly I was able to kick back a little and take it a bit more easy.
Now I understand why people prefer shooting in their native countries.
Ready to shoot. Photo by Tomi Tuuliranta.
The shoot itself? Well, it was smooth and fun. We had a great group of extras, our actors had fun time, the place was fabulous – and the crew, under Lei’s direction, was effective, professional and fast. We finished both days exactly on time, ran through six pages of script and four scenes including a small action piece, and it all turned out really fine. We shot altogether two for two days, then finished just in time for the wrap party.
Behind the camera. Photo by Tomi Tuuliranta.
The party was organized by Turku Film Commission who invited all of us to Villa Marjaniemi, a legendary old villa outside of Turku. I unloaded quite a lot of stress on that night, exchanging experiences with the actors, the crew and the whole production team. We had a sauna later that night, and although the river was frozen so we couldn’t swim, it was a perfect, perfect ending for a super rough shoot. All in all, 80 shooting days in two countries, spanning over six months of pre- and production time all ended on a high note.
Now all that would be left was to cut the film and create the VFX. And that’s what I’m doing back here in China, cutting and working with VFX.
Somebody was asking on the Internet what happened to the Finnish shooting days of Iron Sky: The Ark? Yeah, reading the blog I also realized I had not gone through that story, mainly because that took place in Finland and this diary I write only in China – but now it’s time to take few steps back to those days about a month ago, when we indeed finished the shoot of Iron Sky: The Ark in my dear home country.
The whole idea for the Finnish shoot was born originally in Tero’s head. We knew we would need to shoot a scene in a location titled “German Castle” in the script, but heading over to Germany to shoot for two days would’ve been cost-wise quite challenging, and besides, although we shoot a lot outside of Finland, we would like nothing more than to bring projects back home. It’s been very challenging due to lack of production incentive program in Finland, but since they established one finally now last year, we were able to figure out a way to make the Finnish shoot work.
We are not in China anymore.
The other important factor was the city of Turku, which has been very active in film field, getting productions to shoot in their beautiful city every now and then. Turku also has the great advantage of some of the most amazing locations in Finland: old, dazzlingly charismatic buildings, halls, churches and of course nice nature around. What we needed was a prestigious interior, and found one from Turku Academy’s Ballroom.
Detail at the Academy Ballroom
I had returned back from China one and a half weeks before, managed to relax a little bit, spend some time with Julius and get ready for the shoot. Week before the shoot, we did a little recce to Turku, where we had also the pre-production meeting.
The team was much smaller in Finland, but all of them were good professional people, and I had the impression that this machine, the Finnish production team, was really greased and ready to roll. We had a first AD from Finland who did the preparations, and would hand over everything to Lei as soon as he would arrive.
Pre-Production Meeting in Turku
The main reason to shoot outside of China was originally Max’s wish, because he wanted believable Western faces in the audience. I agree, having worked with a lot of foreign extras in China, that it’s very limited what you can get over here. Mostly Russians or Ukrainians, who look very East European, but of course finding old, rich Westerners looking extras in Finland would be much easier. So that was one of my main concerns, to pick good extras. We needed people who shimmer with the aura of wealth.
The space itself was beautiful as it is, so we didn’t really need to furnish it too much, just needed a bunch of tables (we did design a special table light, though) and chairs, but since we were to have a small action sequence taking place in the location, we did need to prepare few foldable tables with some breakaway glasses so our stunt team would be able to run their actions safely.
From China, we really didn’t bring anyone else but Chris our VFX supervisor and Lei, and Max wanted to come over too, although he really didn’t spend too much time on the set, just explored the city and fell in love with Turku and Finland. Rest of the crew was Finnish. After having worked half a year in Chinese and English, it was really a big relief to be able to go through all the preproduction meetings in Finnish. Speaking your own language is just so much easier and gets things done so much faster.
Ahh, another day of cutting and slashing stuff we so carefully shot. Nothing feels as liberating as throwing stuff out, stuff you thought you can’t live without when filming. Unfortunately, I’m still very groggy from the jetlag, so it’s painstakingly hard to crawl out of bed after midday and head over to the office, but over there, things move fairly quickly. The editor is fast, and although there’s a slight language wall there – we are almost in clear understanding on each others, but sometimes information gets twisted and the dialogue hits the wall, but mostly it’s smooth sailing. Like I said, she has done a wonderful job already on the material, so it’s nice to build on that, instead of having to do everything from the scratch.
