Author: Timo Vuorensola

Thursday was one of those endless days where the despair grabbed me few times over. The production had given me an ultimatum: I had to finish off all the extras today, or good things wouldn’t be swinging to me as we say in Finland. We had already had some issues with the extras because some of them were supposed to be wrapped halfway through the day, the others could stay later. That made no sense since they all were manning the service stations and if suddenly some stations would be empty, Lotus the continuity girl would murder me, and later my editor would murder me the second time.

I had agreed with the production that the extras stay as long as they are needed, but that I would finish them off today, no matter what. That meant a lot of work for us: we had tons of Andy’s scenes to go through, and then a lot of reactions to be recorded from the extras.

But first, we focused on getting the beef of the day done. The first scene we needed another English-speaking actor, and I had nobody left who could do it. I asked Chris our English teacher, who works with our actors on pronunciation of their English lines, to do it. He was game after few words, and he did a wonderful job as a flight commander, being able to sound very convincing. Andy’s scenes were exhausting: his grande finale was complicated to do as he went in with such emotions, and we had to take it few times because the focus was always somehow lost on the closeups. After he was done at nine – when we had already shot for 12 hours – we sent him home and started to work with the extras.

We had nearly 30 scenes on the script where we needed reactions from the people, so I created this “reaction script” which I then taught to the group, and then we started running it. The plan was that we have a Moviebird crane capturing one side of things, Ants on Steadycam running around like a madman and third camera on tracks grabbing wherever there was no camera in place.

It was a hard script, because the people had to be surprised, they had to be moved, they had to be angry, they had to be neutral… just impossible. And as it is always with extras, there’s always someone a bit too excited about the situation who overacts so loud the cameras need to do everything they can to avoid him.

I was standing on the podium, screaming through the script in English while Lei was behind me, translating. It was really hard for everyone, and of course we also had some light effects that needed to be timed correctly… we spent nearly three hours working with them, and afterwards we were all exhausted and it was nearly a midnight. That was sixteen hour shooting day… No rest for the wicked.

But we got it made! I thanked the extras, they all circled me and we had a million photos taken of us, selfies after selfies and I spoke with the people. It was a fun way to end the day, and I thanked everyone for staying up with me although we did long days.

In the meantime, Andy had gone for his farewell dinner with the producers and the cast. They had apparently fun night, but by the time we were out of the studio, it was already too late to join and I was mentally a wreck, so it was home and bed for me.

Nice,

nice.

Very nice, the Bokononist would whisper.

Tuesday; another day in the same set, another day working with Andy and all the extras. The AD team has really put together a challenge of a schedule for us, but that’s the way its’ gotta be, since there’s no other way we could finish Andy in time. Tuesday, we started to enter to the very end of the movie, which consists of one big action sequence viewed and interacted with from different locations; Andy’s character and the command center being one of the places.

The only way to get the scenes done in a decent way was to start running the whole end piece in one long scene, otherwise we’d have to drag the cameras back and forth the set every time, since all the time you need front and back shots, so it would be just turning the set around constantly, which would take time and energy too much to even think about.

Being economic with shooting doesn’t usually sit well with the actors. They view the scene through their character eyes, and many actors are not into jumping back and forth between scenes, they prefer us to cover the scene from every angle possible, then move on to the next. Andy was especially adamant about this, so my idea of being economic and fast was not fitting together very well with this. So instead, we focused on getting his front shots for every scene, and then save the backshots where he doesn’t really have to perform as much to the end. I was also worried about his voice, it was getting raspier every take and wouldn’t hold for too long, and I really needed his voice, that’s for sure.

After the day, I was done for. We did great scenes but it was exhausting. I didn’t want to go over that day so we wrapped on time, but I knew there would be long days coming up ahead, so preparing for them was in my mind heavily.

Filmmaking creates a bubble around the reality, where everything outside is faded, distant and blurry, and everything inside feels very real, important, relevant and focused. The only escape from the bubble are dreams, since there’s really no way to get out when you’re shooting 6 days a week – the only day off is for recovering. But when even the dreams start to become dreams of scenes that are not in the script, discussions that you want to have on the set, dreams of directing a scene, you know you’re in it too deep.

