Author: Timo Vuorensola

Wow, 70 days in China! I’m practically a Chinese now! I know four words (“director”, “thank you”, you’re welcome”, “great work”) and I sometimes find myself strutting on the ground like the Chinese do, although my physique doesn’t really give in to that position. I honestly watch with envious eyes the Chinese hip/knee -versatility.

Also, 70 days of blogging! That’s a lot of writing. For myself, but also for you to take a peek into how it is running a project like this, living like an Englishman in New York, an alien in a weird, far off land. I’ve been surprisingly open with my feelings about the production and how I feel being so far from the people I love, and about the problems and issues that are brought forward every day. It’s been cleansing and has given me strength to deal with it all. So thanks for reading!

I’ve had so much Chinese food, such a variety of strange and wonderful dishes I have no idea what they are, but also realized that I really miss the home cooking of Finland, the clean and fresh ingredients and menus I can understand. I’ve had so much of the Chinese white wine I can’t begin to count, but I really miss red wine for dinners. I’ve eaten such things I would’ve never believed I’d touch: a thousand year old egg (it’s just the name, but … also the look), chicken head (I didn’t really eat that), pig feet (that one I did try) and so on.

I’ve gotten to understand a little bit more of the Chinese mentality. They are proud of their country, but they are not very politically active; you can’t really cook up a good political discussion with them easily. They don’t know too much about Europe – to them, Europe is just Europe, just like to us Europeans China is just China. I’ve started to realize it’s just as different going to northern China and then to South, as it is going to Finland then Greece – only the language is mostly the same (well, even that changes, but still).

Seventy days and so many script changes. I’ve worked with the most intensive producer, Max Wang, for seventy days almost daily, and it has been quite a ride. He’s a strong producer with a strong will and it’s easy to find oneself in a crash course with him. But he’s also very intelligent, knows film business and ultimately has a huge drive to make an amazing movie. Even today as I’m writing this, with only three days to go until the shoot, the script is being scrutinized, elements re-touched and polished – and since this all is done in two languages, it can get quite tricky to follow all the changes.

Seventy days of hotel rooms, that’s a lot. I started out in my own little apartment hotel when I came here, a dark apartment which smelled a bit of cigarettes and really crushed my spirit. I moved to New Otani hotel, which was where my soul was at rest. In Qingdao, we stayed at a terrible, rotten hotel for the first time, but the second time they put us to a huge luxury resort. Right now, I’m in a luxurious five-star hotel at a Chinese wineyard, enjoying free red wine and bathing on a tub on my balcony.

Seventy days of Chinese language, the absence of decent English and trying to understand one another. I’ve learned to deal with the production team with nods, hand gestures and thumbs up / thumbs down whenever Lei, Maxine or some other bilingual person is not around. But when real discussions happen, they are in Chinese, and I’m in need of a translation. Everything is slower: you have to wait for the translator to finish, but your mind is already racing at the next topic. It’s really frustrating sometimes, but since there’s no other way – I can’t stick a Babel fish up my ear like in Hitchhiker’s Guide – so that I just have to learn to live with. But boy do I love when the communication is in plain English.

Oh, and seventy days of being the tall, weird western giant in China. I’m a sight of its’ own, people actually stop on the street to take a photo of me. Everyone stares, constantly. I’m like a celebrity, without actually being one. There’s absolutely no place I can blend in, I never will. I’m always seen charged with expectations and prejudice, always a bit feared, looked with a wry smile, never completely trusted and seen as an incompetent western fool (which I, for sure, am!).

Seventy days being away from my wife Annika. That’s the worst part of this all. We call every day, talk for hours, fall asleep over Skype and fret over our relationship more than anyone I know. Strangely, our love has grown stronger and we’ve bonded even better now that we very clearly understand how shitty the life is without the other one around. This separation has brought me the understanding that I am with the one woman I intend to spend the rest of my life, and if this can’t break us, nothing will. And nothing will!

Also, seventy days away from my son. He called in yesterday, all teary-eyed, to ask when I’m coming back home. It’s very hard to tell an 11 year old that as soon as I can, but not right now. He’s missing me so much, and I’m missing him if possible even more, but our longing is different: for 11-year-old it’s very instant and strong when it pops up – but luckily, for most of the time it’s not the one thing in his mind, for 37-year-old-me it’s much more persistent, like knowing I’ve lost my eyeglasses, and although I can operate without them, I know something important is constantly missing from my life.