The air quality has been pretty nasty since I came over. Index dipping on most days to red, the weather outside is gray and the city disappears in smog in just few hundred meters away. I’ve felt stranded in my hotel and office the last few days, since without my skateboard it’s pretty hard to get around. See, getting a taxi in Beijing can be quite a painful operation. It’s easy enough to get the hotel to order you one, but getting back from wherever is the trick.
My dear hotel. I know all the staff already – no surprise, I’ve spent two months here recently.
After the work day I decided I’ve been enough in my room and after a quick nap I jumped in my Timberlands and taxied to a half price taco Tuesday night at a local taco house. The buzz was positive, loads of foreigners also had found the tacos, and margaritas were floating around the room as I parked my bum on the barstool and ordered two combo platters full of delicious tacos and few Coronas. I allowed the noise of the room fade out in to the background and sank into my book. I’m reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, a wonderful post-ecocatastrophic book about New York.
Tacos, Kindle and a Corona.
I was still feeling a bit jumpy after the dinner, so I Beijinger.com’d me something else to do. I found out there was a jazz band playing in a club that sounded pretty promising – Dusk Dawn Club – so I hailed a cab (which means: stood in the freezing cold Beijing night for 30 minutes) to the shadowy Hutong alleys and soon enough found myself enjoying a Chinese-American (I guess) jazz band playing a bunch of classics and then throwing into a full fletched impro with locals. A perfect night, only a bit lonely if anything.
Back at the hotel I tried again to sleep, but it was impossible. I wasted the night away with my laptop, even making it to the breakfast before I finally fell asleep. I knew already the next day was ruined, but luckily it was just one meeting day, not a proper edit session.
On the days like yesterday, it’s great to take a peek at other people’s social media feeds. What amazing lives they live: some are out there, skiing. Others have screaming baby in their hands. Someone has gone to south, to the sun. And here I am, in 185 pollution index Beijing, stranded in a hotel since I can’t use the taxi in this city doing nothing but munching Oreos in my bed and watching Boss Baby animation. What a crazy day off.
I did go to the neighbourhood restaurant which serves some pretty nice Chinese food. I dare not to peek into the kitchen, which is blissfully sealed save a small hatch where the food is pushed out, but I like the atmosphere there. A lot of people from around come and eat dinner there with their families, the food is cheap but pretty good and there’s a good variety of it available. Today’s dinner was a plate of sauted corn and a tofu-meatball -soup, and while it sounds a bit dubious, it was really delicious.
My time here in Beijing will get very, very boring during the next three weeks, that’s as much as I can promise, unless I really grab myself from the ass and decide I have to do something that’s teaching me something new every day. There’s a good selection of museums I will start going through, and so much to see, I’m just a touch lazy to do anything – and, well, I’m working most of the daylight time. I just wish the jetlag would let go and I could sleep normally; then one could plan a bit more activities. Right now I go by my sleep rhythm which is completely screwed up right now.
But there are things to see, and I shall see them!
The persistence of the hotel cleaners leaves me in awe. No matter how loud I scream from the bed that I’m still here, they keep on banging the door, and eventually call my phone, and only then I get them to stop by telling I’m not going any-fucking-where. I paid for this room, now let me try to cure my fucking jetlag here silvuplää.
This means when I finally, after the constant interruptions, got up from the bed it was already past midday. I remember waking up around this time when I was a kid and spent weekends over at my friend’s place and we played Nintendo secretly ’till morning (which was, then, around 2 am), and then it was impossible to wake up to go outside play with others like everybody else did.
Nevertheless, I waded past the McD and grabbed myself two burgers for lunch and then came over to the office. They had brought in a nice TV set and a comfy couch, so I stretched myself on it and we started to work with mrs. Fang. Our method is first to focus on drama, and only after that is in order, focus on action. She has already done quite a good job, so it’s not like we have to start from the scratch, but much of the work is me stopping and asking if there’s better take (usually she already fished the best one) and especially focus on the transitions between scenes. It seems to be something I find myself fighting the longest time in edit, how to get from one scene to another without letting the pace stumble.
