China Diary

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.

My wife made her way back to Finland after all. She was sending me images on the way: a slumped-over 150kg Russian bear-of-a-man sleeping his head on her shoulder in the plane. The slush-ridden, gray and dark Finland December. Her in our super-comfortable Tempur bed, wrapped in bedsheets. I’ve now been here 120 days, and I can barely remember how our home smells like. It’s been a long time getting from here to there, but not that much to go anymore!

In this blog, I’ve described my stages of integrating to the Chinese culture. It started with going through the four stages of culture shock – the honeymoon, the frustration, the adjustment and, eventually, acceptance. What appeared annoying to me 120 days ago feels now normal, understandable and something I can work my way around.

During these 120 days I’ve learned to love the Chinese cuisine. In Western countries, one might think they’ve had some good Chinese food, but before you really experience the mainland China, you know nothing, Jon Snow. I’ve only had a chance to enjoy Beijing and Qingdao cuisine in depth, and both of them have shown that few thousands of years of culture and human lives create something that can’t be described as “Chinese cuisine”, but must be broken to smaller pieces, to areas, provinces, cooking styles and so forth.

I’ve also admired the Chinese working culture. The Chinese are hard workers, there is no doubt about it. When on a job – like on a film project – they are tireless. They work long, hard days and very rarely complain. They want to achieve the best result in whatever position they are in the production, and are willing to go through huge stretches of work to reach there. Working on a set, it’s interesting to see how things happen fast when they need to happen: one command, and ten people are running with cables, tracks or tools to fix whatever needs to be fixed. You never see that anywhere else. And the commands are responded with a prompt holler: when 1st AD shouts: “props”” (meaning a person in charge of on-set props), everyone in that position instantly hollers back (something I believe means: “here!”. Same with costume: you need the costume, just say the word and they come running.

And it’s not just when shooting. The art direction, for example, is amazing. They pull out great concepts, plans and build sets out of nothing in mere seconds. I did hear that all in all our whole crew here is whopping 470 people, including all the set-builders and crew that are not constantly on set. The costume team is working hard to dress our hundreds of extras and the the office people – ones easily forgotten if you only go back and forth between the hotel and the set – are doing amazing job. All in all, we have an amazing film crew working hard on realizing my vision, and I’m nothing short of grateful to their effort.

Language barrier is still quite heavy on me, both on set and off-set, and Chinese body image does sometimes surprise. Here, they find no problem describing people as “fat” or “ugly”, which would be a big no-no in Europe or USA. But it’s easy to go by these remarks with a shrug: my job is not here to start lecturing every Chinese about how to address people; whatever cultural exchange I’m bringing here will be brought through my work. And then there’s the Chinese culture of avoiding to say directly anything. You rarely get a clear “yes” or “no” to anything, it’s always something in between, and it’s up to you to deduct which way it would be leaning. Duan Yihong specifically explained in-depth me the phrase, which roughly translates to: “I’ll think about it”.

On personal level, I’ve learned also a lot about loneliness, and how it can break you in pieces. I’m working with loads of great people here on daily basis, but if I had nobody to share my experiences with, I’d be a mess. We have established this pattern of WhatsApp calls with my wife here, where we speak about an hour every night, just going through the day on both ends and sharing our thoughts and feelings on everything – news, people, social media and our work. And of course our favourite topic: us. Plus, we discuss our children a lot. We talk almost like we were together in bed, and although the time difference is quite drastic (6 hours between Finland and China), we somehow manage to make this thing work on a daily basis.

And of course, I have Mika, and a selection of my countrymen coming in and out: Roope and Pekka were a great addition to my daily life. I also have some of my actors whom I have bonded more with: Udo is a great friend of mine, and he made a quick appearance here in China; Malla Malmivaara, a Finnish actress whom I didn’t know before, came here and spent two weeks here, and we became friends. Dalan Musson, writer for Iron Sky The Coming Race and Iron Sky: The Ark, who also plays a small role in the film, was a great delight when he showed up for two occasions. With Andy, we’ve had tons of great dinners already by now and I can’t get bored to his endless wealth of stories and lessons in filmmaking. I’ve also been watching his older movies to catch up with his life’s work – just last night I saw Internal Affairs where he plays against Richard Gere, from 1990 – and while I’m a fan, I try to keep the fandom at bay and work as a director with him.