As I’m writing this, I have about a month to go on the job, a little less. Still, there’s Christmas and New Year in between, so it feels a much longer time: I know I’ll be done not before next year. Funnily, I haven’t stressed too much – to be honest, I’m not a very stressed person to begin with. I mean, we’ve had busy times and we’ve had rough days and I’ve been tired, on the brink of mental breakdown and felt helpless many times, but it never transpired into a feeling of stress as much as just need to rest a bit. Last week shoot I felt the jolt of sudden exhaustion sweep over me as I was, again, bombarded with questions on set and we were going overtime seriously. All I could do is to just walk away from all the people, walk into my green room and stare at the wall for good 10 minutes. I gathered my brains and went back on, apologised the team for the wait and in no time we were back on the saddle, shooting. I bet that was one of the moments when actual stress just shut my brains down, but luckily, reboot did the job.

The other thing that bothers me is that while the brain is being fried on a slow flame constantly, the body isn’t doing great, either. I haven’t had a time to go to a gym in the last two weeks not one time, as I’ve been just way too tired after the shooting day, and mornings I barely make it to the pickup anyway, so I’m feeling my body is not doing good, either. I like lifting weights to keep my back and upper body in shape, but not doing it in a while really starts feeling, in the back mostly. Sitting down most of the time just isn’t a good position for a human, and directing is mostly hunching over monitors in the most unergonomic position. Slowly, it gets to you.

The food on set has been bad through the whole production (it always is, no matter which film, that’s my experience), but when Andy came, they hired a cook and for a while we had some decent chicken and meat for lunch and sandwiches for the snack. Now that he’s gone, I’m yet to see how the on-set food situation is. Before Andy, I always asked David to get some regular food for me – Burger King or KFC or McD or something easy and surely edible, but haven’t had the need for that in a while. I’m not really looking forward going back to the BK diet, but when I’m shooting, I just can’t do with weird Chinese food, that’s just not happening. Nevertheless, the food I’ve been eating during the shooting days is not something I can be proud of: either burgers or pizza for the most parts. On days off and dinners we’ve had some really good meals, but on set I eat like a cardiac arrest candidate. Yeah, I’ve gained some weight and lost some muscle, and feel like shit for most of the time. I can’t wait to get back to Finland and get back in (some kind of) shape after all this.

Also, I’m running out of clothes! That’s another thing. When I left to China, I brought *all* my clothes with me, but I don’t really own a huge amount of shit, so the little I do own has been in heavy rotation ever since. Usually, I end up buying new stuff, but here the clothes just don’t fit me and I’m tied to what I have – plus, I don’t really have time to go shopping, either, even if I did find a place to shop. So there’s that. T-shirts get out of shape and jeans wear out after having to go with exactly same rotation for 127 days.

I’m growing by beard, too. I cut it when we started to shoot, and looked like a child for the first weeks, but now it’s getting mushier and darker and thicker all the time. I’m not sure I’m going to keep it this long, but at least it’s an interesting experiment. Turns out my beard growth is not as fast after it gets to the basic thickness, so I don’t really see the difference that well, but I think it’s right now fashionable to have a scruffy and bad beard anyway, so I’ll let it grow more. Doesn’t make me look any more attractive, but hides my second chin, the creation of the shitty food diet I go by here.

Anyway. Monday we shot the second day at the Control Center set. It was Andy’s time to shine the whole day, and he was brilliant. His style is to get all in and we better capture it in as few takes as possible, because he puts so much intensity in his performance. He can be a bit scary, too, when he assumes the character of William Russell. He went off to few extras during the shoot as they were fiddling with their phones while he was performing, which I totally understand. “IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE HERE, GO HOME PLAYING THAT THING!” We then denied the use of cellphones on set (but the Chinese don’t really care, they have them out anyway…). After we wrapped him the other day, though, he noted that it was not Andy Garcia shouting to the extras, but William Russell, his character. When the cameras are not on him, he’s the sweetest guy.

Sunday meant back to work for us, and ahead of us was a tough week since it would be Andy’s last week, and we would need make sure we have everything we need from him. Rest of the week we would for the most part spend in a set called Command Center – it seems I make a lot of movies which has a command center of some sort, and they are always quite humongous sets.

This set was quite similar in shape and style as U.S.S. George W. Bush’s set in the first Iron Sky – although with the first Iron Sky, we really built only one control table and the actual command post, and then just moved the table around the room to get different angles or multiply characters in it. This time, we had enough budget to build quite a many tables and the actual set was actually built in two levels: Andy’s room was located above the set, with a huge window overlooking at the Command Center. It was, I must say, quite an impressive set.