Just around the time we were about to be finished, mrs. Fang noted that tomorrow would be Sunday, and we would have a day off. Which made me realize today was Saturday, which made me realized I had made a dinner arrangement with someone. In half an hour!
I ran to the hotel, changed my shirt and jumped into a cab and headed to meet a friend I met through another friend, for some Korean BBQ. Ludovic was right on time, but the place was empty, so we took a quick tour around the neighborhood looking for open restaurants, and eventually landed into a small street full of great-looking Japanese restaurants and chose one in random.
The dinner was really amazing. Ludovic had just finished fasting, so he was hungry, and so was I (I don’t need to fast to be hungry, though, I can tell you that) and we wolfed a table full of sushi, tempura, grilled stuff and salads and whatnot over the dinner, talking about investments (he’s a professional investor), games (he owns a game company) and films (well, my side of the table).
Hungry? Yeah, thought so too.
We even bounced to this couple Ludovic knew who we chatted a bit about books (I was introduced to writer Matthew Reilly’s work), until finally we called it a night and headed out.
Back at home I fired up my laptop and watched The Beauty And The Beast (the Oscars are coming…) and then played around with my laptop until I dozed off around five in the morning (I did have a nap during the Beauty, though).
There’s something that fascinates me with these dimly-lit China back alleys.
Last night I dreamt of this lizard-like creature which was made of human hands, but was only able to walk backwards because it was in such constant pain. Somewhere, buried between the palms was a face of a friendly-looking coder – I don’t know who, but someone with quite a regular coder face – and it crawled towards me from the darkness, talking something about the pains it was suffering.
Oh, welcome back, melatonin-induced crazy dreams, the wakings-up at midnight, the going-to-beds at 8 am… Now I remember how it was when I came to China first time around. This jetlag is going to be one hell of a mountain to climb.
Yesterday I saw the first cut of the movie. That’s always the defining moment of the production: when you first time sit down and actually review what you’ve shot. Then, right there, you’ll either see a movie, or a mess. So far, I’ve always been lucky enough to have a movie at my hands, even around the first screening.
Actually, it was interesting to see how well the film worked. The flow was quite smooth, and never did I really encounter a scene which I didn’t quite believe in. The pacing was pretty good, and although it’s still too long, there’s quite a lot of great moments in it already.
So now, it’s mine and mrs. Fang – my editor – job to put it all together and make it into an actual film.
Later in the day Max walked in and brought me a coffee machine. Mr. Song, the big boss of Jiabo, also came by to say hi – or “nihao”, in Chinese, and in the evening Max took me and mrs. Fang for some hot pot. God, I missed that! We discussed a variety of topics – they had laid down quite clear release plan with mr. Song – and also spoke about Max’s visit in Finland. He had liked Turku as a city, although did mention that he was surprised to find out the old church in the city was every day locked when he tried to visit it, without any clear explanation why.
Right off the bat I felt the familiar raspy feeling crawl up my throat. The air quality is now moderate, but it’s already something you can feel everywhere. One month in Finland made me forget it, but I can tell it’s definitely out there, the pollution.
But the weather is nice. Sun is shining bright and Beijing looks interestingly different from October when I left to Qingdao, what feels now like ages ago. I also managed to escape Russia’s icy lick coming from Siberia, which is bound to freeze the whole country in the coming weeks.
RGB True Color Image of Finland 22.2.2018 by EOS-Terra Satellite. Yeah, cold as fuck.
Back home, I was feeling grumpy and detached the whole day of departure. I probably was acting like a ten-year-old who doesn’t want to go to the school in the morning: I didn’t feel like packing my stuff (and actually decided to go only with hand luggage for this one month trip…) or eat or do anything a grownup would do to make sure the one month that’s coming up would be relatively decent experience. I was snappy at my wife, who was suffering for the upcoming separation just as much as I did, but I apparently thought my feelings were above hers’. I’m sincerely sorry, Annika. You deserved a more considerate departure from my side. I’ll make it up to you soon.
Creepy Green Light with me on the Finnair flight to Beijing.