The Chinese cast is, of course, harder to approach because – again – the language barrier. Duan Yihong is a wonderful actor, a real artist who has been teaching me so much about Chinese culture, about his art as an actor and this world. The kids – Liang and Yi – are brilliant and fun bunch, who can say “how do you do” when I come to the set, but are 250% in their roles and throwing themselves into the characters like nobody I’ve seen before! They didn’t know each other when we started, but they needed to play best pals: now I see them on screen and I can’t think of anything else but two best friends in the middle of all these crazy sets.

And of course, then there’s Vivienne, our leading lady who came from the States after facing being a typecasted “Asian girl nr. 3” in Hollywood pictures to create her career here. She is an absolute wonder, hard-working and bullheaded girl who’s set to march through a bunch of expectations built on Chinese female lead and present a new kind of a hero in science fiction films, and Chinese films as well. I’ve enjoyed thoroughly working with her, and her attitude is the one thing that makes me appreciate her the most.

On the production side, there’s Max whom we worked very tightly in the pre-production, shared stories and thoughts on the film – and films in general – and although he is not daily on set, whenever he shows his smiling face, I feel at home. My first AD Lei is also a great company, having been in school in USA to an artist family, he is a great bridge between Western and Chinese worlds, one without whom we would be in great trouble. I also have a great respect for our production manager mr. Zhu, who, although doesn’t speak any English, makes sure I have everything I need to make the best movie possible (and keeps me supplied with Chinese white wine, which I’ve told in this blog more than enough already).

In other departments, we have great people I’ve learned to know a bit more, Barron (not his Chinese name), our 2nd 2nd AD, and Maxine our 2nd AD, and Alain our 3rd AD are all super good at their job (my AD department is just amazing, I have to say), there’s wonderful and understanding people in casting department (Ma Kun for example), and camera department where Jonathan is the key between Mika and the cameras, a young kid with enormous interest in film and game business… and so many more.

So, I’m not lonely during the days, but when the hotel room closes, it sits in. The fact that I’ve been 120 days apart from my son, I see my wife only rarely and I haven’t seen my parents and my sister in a long, long time.

So, however much I’ve enjoyed these 120 days in China, I can’t wait to see my loved ones back in Finland. So if you guys are reading, only one month to go and I’m on a plane back home.

Then, let’s catch up.

Birthday week was now done, and it was time to get back to work. The week ahead would be grueling: six shooting days, every day working with a lot of actors and shooting 17 pages (!!) of script. Luckily, everything was to take place inside the studios and in pretty controllable sets, but in addition to this, we had all new sets which always take some time to set up in a shootable condition.

The first day was, though, an easy one. I was thankful the production had scheduled only a short scene to be shot on the first day with Andy, since of course it would take some time to get to know the character and how he works on the screen and to get us working together. I had already established a pretty good working routine with Duan Yihong, the Chinese big star whom we had been developing the character very intensively already for few months. Still, getting all the actors together in the same room is always not only a challenge for the director, but also for the actors: they have to portray characters who have long histories together, yet they probably meet each other for the first time on the makeup or even later, as we do blocking on the set!

But it was great to see how working professionals do their job: they know the script, they know their lines and they know what kind of relationships they should have with other actors, and the rest is really just about finding the key of the scene and making it work. Andy took his rightful place as the leader of the scene immediately, while Yihong played his part as the suffering father perfectly.

What’s interesting, having now worked with them both together for over a week, is that the real interesting key of the movie is starting to unearth itself in a surprising way. The script is, of course, great and the visuals will be amazing, but most interestingly, the relationship between an Asian and a Western man turns out to be one of the most interesting things I find ourselves exploring constantly.

Yihong, who plays father of our main character Fang Qing, brings up constantly the relationship between Chinese kids and their parents. He goes to great lengths in securing his character’s emotions, making sure his character doesn’t give out too much too early. Andy, in the other hand, brings out the American steamroller kind of a character who has a very different view in parenting, in emotions and in the way to co-operate with people. Rarely have I seen two similar characters put side to side, and since they share no common language, the reality is found somewhere between the lines. I must say I can’t wait to get to show them to the audience, there is something quite genuine in this combination.