For the set to work, we needed at least 25 extras there to keep all posts manned, and they had to, of course, be the same extras every time. In addition to this, we needed to have some speaking roles there, but the casting had mixed two roles into one (I admit, they sound very much the same: Male Controller and Mission Control; in translation they both just became Controller), and I only learned about this on the day as I was on my way to the set.

Usually, I’m quite aware on what kind of day players I’ll be working with, usually having chosen them quite carefully, but this time, I had overlooked the casting list and forgot to really put my brains on the matter, and then there was the translation mixup, so we ended up with a day where we were missing one key actor who would be playing the whole week.

I was quite unsure what to do: we had to shoot, that goes without saying. Joe, Andy’s assistant and an actor as well was available, but then we’d have to deal with SAG, which was not possible at the time (I had some twenty minutes to go before the blocking!). We had few English-speaking people on the set, but none of them were really what I was looking for, until someone suggested Victor. Victor is the stand-in for Andy, a Ukranian actor based in Beijing and Kiev, and speaks decent English. For the role, it would’ve been better to have maybe even more fluent English actor, but I decided that the acting skills and the looks are more important than fluent dialogue at this time. The decision was right. Victor proved to be a wonderful guy who really worked hard on the role, and although sometimes the complicated technobabble dialogue was hard for him, he played it with bigger intensity and made the role work great.

The first day at the new set is always a bit tricky, since it’s usually not completely ready, but we made it work in a decent time. For Andy, it was a bit dumb day all in all because he was mostly just standing in his office and looking at the control center while the actual scene was playing in below. We worked hard and after five hours finished the scene; then it was time for Andy’s bit.

While the Chinese actors are very much in control of their emotions when playing a role, the Western actors tend to externalize much more. Andy’s scene was one where he was getting riled up, and it was first a little intimidating to see him get into the mood: the nice guy turned into a grumpy shouting man. We could see he was in the headspace of the role, but still, it’s always a bit shocking to see someone change so drastically in a matter of minutes.

The day played out well and we finished much of it, leaving something still to be achieved in the days to come.

‘T was the fabled day off, and like so often, I spent most of it lazying around in a bed and practically doing nothing much but recovering from last night’s farewell dinner. The sun was shining outside and it was a beautiful day, but I couldn’t find enough strength to gather my bones to go out. I was also scanning through Qingdao services to find a decent massage parlor, but couldn’t get to that, either. In the end, I just ended up watching a movie (Internal Affairs, with Andy Garcia on it), until David called me and told that Mr. Duan and his wife had invited me and some people of the cast for a dinner.

It was already pretty late when we arrived there; in addition to mr. Duan, there was Andy, Vivienne, Andy’s assistant Joe, Max, Rhydian and his agent and Lei. We enjoyed some great seafood and heard nice speeches from mr. Duan, where he went through the trouble of thanking personally everyone for their efforts and appraising the collaboration we had. It was really nice to hear he enjoys my directing, and although sometimes we go very deep into the character, he loves the process. I’m of course very happy hearing that. He thanked Andy for the lessons he has give to all of us.

Then, it was Andy’s show for the rest of the evening: he told us a selection of amazing stories over the dinner and wine and a fat Cuban cigar he was puffing, stories from sets of different movies, Godfather and many others, described in detail (with Joe’s assistance) on how many iconic films and scenes had been made (I can tell you, it’s amazing in what kind of conditions and situations some of the best things I’ve seen on a big screen have happened). He told us about his encounters with Marlon Brando and his friendship with Al Pacino and many others, imitating them impeccably. We were laughing in tears, but he always had also some very important lessons he shared with us, about acting and filmmaking in general. One simple but good general advice was that the deeper the respect and friendship between two actors is, the better they’ll be able to portray enemies on screen.

In the evening, mr. Duan gave us a bottle of nice wine and bowed for goodnight. I went home and had a great sleep after an hour chat with my lovely wife, feeling rested and awake the next morning.

Friday was the last shooting day of the week, and the first and only day we shot with Udo Kier for this production. Those of you who know my work from earlier films know that Udo has been an integral part of my body of work: he played one of the key roles in Iron Sky and, although the film is not out yet, he played a double role for Iron Sky The Coming Race, appearing as both villains of the movie. So no surprises there, I’ve spent a lot of time with him on and off set, and for Iron Sky: The Ark, I specifically wrote a scene and built a set for him, so although I had him only for one day, the set was beautiful and designed for him.