What we begin officially now is the actual post production of the film Iron Sky: The Ark. The first 161 days were both pre-production and the production phases, and now we start putting it all together and making it into an actual movie. This has been going on already all the time, during the production, as our editor ms. Fang has been editing the film the whole time. Now it’s time for me to jump into the edit and start bringing my thoughts into the game, take it to the next level.
Obviously, I’ve been very nervous getting to see the film. I’ve only seen some assembly cuts and a bunch of hastily edited scenes, but nothing complete, so I have no idea how the film would work as a whole.
What we now have in our hands is a film that’s 127 minutes long (without end credits), with already some 45 minutes shortened from the first assembly cut. We are hoping to find cuts to bring the total length to around 110 minutes; anything longer than that has tendency to be a bit too long in theaters.
The edit happens at my old office at Jiabo Culture building, just a stone throw away from New Otani, my trusty old hotel. The suite itself is not very edit-suite-ish, just two computers screens and a table, but I asked for a bigger TV monitor and a decent couch, since I’ll spend a lot of time there waiting for the editor to make the changes.
But yeah, that’s what I’ll be doing for the next about a month. Originally, I thought about not returning back to my blog, but well, what else do I have to do here? Nothing much, especially since this time around I don’t have Mika with me, nor do I have any other Finns in town – save maybe Renny, but I’m not sure if he’s around either. Annika won’t come to visit this time since the visit is relatively short and she’s much of that time on a vacation with her family in Spain, so yeah, it’s just me and my laptop and VPN running hot.
And, most importantly – the story is not over yet.
The last one hundred and sixty one days have been a hell of a ride for me. Being separated from my family, working in a strange land and culture, on the biggest picture I’ve worked so far in two languages, I’ve been lucky to experience something I know a lot of filmmakers dream of going through. I’ve had the privilege of getting to work in China, for China film industry, which has long roots and massively interesting wealth of stories and talents the Western world knows nothing about, and I feel I have done some deep cultural exchange with Iron Sky: The Ark between the East and West, at least I hope so.
The last shooting day dawns at the Wanda Studios in Qingdao
I set out to write this blog to help me process my experiences, and decided to make it public because I thought there might be something interesting for other to read here too – if nothing else, at least a bit of entertainment, maybe with some small informational value, as well. I’ve received emails and tweets over the perioid of six months as I’ve been writing this blog from readers from all over the world, friends and people I don’t know about, so although I wasn’t expecting anyone to really read all on the blog outside of myself, it has surprised to hear some have. So thank you for your readership and your support, you’ve been instrumental to me wanting to carry on writing these notes, even though sometimes I’ve been completely dead after a shooting day… I knew there’s someone out there reading my ramblings.
Wang Liang and Lin Yi came back for two more shooting days, which was a delight for all of us!
The main reason, in the end, for me writing this blog was to have a channel to tell my family what have I been doing. Trying to explain the loved ones everything over constantly breaking Skype connections from behind the Great Firewall of China, with seven hour time difference between us, it would’ve been impossible. I also wrote this to my son, Julius, who may one day come back and read these – or then not. He probably will remember the year 2017 as the one where his dad suddenly disappeared abroad and only came back half a year later. I owe him a good explanation, I hope this serves at least in some small way as one.
I wrapped Wang Liang (Da Fei) after few small pickup shots, and fared him well! He’s a talented, young and very funny actor, a brilliant guy to work with!
Yesterday was the last shooting day in China, and as I’m now on my way back to Finland as I’m writing this, just flying over Vytegrad, Russia, I felt like reflecting back a little the last half a year.
Vivienne Tien (Fang Qing), Wang Liang (Da Fei) and Lin Yi (Lin Feng) form the core of the Iron Sky: The Ark
I started out in smeltering hot Beijing, doing preparations, skating daily between my hotel and the Jiabo office. Then, we went out for countless recces around China – from south to Qingdao, Rhizao and back to Beijing. During that time, we were hard at work deassembling the script into shots, shooting plans and storyboards and animatics. I wasn’t sure if the film would ever happen, during that time. The casting wasn’t there, we got turned down few times by important cast members and it felt rather hopeless that we ever get everything together.