My approach in directing films like Iron Sky is always to find the characters amidst all the madness the world brings about. I love to have crazy characters around everyone, but the ones that make the story, need to be approachable and solid, real characters. I worked hard with Julia, Chris and Götz to find the truth in their characters in the first Iron Sky, as well as with Lara, Vladimir and Kit in the second one. This time, I have even more realistic characters to play with, and while it can be quite a brainfry at the end of the day with six to seven characters who all need to be believable in the scene and in the world and do part of their own story, it’s really satisfactory to see the end results as they unfold in front of your eyes.

There are very few things more enjoyable in my profession than seeing a scene that I believe in. I believe the characters, their intentions and I forget that I’m watching actors reading out lines, but actually a scene from a real life playing in front of my eyes. And I don’t take credit for it, I may have nothing to do with it in the first place: the scene is created by the actors, and the writer, and if these elements work, I don’t have to say anything. Andy actually told me Lew Ashby had once told him that people easily misunderstand the role of a director, because of the title. Lew said, a director doesn’t need necessarily to say anything to create a beautiful scene.

The first time I read the script for Iron Sky: The Ark, I knew we need a great piece of cast attached to play the role of the main villain, Illuminati mastermind billionaire William Russell. Someone with an aura of respect, versatility as an actor and a possibility for a sinister presence. Being an extremely rich character who uses his power ruthlessly to achieve his ultimate goal, he read almost like a criminal boss; almost like a mobster.

Well, it didn’t take too long stretch from that thought to land the name on mr. Garcia, whom we remember from multiple roles in American films, but his most notable work was at Godfather III, where he played the role of Vincent Mancini, opposite to Al Pacino. I’ve been a big fan of Garcia, and after talks with the production, we decided to approach Andy. To our great fortune, he read the script, liked it, and enjoyed the China connection of the production and decided to give it a shot.

Afterwards, there was no contact with him, outside of the dialogue with the agent and the agency, but Andy himself remained a shadowy figure of whom we spoke about but nobody had any real direct contact with him. So, I would be guessing what kind of a guy he was – I had talked with Udo about him, he had made a film with him and said he’s very nice – but my actual first contact with Andy was over a FaceTime call, as he called in to talk a bit about the role. The conversation was short, and the first time meeting with him was just one day prior to his first shooting day, as he had landed in Qingdao the day before.

The day itself started off badly for me: the white wine and the KTV did its’ job, and I was suffering in the bed long past the afternoon. Annika was leaving to the airport later in the evening, because she had to stay in Beijing overnight to make sure she doesn’t miss the flight (Qingdao-Beijing -connection tends to be a unreliable and Finnair only flies once a day from Beijing, so missing that plane is both expensive and time-consuming). We had our sad goodbyes in the afternoon and afterwards I rushed to the car and off to meet Andy.

The man turned out to be a nice guy full of stories with a ridiculously wide experience of the craft of acting. Having done so many memorable roles and having worked with hundreds of great actors over four or five decades, he knows what he is talking about. Over the coming days and weeks I would learn more just about my own craft as a director, not to mention about acting as a profession, than I would’ve ever guessed.

We spent the first afternoon going through costume options and discussing the lines and the character in general, and then had a nice seafood dinner at a local restaurant nearby the studios. Max came around, Lei was there and we heard crazy stories and discussed filmmaking in depth.

I was feeling bad after Annika had left, but we had also decided that she would come over once before the shoot is over, join me for the wrap party and travel back home with me. Knowing a thing like that makes a big difference to a lonely soul.

Luckily, Roope and Pekka would still stick around for about a week, so I wouldn’t be just by myself.

Last shooting day of the week, and tomorrow would be a day off! Annika had been planning my birthday party for quite some time, and asked a bunch of people from the production to join, and now the day was here! We did have some shooting to do, first, that’s for sure, but I was already antsy (no relation to our steadicam operator Ants) the whole day.