Udo had arrived few days before and day before the shoot, he appeared suddenly on the set wearing an all-white suit and a moustache made out of his own hair (that is very Udo move to make). He walked straight to Andy and asked if it was good. I thought it’s quite good, but it wasn’t brilliant, but I really didn’t have any other solution in mind, so that’s what we went with.

The day was quite a heavy one. We started off with a scene taking place in the same location but without Udo, and around halfway through, broke off for lunch and a press conference, where the cast, the producers and the media were present. We all spoke nicely about the production, but didn’t really go into great lengths to explain it in depth: we still have about one year to go until the film comes out, so we need to save some treats for later. But we did launch our cast – Andy, Duan, Rhydian and Udo – and sent out a small press release as well.

As we came back from the conference, it was time to bring Udo in. Working with him is always great. His style is very involved, he thinks in detail how to deliver one specific line, and manages to create an aura of something weird and wicked happening even if he’s just talking some rather mundane dialogue. His style and accent are just irreplaceable. Even though every word doesn’t come out exactly as written on the script, he’s a joy to work with, as always, and delivers always the most amazing roles – no matter how big or small ones.

We spent the evening chasing the lines and creating a wonderful small character – like Udo said, “Timo, since I’m here only for one day, I need to make a role nobody will ever forget.” Well, I believe we succeeded in it.

In the evening, we headed out to celebrate Udo’s wrap party at a local bar close by. The next day would be a day off, so it was natural to have a good party with white wine, burgers, pizzas and other stuff they miraculously had in the bar for us westerners. The night went long with Pekka and Roope, since it wasn’t just Udo’s wrap, but also last day for them to be in town. We talked bullshit, played some pool and listened to David Bowie since we were the only customers in the bar after midnight.

We sent my dear friend Udo off with kisses and hugs, and promises that we’ll work together again very soon on something amazing and crazy.

I also thanked Pekka and Roope for being here for me after Annika had left to fill at least a piece of the hole she leaves in my heart every time we are apart. They would be on their way back to Finland through Beijing tomorrow, and then it would be just me and Mika to represent Finland over here until… well. For quite some time.

One two three, here’s how not to stage a scene.

I thought I was being very clever yesterday, and plotted out my way around my actors in today’s scene. The setup was as follows: two characters with very dissimilar interests talk with each other in a room. There’s nobody else there, and the scene itself is some two-and-a-half script pages long; that translates to about two to two and a half minutes of screen time. So, a relatively long scene to cover two men talking to each other.

The actors are Andy and mr. Duan. Andy is always pretty easy: as long as you are clear with what you want and give him the space to work his scene, he can do magic. Mr. Duan is a very different kind of an actor. He wants to understand and internalize the scene in depth before playing it out. He needs to understand why and where he comes to the scene and what kind of an internal struggles he is going through before he’s able to play it.

My general strategy in the beginning of the day is to go and talk with mr. Duan through the scene and hear his thoughts and ideas for it. He’s one of the greatest actors in China, and has a deep understanding on not only his character, but our story and the intricacies in it, so he has usually loads of valuable ideas on how to make the scene resonate deeper.

But this scene was the first scene these two actors play heavily together, and my method wasn’t very good for us today. I went to mr. Duan’s trailer and spend a long time talking with him about the scene and spent a good hour there in the morning, and then went to talk with Andy to hear his thoughts. Turns out both of them had a bit of a different approach to the scene, and both wanted to work a bit on their lines, so by the time I had gone through both of their notes and discussed with both of them, a lot of details in the scene had changed, but the actors who are actually playing it had never spoke of it together.

So then I go to the set and invite my actors there. I explain to them in great length what I want to happen, work the big set like a crazy person and try to get everyone excited about the staging, but there’s something that just doesn’t work. First, Andy notes that the staging has a lot of shoeleather in it. Meaning, the actors walk around the room needlessly. So we kill the walking: Andy suggest he just sits in front of Duan and they talk. Then, let’s see what happens, organically.

Sounds great. So we do that. They start then going through the lines, and we hit wall almost after every small bit: it just doesn’t go together with what I had devised. I try to talk them around, but both actors just don’t feel natural, so I decide it’s time for me to also forget my directions and just let the actors work their way around the scene.