Me and my wife, we can live through me living abroad for certain amounts of time, that’s what this excursion has proven, but for my son, I’ll never do it like this again. He needs a father around for the next at least ten years, so other solutions for working abroad extensive amounts of time need to be found.

And my parents. Leaving Finland was tearing me apart. Our family had gone through a big tragedy recently, and everyone is still trying to cope with it, and leaving right now felt like I was leaving my family behind when we all would’ve needed each other the most. There was also some sickness in the family – luckily it was treated and healed, but this scared the shit out of me. But nevertheless, I left. I rationalized it, that this is a huge opportunity for me, this is my work and I need to do it now, but at the same time, I felt like I abandoned people I loved when I would’ve been needed. This, and missing my son and wife, created an uncomfortable coating over the fact that I’m doing an exciting film abroad, basically living my dream. I guess that’s the problem with “living the dream” – you’re always giving up something for the sake of yourself, and that eats a piece of your personality away, makes you one bit more self-centric – and I believe there’s already enough of self-centric people in the world for me to become one. (Says he and publishes the seventieth blog post about his own life…)

Seventy days of joy, challenges, sacrifices and self-exploration. It’s not a lot if you see it in a larger perspective, but it’s at a junction in my life where it means bigger than the sum of those days is. And still, there’s another 70 days to go. To be honest, I’m not even halfway done here.

That’s a big thought!

I’m sure I should be able to write something about this day – since the date number is so special – but there’s really not that much to say. Six days to go before the shoot and those six days will go past quickly. We haven’t rehearsed at all with my actors yet, and I’m really worried about one character’s costume at this point. We still don’t have all the cast confirmed, some locations are still a big mystery and even the script is under tinkering. Mika is still missing the lenses he needs. My head is falling off my shoulders as I’m thinking about all the things that need to be done before we’re really ready, but I’m happy to say my AD team has their eyes on the ball and everything seems to be happening according to the plan.

So, apart from being scared shitless, day 69 in China was just another day at the office. Or, as Max our producer puts it so very truthfully: same shit, different day. But maybe I’ll just throw in picture of our production office for you all to admire. Yeah, it’s not much to look at, but it’s one rockin’ office I tell ya!

We are now back in Beijing, and I was revealed we have under one week to go before the first shooting day! Oh, the horror! Simultaneously, we are still missing two actors who both are key – but not leading – roles, so the pressure to find them is growing. Luckily, their shooting days are way longer in the future, but I’d loved to have my cast ready before the shoot, not during (and definitely not after). But our casting teams are on it, and if there’s one thing in China, it’s people, so we should be OK.

After the endless car rides in Qingdao, I was hoping it’s better here in Beijing, but yesterday we counted with Mika we had been sitting in the car six hours before the day was over. Some of the fun activities of yesterday’s trip consisted of: visiting our Beijing studios. Visiting another studio where our stunts are rehearsing. Visiting our new Beijing offices. Visiting a shady restaurant that was the only one still open close to midnight when we finished the day off.

Mika is to fly back to Finland tomorrow for Unknown Soldier’s premiere, making me the only Finn in Fangshang district in Beijing for the rest of the week. I’m about to set this district ablaze, be prepared all the party places, I’m coming! Bring in the booze, the girls, the party – I’m on fire!!

Only that… there is literally nothing here. The closest resemblance of a “bar” is 15 kilometers away, and even that is not exactly what the word means in where I come from. But there’s a beautiful lake outside my hotel and some nice walking around to do if the weather stays decent, so maybe that’s what I should do. Chill out a bit before the tornado hits. Yeah, sounds better.

Annika is coming here in 8 days. It feels like the last days are dragging on like a drunken snail. Yesterday, she applied for the visa, and only afterwards I realized that it actually could have been denied easily: the whole country is jumpy because of the upcoming National Meeting, which is the Communist Party’s meeting that decides what’s going to happen for the next ten years. The police presence is much heavier everywhere, getting on and off a train means 4-5 passport/body checks and people have been asked not to come to Beijing unless absolutely needed. Afterwards, things should get better: things like money transfers to foreign country can begin again and all the business gets back to normal, but for the next few weeks, everything is a bit on hold.

Not our production, of course. But everything else.

The red wine is free.

Those words I’m happy to hear. We have just moved to another hotel in Beijing, one located close to the Beijing studios, and will stay here for the next one and a half weeks. Also, today I’m realizing we have exactly one week to go until the shoot begins. Now that is some scary shit.