The shoot was all things weird, to begin with. Those of you who’ve read the whole diary may remember we had to stop shooting in Beijing on the fourth shooting day quite abruptly, as the local officials were a bit nervous on large gatherings during then-ongoing National Meeting in October. The issue was that the hall we were using for the shoot would be taken down after we left, so the set wouldn’t be there anymore afterwards. So the decision was made that we preserve the set, ship it to Qingdao and rebuild it exactly the same way to the Wanda studios. I was slightly skeptical that it would be similar but lo and behold, as I stepped in to the studio on the first of December, it felt like a time warp back two months and several hundred kilometers north. The set was an exact facsimile of the one we had in Beijing, although I did feel like the room was just slightly smaller, but everyone claimed it was the exact same measurements; maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten that much bigger. Damn that Qingdao seafood.

The day was a beautiful one. Sun was shining bright on the sky and I took few rounds with my skateboard around the studios, just to keep myself in motion. The shoot was also pretty easy: we did two scenes, with the kids (Liang, Yi and Vivienne) and wrapped early. Then, we jumped on the car and headed over to my hotel where Annika had donned up in a sexy little number, and then off to experience the Qingdao nights!

First stop was seafood. I had found this lovely place which I call Big Tits Seafood, thanks to the painting of a huge-breasted woman on the wall, but what took me there again and again is the amazing seafood hot pot which is like something I’ve never had before with anywhere. A massive bowl filled with seafood, swimming in a slightly chili sauce: a dinner to die for. Vivienne joined me and Annika and Roope and Pekka and we enjoyed the dinner thoroughly.

Then, back to the car and towards the next stop: New York Bar. We were blasting Finnish music and singing along, my driver wasn’t that excited about it, but took us to the Qingdao’s hottest bar… Which was, thanks to Chinese non-existent bar culture – practically empty. A band was playing Alanis Morissette quite well, and we had a bunch of nice drinks and enjoyed an added company of Jonathan, Mika and few others from the crew who joined the party slightly later.

And then, it was time for the rumoured KTV experience. KTVs are practically Karaoke hotels here in China. Some of them have girls there who join the partygoers and sing and dance with them, some of them are just simply rooms you rent and get served beers and snacks with music. Ours was the latter kind, and we arrived there around 1 am. The whole house was empty, but that didn’t matter: we lined up a nice set of Metallica and David Bowie songs and started belting loud and absolutely wrong, and partied until five in the morning. Turns out Jonathan, the 18-year-old kid who’s kinda shy, is an excellent singer and killed Eye of the Tiger like a champ!

At five am we eventually decided to head back home. There wasn’t much to be achieved anymore, we had already gained ourselves a great momentum for the hangover on the next day, celebrated my birthday quite enough thank you very much and headed back to the hotel.

Just as we were leaving, a strange commotion ensued: my driver refused to drive my friends back to the Qingdao anymore, although he had already agreed to drive us as much as its’ needed due to my birthday; he decided to change his mind as we were just about to step out and ordered everyone out instead, that he’d go sleeping now. It was not a very nice surprise, for the hotel was fully booked, we were quite far away from Pekka’s and Roope’s hostel and everything was supposed to be OK until last minute the guy ditches us and drives away.

I got pissed off and called David my assistant to tell the driver to come back. He refused, until finally he did drive back after the transportation coordinator called him up. He was really furious and we nearly got into a fight with him, and I was very uncomfortable on sending my friends with the car back to the city and offered to get a taxi, but the production said it’s OK, so off they went (and arrived safely, no problems there). It was an uncalled-for incident, especially since we had been very clear that today it would go late, but apparently the guy had had some issues with the production already before, and after that day, I never saw him again. Either he quit or was fired, I don’t know, but my new driver is now in and he is awesome.

All in all, a great fun birthday, save the little incident in the early morning hours; the next day would be quite an interesting one, because I had the first meeting with Andy Garcia, whom I had never met before, to talk about the costume and the character, and I was already boasting a nice post-birthday hangover. Also, Annika would leave tomorrow, which made it even worse day for this… but such is life sometimes.

Since we now revealed our cast in a press conference yesterday, I’m able to start talking about our actors with names. 

30th started in a new location, a beautiful simple set built around a triangle-shaped table with a light on it. The whole room is kinda weirdly shaped and small, but the strangeness of the set really does magic on the picture. We shot with our kids – young Wang Liang, Lin Yi and Vivienne Tien, and Rhydan Vaugahn, who plays the henchman of the antagonist in the film. The scene – an interrogation scene of the young kids – played very nicely, and we spent the day covering it.