And only then, after few hours of talking and staging the scene starts to unwrap itself, when I actually give the actors the stage, only tell what I want as an outcome of the scene and what’s my final image there (them watching through a window together). Then, together they start going through each bit and I stand back and watch them work together, like professional actors do, finding their beats, their turns, their slight adjustments to the text and eventually their staging, too.

In the end, the scene turns out to work quite a lot in the way I originally described it, with most of the shoeleather in it but instead of feeling staged, it felt really natural. And this day taught me an important lesson: don’t overthink the scenes and let your actors find the rhythm, organically. Instead of talking with each of them individually for hours, get them together in a room and tell them where you want to start and where you want to end and let them find the natural way to go about it. Directing is not necessarily telling them what to do, but tugging them to right direction, and the art comes in finding together with the actors the rhythm, listening to their ideas and eventually, repeating it over and over again, giving them free takes every now and then to keep it fresh until you’ve got it nailed.

I guess the trick in director’s work is that every actor works different way, and every actor combo works in a different way, and finding what works for whom is the challenge.

After the day, another dinner with Andy and Udo, this time downstairs of Andy’s hotel. Was fun!

In addition to Udo, also Dalan had returned to Qingdao, to finish his role in the film and help us out a bit with Andy’s lines and stuff. It was truly a great thing to have him hang around, and we ended up talking about several projects we would love to develop together. I love his writing style: it’s not taking itself too seriously, and he’s always game for whatever crazy I have in mind, and is able to throw it back to me with a nice curve ball. His rock’n’roll writing style combined with his immense knowledge of shit like history makes him a perfect companion, and I’m truly looking forward getting few other projects off the ground with him one day in addition to our Iron Sky -stuff.

On the day, we celebrated Finland’s 100th birthday, although here in China the whole idea felt so far away that I just couldn’t get my head into a patriotic mood. I was planning to give few words to the crew about Finland, but the Finn in me won me over and I started to think how stupid it probably would sound and that they would think I’m an idiot or even more so, a patriotic fool, and would just misunderstand me completely, and decided to give the idea a rest. So instead, we just kept on shooting like maniacs. In the meanwhile, back in Finland, my wife the journalist had been assigned to the President’s Palace for a Independence Day reception to do stories on celebrities there, and she was sending me strikingly beautiful pictures of herself being all donned up to the nines at the party. I’ve done the party once – it’s kind of an honor for a Finn to be invited there – and enjoyed the evening, and she did seem to enjoy it too. Maybe one day we get invited there the same time, who knows.

Back to the shoot. We have only a limited availability for Andy and we had scheduled the shit out of his time here in China, since we have quite a lot to do with him. Good thing is, he is game for it, and is working hard and rigorously for the film. We kept on slamming through yet another heap of script pages and in the evening headed for a dinner with Roope, Pekka and Andy and Joe and a bunch of others from the production. It was a great and productive day, and a fun dinner at the evening.

One thing I love about working with great actors is that as a director, you’re mostly just in the way when they start developing the scene; your job is just to tug them to right direction, and they’ll find the solutions themselves – organically, and coming from their own mind. You just sit back and enjoy.

Yesterday was exactly that kind of a day. We had a scene which was rather weird in the movie, but had some very interesting potential to it. Still, the way it was written and the way I was staging it didn’t feel really good, until Andy suggested another approach, one which would completely throw a wet blanket on the face of the scene – but then, as he performed it, it actually gave it a whole new life!

I enjoyed shooting the scene and covering it, and although we had to do it a gazillion times to get what we needed, we all felt we were doing a worthwhile scene, something that will live a long life on the screen.

Udo Kier, my good friend and a trusted actor came also around on the evening, and of course, we took him and Andy and Joe and my friends Roope and Pekka – and Mika and Ants – to a dinner at a hot pot restaurant nearby. Andy and Udo had done a film together (Modigliani, in 2004), so they knew each other from way back. The evening was full of joy of rejoining with old friends, and although we had Andy and Udo, both great personalities with amazing stories, somehow Udo always wins the seat at a table. His lavish style, his crazy stories and his presence is just beyond this world.

As I’m writing this, Udo has already left Qingdao, off to Macau for a film festival, and from there back to Palm Springs, but still, we shared our Udo-stories at a dinner with Andy and Joe and Mika. Even if he’s not around, he is everywhere.

There’s only one like Udo out there.