The film world is buzzing about Harvey Weinstein being fired from his own company, due to the alleged sexual harassment and even charges of rape being slapped on him. For years, he has been the most lauded guy in the industry, but everyone knows about Harvey’s habits – even I have spoken with two actresses who have been through the whole hotel room / bath robe -shabang. It’s disgusting, yet everyone has known about it. Why is it that only now the people in real power in Hollywood – like Matt Damon, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep – step up and condemn the man, but before were happily smiling in pictures with him, taking his money and starring in his films? Also they have known about it, heard the stories, but did nothing about it. The two-faced opportunism of Hollywood makes me sick. It’s probably the same everywhere, but this is a grand presentation of it in the most pure form imaginable. For the most part I feel terrible for the girls who have had to go through it, have been clinging on Harvey’s list for years fretting whether or not they should have had given up and just letting it go all the way with Harvey – where would they be now? Or those who did it, and feel every day that partially their career is thanks to letting someone have their way with them. This kind of revelatory piece of journalism is important, and seems to do what it was intended to do, but seeing the “Hollywood elite” so rigorously now spitting on him makes me hate these assholes just as much.

Back to my life, which includes surprisingly few actresses in my hotel room. Thankfully. This new resort is located in between two golf courses and a winery some 70 kilometers outside of Beijing, meaning at least one hour drive to get anywhere near the civilization. But at the same time, I’m looking at the same rolling hills and mountains that my ancestors did hundreds of thousands of years ago: close by is the famous Peking Man Site, where the researchers have found one of the oldest remains of Homo Erectus, dating back to 700,000 years. There’s a museum there, and I intend to visit there one day.

In production news, well, nothing much but our other production designer seems to have spent days building a piece of set everyone knew would never be seen in the pictures and had he taken a quick glance at storyboards or spoken with either me or Mika, he would’ve known this, but guess this is the reason he’s out of the picture for the most part now. It’s just dumb waste of time and resources.

Now, I’m going to get up and go test the gym facilities of this hotel. Nähdään, sano sokeet toisilleen.

The Qingdao way of doing things is … interesting, to say the least. The location managers are quite an interesting group, to be honest. There’s the older gentleman, and there’s the even-older and grumpier-looking guy with an mohawk haircut and a face that looks like the one of a cellmate from hell. Then there’s a guy riding a brand new Mercedes convertible, who actually owns a brewery that makes probably the best beer in town – and being in Qingdao, that’s a lot. The guys work … weirdly. The location process doesn’t begin with “here’s what we need”, but with “here’s who we know”. They don’t have a data bank of images, rather they wander around the town and chat with the people they know, then ask them to snap a few photos for the production to see. It’s strange, and sometimes quite frustrating – but in the end, we have found the locations we need and that’s what counts.

The other thing we found really strange are the permissions. Usually, you ask for a permission for something – like flying a drone in certain area – and the answer from the local officials is either a direct “no” or “yes”. But in Qingdao, it depends when you ask it, how many times, and how much of a firm “yes” you’re able to live with. So for example, one of our locations is near the Qingdao airport, and we want to fly drones there. Usually, that’s a no-go, but in Qingdao, the location manager knows a guy who knows a guy and suddenly a “no” becomes “well, maybe, as long as we don’t find out about it”. Lei already told me: “Timo, prepare to be disappointed sometimes – things will change in Qingdao.”

And then there are some absolutely ridiculous denials: we can’t have blank-shooting guns because the national congress meeting is happening in two weeks in Beijing. We can’t use a completely dead stretch of street in a neighbourhood because we just can’t. We can’t paint an unused motorway ground black because we shouldn’t raise too much attention – as if bringing fifty stunt cars, motorcycles, lighting a set and doing big stunts isn’t drawing all the possible attention anyhow – but we can’t paint the street. It’s strange, but we’ll have to work with what we have – and as I said, we have what we need. We just need to be flexible on the day.

Last day of tech recce was excruciatingly detailed, going through a good heap of locations, eventually ending up in an old soda factory that’s going to serve as a great location for a big set of scenes in the movie. These old factory buildings with pipes snaking around the concrete structures are beautiful and impressive – and interestingly enough, they have been made with only functionality in mind: absolutely no kind of aesthetics went into the process. Yet, they are in many cases much more beautiful and amazing than some buildings designed by architects with great visions of beauty in their head. What is that called? Beauty through function? Accidental art?

The weather is getting shittier over here on the coast, but the recce must go on. Another early wakeup call, another missed breakfast (I can’t eat in the restaurant, the holiday people make me sick, farting, burping and vacationing away, forming huge lines in front of me, preventing me from getting my dearly needed morning coffee) and another set of locations to go through.