In the afternoon, we moved to another set, also a smallish room, where we decided to instead of covering the scene with normal coverage to do it all in one long steadicam take. It worked beautifully, and although we played the whole bit at least ten times together, the scene became alive quickly and the whole idea of using only one long steadicam just worked. Fortunately, we had the man in the house for the job – the amazing mr. Ants.

After the shoot, we went out for a nice little dinner with friends – Roope and Pekka had arrived to Qingdao for my birthday as well – and then home. We saved the white wine for later, since tomorrow would be the big birthday party and I wanted to be awake for the coming challenges.

November 29th has marked my birthday since 38 years back, and I’ve had a birthday party three times while shooting. First, I turned 31 when shooting Iron Sky in Germany. Coincidentally, Christopher Kirby, who plays Washington in the first one, shared the same date and we arranged a big party for the whole crew in our costume hall, which was actually a downstairs of a huge empty office building. Later on, we found ourselves all stuck in a small bar singing “Olen suomalainen” by Kari Tapio, which for some reason was randomly in a jukebox in this small hole-in-the-wall in Frankfurt.

The second time was when I turned 36, we had a big party over in the amazing Finnish apartment in Antwerp, Belgium, when shooting The Coming Race. The house was just beyond words; maybe something out of David Lynch’s dream. Stuffed with great art pieces, a full round bed in the middle of the living room and dark wood floors and walls, and even more amazingly, the building had a ship’s cockpit hoisted in the rooftop. Yeah, sounds crazy, and it is. We partied pretty hard, Annika was there for sure, my brother was there, Tom Green showed up, rest of the cast came around and much of the crew. It was great fun.

My birthday party weekend started here on the date on 29th with a bottle of sparkling wine after a shooting day, and a nice dinner with bunch of my friends and people from the production. The actual party would be few days away, but already Pekka and Roope had joined the party from Finland, Annika was there and we had a killer seafood dinner with Max, his wife as well and others. The actual party was scheduled to happen in two days, but that was a good start; we had to shoot the next day so nothing crazy went down, but we had a very nice time and had a fantastic dinner altogether.

Oh, and yeah, what did we shoot that day? Yeah, that’s also another story. One of the things we had been lacking here in China was a decent steadicam work. The crew had good people in it, but steadicam is a bit of a different story, but luckily the production had agreed to haul over an outside support: Ants Vahur, who is probably one of the best steadicam operators in Europe, and has worked a lot with Mika, came over and we did a bunch of pretty amazing steadicam moves just to stretch our muscles a bit; there would be much more of that coming up later, but already yesterday we did want to do some tries, and boy can Ants move like a butterfly even with that heavy camera set hanging from his neck.

So, now we are in full force. Although the drones have left us, the steadicam is in so bunch of cool moves are still in the store for us!

As I forgot to close the curtains last night, I’m now wide awake staring at the bright sunrise over the blue sea. The beach sand is still yellow, but the greenery around the hotel has started to turn brownish hue. The winter truly is coming to Qingdao. 

Sometimes, the scheduling in this production means we wrap three hours early, like yesterday; sometimes we’re flooded, packed, absolutely stuffed with ridiculous amount of scenes. On Tuesday, we had all in all 18 scenes to shoot (“only” four script pages, but still…), which luckily happened only between two actors in one location, but still… I was ripping my hair as I tried to figure out how to make it all happen. My first idea was to run it all in one long performance, but turned out it wouldn’t be possible: the scenes broke in three naturally born parts, which we then rehearsed for ages and then started to just run through.

One of the trickiest parts in directing is getting bored with the scene you’re shooting; it can happen, since all you do is run the same lines over and over again, and while it all feels natural and fun by the time you’re working on it in the beginning, it does get stale after 10 hours of the same, with only a lunch break in between. Especially, I would believe, for the actors: at least as a director I get to focus on different faces, different camera angles and details, but to them, it’s just minor adjustments in placing but other than that, the same-same, all day long.