But eventually, we did. That’s a huge thanks to our producer Max Wang, who believed that we have to start shooting this year, and he made the effort to get us there, although I know for a fact it wasn’t easy. He convinced every entity who needed convincing that what we are doing is something amazing, and gathered an amazing team to realize our vision.
The first shooting days in Beijing were cut short because of the National Meeting, and we had to move to Rhizao to continue shooting. As we started there, it was already getting chillier, but the days were still beautiful and we had great time shooting in the old port. Then, came the Long Night, a 10 days in a row night shoot burst which was mostly vehicle action. During those ten days I lost at least five kilos and aged five years. It was by far the hardest single stretch of the whole production. Every day I slumped back into the car, feeling I had given everything in me, calling Annika and talking with her for the whole trip back, lasting one to one and a half hours. I was a wreck, but she was there for me, although over the phone, helping and supporting. It was hard, but I loved it.
After those long nights, we moved to the Wanda Studios. The huge studios hosted a perfect location for our shooting, and in the beginning we were doing pretty strict nine-to-seven –production schedule. We had new actors coming in, mr. Duan Yihong, Andy Garcia, Udo Kier… it was all very energetic, very actor-driven, with no crazy visual effects waiting around the corner, no real big action pieces either.
The production organized a nice outdoor barbecue and beer while we did the last few takes.
Then came the wireworks: we went to the Moonbase location, where we started to do all these crazy wire works stunts, imitating low gravity, with loads of action and drama; we started to shoot a huge fight sequence and split the unit into drama and action. I zipped between the two teams. My brain’s hard drive was overheating, bad.
The day did come when we actually had to wrap the very star of the film, Vivienne Tien (Fang Qing). Her first movie, and she played without any troubles against Andy Garcia, Duan Yihong and so many other stars. A cool cat!
Finally, we moved to the last set pieces; Moon Surface with all the dust, the reshoot of our Beijing stuff and the final moments in big green screen studio depicting the key location where the most wondrous stuff would happen.
The last shooting day, which was yesterday, took place in the newly built Beijing Hutong home of one of the main characters, plus loads of missing pickups and closeups from throughout the production. It was fun to take us back in time for each shot through the whole shoot: we need a closeup of hands on this one we shot five weeks ago, this is from the first shooting day, we need a bigger reaction to this, we need to add one turning from the characters to this which we shot three weeks ago… It was like best-of hits of the production, grabbing those little moments…
…aaaand it’s a wrap! The Chinese leg of the production of Iron Sky: The Ark is finally done after 78 shooting days! Two more to go in Finland, and then the whole show is wrapped!
But all good things come to an end. Yesterday marked the last shooting day in China for Iron Sky: The Ark. There still will be two more days in Turku, Finland to go, but the main unit was wrapped. With heavy hearts, I tried to find words to thank everyone for their crazy hard labor – and it has been hard – but couldn’t really find words to measure my respect. I’d have to be a poet to do it. So I did what I can, thanked everyone, as many as I could, personally.
And we invited the whole AD department for the last supper!
Funnily, the Chinese are not really good in taking compliments. They feel very awkward when you go praising their work. They look at you slightly puzzled, saying “of course I did it, it was my job”. You have to respect that kind of an attitude. Never during the months did I ever encounter anyone complaining, even if the shooting days stretched to sixteen, seventeen hours. Never did I see them grumpy the next morning. They worked, they worked hard, and they were always doing their best – and that’s the kind of spirit I hope to see more in film sets.
Team OK GO heading back to Finland.
Then, we all faded out in to the night. These hundreds of people, most of whom I will probably never see again in my life, who had formed my China family, are already traveling all over Chinal, off to new projects, off to new challenges. I miss them already, dearly. I had challenging times in China, but the overall feeling that prevails was that it was a priviledge to get to experience this, and even if this would be the last film I make in China, it would be an experience that changed me forever, for better, as a director.
But it was not easy.
Looking forward, I feel I have been on the very edge of my skills working on Iron Sky: The Ark. The huge budget, big crew, complex and ambitious script and big stars from China and Hollywood have taken their toll on me. The last few weeks, I was not all there. I was feeling like a ghost, rising up from behind the monitors felt like an impossible task, approaching the actors felt like a mountain I had to climb. Every time somebody came to ask me a question, I felt ten thousand brain cells dying. After the shooting days, I wasn’t anymore toasted, I just felt empty and just prayed that the last days would be over.