It takes least an hour to get anywhere in Qingdao, and most of our locations are usually more than an hour away from each other, so recceing means mostly sitting in the car. I’ve gotten into a habit of playing with my phone and listening to Type O Negative – it is October after all. Mika usually sleeps. He’s amazing at that: he sets his neck pillow up and is out in less than five minutes. Depending a little who’s in the car with us, we sometimes might have a production meeting: art director presents a set of his drawings to me, or maybe another production person has some other topics to discuss. Nevertheless, the car drives are mostly a waste of everyone’s time, but these technical recces are very important to do, to ensure a smooth flow of the shoot when the day comes.

My role as a director is a bit less relevant here, because most of the questions are to Mika: where does he plan to plant the cameras, looking which way, how about lights, and what about other elements like special effects – sparkles, rain, smoke – and so on. I’m usually explaining the scene to everyone, pretending to be the director, but after that it’s mostly just a waiting game and few quick answers to some tech crew people every now and then. So, a recce is definitely not my favorite part of filmmaking. Especially tech recces, they tend to be really, really, really boring. The only thing that’s mildly interesting is to follow as our production designer’s despair deepens by every new location. I usually try to keep my requests for the setbuilding as small as possible, and throw the energy into VFX, but truth is: we have to build a lot for this one. A lot.

Qingdao is going through its’ transformation from jolly, sunny and funny beautiful beer city into a long drink -colored, windy and chilly harbor city. Simultaneously, our location manager has started to lose locations we had already chosen and what we thought, “locked”, but as Lei my first AD says – in China, be always prepared to change the plans in a moment’s notice. This are approximately what you thought you had agreed with, but then… not exactly. There’s always a bit of space for some freestyling – and for us Nords, it’s a concept we’re not very versatile in. We believe if something is said to be one thing or another, it stays like that until the end of the world and beyond. Flexibility is not what our culture is known for.

The first scouting day started out as a bit of a disappointment. We went through only a handful of suitable locations and none of them was like “wow, amazing!” – until we arrived to the studios where our production designer, mr. Wang, had been working on the first sets. That’s when I really felt the film coming alive! Seeing the floors being built and the spaces being formed is a huge jolt of creativity for the weary – the pictures start to float in my eyes, lifting the lines from the script into imagined performances on the set, forming storyboard pictures into actual images, stitching the transitions together and building worlds that I wish would exist. And the peace of a studio is when I really enjoy filmmaking. Walking by myself in a freshly built set that still smells of recently cut wood, sawdust, with a small group of workers silently talking in the background, it’s a beautiful moment to slow down and take the first whiffs of the film that’s about to be born, soon.

In the evening, we had – of course – a dinner. And what a grand dinner it was: located in a karaoke bar / restaurant, the seafood filled the tables and the gam-beis echoed in the room as we celebrated our return, and the impending start of the shoot in just two weeks’ time.

Simultaneously, it also means she’s coming over in just a little over two weeks. This is filling me with a slight jittery feeling; it’s almost like meeting my pen pal for the first time. We’ve been talking so much on Skype and WeChat, without being able to have any other real connection, for the last two-and-a-half months that the idea that very soon I get to touch her hair and smell her face is making me anxious. I’m not sure which one I’m actually waiting for more: the start of my biggest and most ambitious film production, one which I’ve been preparing for over a year and will be shooting for over 70 days with a budget of twenty five million, or the fact that I get to see her for a week soon.

Actually, fuck it. I know exactly which I’m waiting for more.

Yeah. Her.

It’s surprising how some things can get under your skin without you noticing it. I’m extremely good at blocking things that worry me, but when I’m sleeping the deflector shields are down and I’ll sustain a direct hit to the hull. And only after a night like that I’m able to understand what was it that was bugging me so much. So after a very badly slept night and nightmares, I realized it was this certain actor who was bothering me so much. Indeed, I have never worked with an actor who’s so intense, and his questions and my ability to approach them made me feel inferior. Usually, I’m pretty good with the actors, but now I feel like I may have found my match, and that bugs me. I have to up my game here, which is good: one must challenge oneself on each project, and although this one is much bigger than anything I’ve ever done, it’s quite a natural progression and in that way not really “challenge”, but with this one specific actor, I feel like a chance for me to grow as a director, becoming better at my actual job. But that’s a lot of work, a lot of worrying, a lot of sleepless nights ahead.