Well, for sure yesterday was that case exactly. The only thing that broke the rhythm was the realization that we were actually at an exact mid-point of the production on the 36th shooting day, at 17:15, which was the exact mid-point of the shooting day. I asked Annika to bring the two bottles of Jaloviina from the hotel room on her way to the studio, and poured a drink for the most of the crew and raised a glass for over-the-hill -celebration.

Last time I had this celebration was around two years ago on Iron Sky The Coming Race. In Europe, Over The Hill is a much bigger party, also a great one since most of the crew is still around, already know each other and have a chance to unwind the stress of the production for one night. For Iron Sky The Coming Race, our party was held in an old mansion outside Brussels, and everyone was there. We all got tremendously drunk, but the night’s mood was ruined, I remember, by the November Paris attacks which happened as the night grew longer, not very far Brussels indeed. Many crewmembers, including Tom Green, had thought about heading there there the day after for a day off, but had the plans changed…

Back to Qingdao, two years later. This time, there was not a party, we just continued shooting after the Jallu-shots (mine was a bit too strong for a shooting day, took a while to shake off the fuzzy drunk feeling; I could never properly direct under the influence of alcohol, I noticed). But nevertheless, I’ve been here 114 days and we’ve shot 36 shooting days, which is already two days more than there was for Iron Sky The Coming Race, and there’s still full another half to go. Luckily, doesn’t mean another 114 days here, though… From the point of writing this, merely five more weeks to go on this China trip.

I just woke up to a bad dream at 4 am. I haven’t had them in a while. I believe it’s the nerve endings who’ve accustomed into having your loved one next to you, screaming for those responses it got used to now that you’re all alone in the bed. That, and the heavy dinner last night. Nevertheless, here I am, wide awake feeling wretched, watching as the sun slowly creeps above the horizon, lighting the Stringed Instrument Isle, as Qingdao is literally known, with brilliant greenish haze.

The second working day with one of the key actors of the movie dawned beautiful and clear. This also marks the end of our location shoot stretch, and we finally get to move in to the studios for good. Many of the sets are still unfinished, but the one we’re shooting in today has been made ready, and although I do feel the walls could use some more texture, it’s already amazing to see how beautiful the world of Iron Sky: The Ark will form into as we move into the controlled environments of the studio. Not to say there’s anything wrong with the locations, but they are the world created by others, this is the world created by us, solely for the purpose of this movie.

Annika is sleeping back at the hotel for the most part of the day for the jetlag is really kicking in bad, but that’s fine since my brain is only booked for the afternoon to this small but tremendously important scene, and just as we start blocking it, I already know it’s going to be a though day. Sometimes, what seems very simple on the paper can become very complicated when you get the actors on the set and start blocking. If the scene doesn’t fit right, no matter how small it is, it can turn into a real struggle to get it working.

And not just that, the other scene we shoot turns out to be even more troublesome. The performances are not to blame, it’s just a scene which really clears way for the main relationship of the movie and building those kind of things is really tricky. You don’t want to give in too much too early, but you don’t want to end up being too abrupt with the actual emotions when they do kick in. I was trying to get there with the actors, and simultaneously, I found myself running constantly into the Asian/Western storytelling and characterisation clashes. I could write a full blog post on the differences alone, but let’s just leave it to further observations: I don’t claim to understand anything about this, not yet at least. I just shoot the way I find believable.

Anyway, I felt I was locked in with the scene and couldn’t find a way around it until finally I did what usually works in this kind of situation: ask the actors how they would play it. It’s easy to get stuck up your own ass when trying to solve a scene, and the actors who trust you will follow, but usually just asking: what would you do in this situation is the right key. It’s probably not good for the beginning of the scene, when everyone has too much loaded expectations, but after few tries there’s quite a lot of truth in it, as soon as the actors are familiar with the lines, the basic blocking, the set and the actors they are working with.

Nevertheless, when the day was done, so was I and we went with Annika to this beautiful Schezuan restaurant, where we also had my assistant to join us. We had few beers and some remarkably spicy food, like they love to have it at the Schezuan province, and loved every bite of it. Truly, the thing about Chinese food is that probably nowhere in the world you’ll find so many local dishes that are so good, each one of them. Almost never in my last five months altogether here in China have I had anything but the most mind-blowing food experiences in a restaurant.