One of the greatest moments was the chance to get to direct Duan Yihong and Andy Garcia in the same scene.
Now, don’t take me wrong, I love what I’m doing. I loved working on the film, the cast, the crew, but the whole responsibility and the complexity of it all, the dual language nature of everything, the high demands and expectations just weighted me down. I did my job, but the last two weeks I felt it was eating myself away bit by bit.
I think Iron Sky: The Ark was in the brink of being a too big a film for me at this point of my career. I survived it, and I know it will turn into a good movie, thanks to the enormous amoun of talent and care people poured on it, but looking at my mental state, I feel I wasn’t prepared for it.
I don’t have a new film booked yet, and I’m absent-mindedly fiddling through options, but I feel the next picture should be actually a smaller one. Maybe a scifi-minded drama. I’m developing something with Dalan, which might turn into something, and I have a clear idea on Iron Sky Endgame, but I feel I should not go bigger on next project. I already know I can do crazy action setpieces and big visual effects, but I love working with the actors, making believable moments and finding something interesting in the characters on the paper.
The year ahead calls for me to finish two movies – Iron Sky The Coming Race and Iron Sky: The Ark. What comes after them, I don’t know, but I intend to spend the year much more with my loved ones, resting from this push.
This is the end of the China Diary. This blog will remain, I will occasionally write here on stuff, but the China Diary is now done. Thank you to Annika for supporting me over the year, thank you to Max for trusting me with this big film. Thank you to Lei for helping us making this movie possible. Thank you to the family back in Finland for their understanding and support. Thank you to Tero for having the braveness to take Iron Sky franchise down this strange but interesting road. Thanks to the whole cast of the film, the crew and every producer and financier backing us up with this one. And thank you, readers, for sharing these times with me.
PS. If you want to start reading from the beginning the blog, the first entry is hereand from there you can just click next entry at the bottom of the page to go forward.
To quote Manowar: Carry on, my friends, forever carry on!
Alright, the reason we decided to do two days reshoot was because the writer had written a scene into the movie which was very Beijing-style scene, and when I directed it, I obviously had no experience in such culture, and it turned out a fine scene, but not very authentic.
Producer Max decided to give it another go: we re-built the set, now in Qingdao studio, expanded it a bit to make it larger and more cinematic, and rewrote the scene slightly. What Max wanted was more of the communal feeling of a Beijing Hutong culture, a specific lower middle class culture which has long traditions in the city’s history.
The way we plotted the scene this time was that Lei spoke to the extras, and the writer, mr. Yu, gave his comments on some of the performances to make them feel more Beijingese. I blocked the scene the way I felt the best, and got consulting from the local Beijingese to make the scene feel alive, and suddenly the whole thing sparked to full speed and I was watching not a staged scene but something that even made our producer Max say “this is pretty good”. That’s a lot coming from him.
It was also super nice to see our kids coming back together. Wang Liang and Lin Yi came back for the shoot, as did the actress who played Lin Feng’s mother; it felt like the scene we were reshooting had been a great rehearsal, and now it all came together: the characters were more alive, the feeling was better and we had fun – also, it felt like a family reunion: I had missed these people, and also, it’s a nice way to end the shoot – a full circle. This was the scene we started out with, now it turned out to be also the scene we end up with.
The shooting had an interesting turn of events, when the leader of the Wanda Studios asked me and Max to join us for a dinner. Truth was, we had still a lot of things to shoot, but the production organized things so that a B-unit led by Mika and Lei took care of the remaining bits, and we left for the dinner.
The place we were taken to was an old German Navy clubhouse built over a hundred years ago. We had a great time talking with the studio executives, eating some German sausages and mashed potatoes and – of course – drinking white wine. I did feel a bit bad for the guys working hard in the studios blowing Moon Dust everywhere while we fine dine away, but sometimes filmmaking is about relationships, and besides, I trusted Mika and Lei completely to run the scene nicely.
And they did!
By the time me and Annika hit the bed, I got confirmation from the guys (all blackened from the Moon Dust) that they also wrapped.
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