The second day of the table read was actually much easier because now we already had discussed all the big questions on each character, we already knew these characters and mostly because by the end of the movie the characters become more active and things move at a faster pace. So instead of 10 hours table read like with the first part, we did what we had to do by lunchtime, and then I headed for a quick lunch with one of the actors to discuss his character in more depth. We had a bunch of great ideas I tried to convey to the writer, but the lack of common language didn’t really help, so I tried acting things out – yelling, jumping around the office, ripping papers and all that jazz to get him excited about a specific idea – but I don’t think he got it, not completely. We’ll see when the next version of the script arrives, I guess.

Then, it was time to head back to Qingdao, for the location scouting and finally to begin the actual technical recce, when all the crew is there and we lay down in exact detail where we place which lamps, what happens to whom and where. Train ride I was reading my new favorite book “What Women Want”, a study in women sexuality and talking a bit with Mika about the progression of the preparations. After a while, Mika dozed off and I tried to work a bit, but for some reason the whole car was packed with SCREAMING CRAZY KIDS! And I mean, INSANE. And the parents did absolutely nothing to calm them down, they were running around the car, jumping on seats, SCREECHING. I was shocked.

Another thing I don’t like about Chinese are that they have no manners when it comes to portable electronics. You wanna watch a video on your device? No problem. Just turn the volume up, so that the whole fucking train car can hear you. Oh, you wanna play a game with super-annoying sound effects? Hell yeah! Just remember never to use headphones, the louder the better the experience, the more you piss off other people, the better!

So when I finally, after five hours of train ride and one hour car-ride, arrived to the hotel, I was absolutely knackered. The room has a huge tub in it, so I decided to make myself a relaxing bath before hitting the bed, getting ready for sitting in the car for the next seven days.

Every actor works differently. They approach their roles from a very different perspectives, their methdos are vastly different and their process of acquiring the character are all very unique. Some think their characters very deeply, requiring a lot of information, discussions and challenging the director at every turn, some are more accommodating and require only information on where to stand, what to say and where to look.

Also, every director works differently. The director’s job is to meet with each actor individually, and try to find out their method, and then guide the actor to the role the way you want it to appear on the screen. There’s no one right way, since everyone works their craft differently, but in general, the more clear, confident and informed the director is, the better it is for everyone.

But it’s not just that. Also, every producer works differently. To some, a film is merely a business venture where they hire professionals, find the money and the let the people work their magic. To some, the kick is in the marketing. And to some, especially those who are also writers, the line between a director and a producer is blurred.

Tuesday, we all sat around a big table with four actors present, producer and writer on the other side of the table, first and second assistant directors and me on the other side, and the actors lining the sides of a big meeting room, and begun a two-day procedure known as table read.

In short, it means you read the script through with the actors for one time, and everyone discusses their thoughts on the dialogue and action on the script, before really starting to act it out in front of the camera. This process can be a quick in-and-out, or – as it was in our case – a big, tedious job that took all the energy and attention I was able to muster.

One of the actors, a very well-known actor on Chinese market, is exactly the type of an actor I described in the beginning: he was challenging everything. And my producer Max, whom I’ve so often described on these pages, is a very… involved producer. They’ve known each other quite some time already, and engaged in lengthy, lengthy conversations about every line and moment in the script. I found myself listening Lei and Maxine trying to translate a huge discussion about the way another character knocks on the door that went on for half an hour, in Chinese. Trying to get involved there was almost impossible: Max’s fast-paced talking that goes back in the backstory ten twenty years before the film begins and the actors’ need for background details was daunting. At one point, the ADs stopped translating as the conversation went on and on, with other actors trying to understand the point.

Nevertheless, the vibe was strange for the most of the first table reading. On another break, one of the actors came to talk to me, slightly worried about how everything was progressing, but I told her this happens every time, the first table read is a chaos. More than reading the story, it’s about the questions and the answers, and this is the time to present those questions, doubts and ideas, since on the set we already have to be very, very clear on what we are going to do. We can’t sit down talk hours about something while rest of the crew is sitting around waiting for something to happen, so even though it was a harsh start, it was essential for the project I felt.

We went through the first half of the script, and agreed to continue the next day. Just as I was on my way out of the office, Maxine grabbed me and sat me down for another hour of costume change details (for some reason our costume designer had thought every character has only one costume throughout the movie, and I had to correct her that no, there are most likely seven to eight costume changes for everyone through the movie, which of course sent her into a screaming fit since there is only two weeks left before the shoot…)