China Diary

China Film Group is China’s biggest and most influential film enterprise, which distributes, produces and finances films for China market. With Max’s connections, we’ve created a good relationship with them and they have supported Iron Sky: The Ark from the beginning, which is imperative for the film to succeed. On Wednesday, we paid a visit to them, talking about films and also their recent trip to Finland, which hopefully comes fruitful as there’s a planned co-production agreement being drafted between China and Finland, making official co-productions easier.

After the meeting, me and May, our Canadian-Chinese co-producer had a nice chat, and her sons joined us for the dinner at a great teppanyaki restaurant at their hotel. Mrs. Fang the editor was sick for the day so there was really nothing much to do. I spent lengthy afternoon watching a terrible hotel band playing with broken equipment very badly some classics until it was time to head back to the hotel and chill. A glass of wine soothed me for the first time into a decent night’s sleep, hinting that slowly the jetlag might be over.

Video of the day!

Back in the Containeryard, we did some serious container Tetris.

Sound people love their sound equipments and get slightly nervous when you don’t respond to their enthusiasm, and sales people get slightly nervous when you don’t respond to their sales pitches. That’s the reason I usually try to be excited about some tech I have no idea about when being presented with, or nod along and ask questions when sales pitch is being presented to me, but yesterday I just couldn’t get there. I had slept two hours in the night, in one hour blocks, so I had this constant pressure around my skull which made me more quiet than grumpy than usual.

It didn’t help that I had again encountered a masterful example of shitty Chinese customer service. I had decided to, instead of my usual McD lunch across the street to head over to a place which called itself something like Old Style Beijing Lamb Hot Pot. Unfortunately, around the hotel the restaurants and services are pretty often crafted for the hotel guests, so the prices are ridiculous. I was watching the prices and decided to want something that they didn’t feel like doing to me, and after a bit of “meiyou-meiyou” I realized they wanted to sell me something more expensive than what I was picking, and looking at the 200RMB bill that would’ve got me to, I decided to cancel the whole order and walk out.

Luckily, there’s also a a delicious little noodle place just around the corner from the office, so I went there and grabbed a 22RMB bowl full of delicious noodles added with a service which – unlike usually anywhere – included a smile to the paying customer.

At the office, I had a clear plan of trying to figure out the midpoint of the movie, but somehow we got stuck trying to solve a scene which actually was already in a pretty good shape. We fiddled around the shots and tried to come up with a way to make them all fit differently, while avoiding the actual problem of the 2nd act we had been battling it, and by the time we had to leave for another sound company meeting we were all quite lost on what it was we were even trying to do.

The visit to the sound company was, as I told, a tech demo and sales pitch, to which I didn’t really respond very much because my mind was working on the edit, and I saw mrs. Fang going through the same process in her head. We were both miles away while Max and the sound company people discussed options, and while there’s nothing I can really say whether this or that is better in sound as long as it’s Dobly Atmos and all that stuff, color grading suite would’ve been of great interest to me. Yet, we couldn’t visit the grading suite, which indeed was disappointing, so we left home not much wiser than when we came in, but it was good to meet the people and see the admittedly professional facilities (although, having worked with Rotor in Babelsberg, Germany, everything looks tiny compared to their massive mixing/grading suite…).

As we were leaving, our original plan had been to head back home or hotel, but since we both’s minds were working on the cut, we decided to give it a few more hours. We went back to the office and opened the cut and started to really work on the actual problem of the second act.

What I did was I gave each scene a name and placed them in front of me. Soon, just by looking at the scenes, I realized what was the issue: by naming the scenes I noticed a certain description following up with each, and that I was able to identify as the problem. It wasn’t really so much what happened in the scene, but the rhythm of the events inside the scene. It all become rather predictable, and we realized that in order to keep the audience entertained, we need to keep them constantly on the edge of their seats, surprised and wondering what would happen next: never let them get lulled by a familiar rhythm of events. Find the surprises; like the editor of the first Iron Sky once taught me: get in the scene as late as possible, and get out as quickly as possible. It’s a general golden rule in editing, keeps the viewers on their toes and the filmmakers just one step ahead of them.

So we started to kick around an interesting idea which came to my mind when we were trying to solve the pacing. The idea would change the actual script a bit, but it sounded like a fun aspect to look at, so we decided to give it a try. I gave mrs. Fang the instructions to try this crazy idea out, and decided to let her work on it by herself and headed back home. Well, New Otani hotel, that is, but anyway. As close as I can call it home..

I had big plans to just quickly change and head over to enjoy the Tacos at Taco Tuesday, but my tiredness got a hold of myself and I crashed on the bed, only to wake up six hours later, at 1.30 am. No more sleep for me for tonight, but at least I feel slightly more rested than yesterday.

I tried sleep again, but it turned out to be impossible. I managed to nap one hour before 9am, when it was time for the Oscars, which I streamed using a really snappy, crashy stream. I managed to watch only half of the show until the whole stream finally froze and nothing was to be done anymore. From what I was able to gather, it was quite an uneventful show awards-wise, but much was said on stage which will stay in history. I guessed 12 of 24 Oscars correctly – Actor, Actress, Animated, Cinematography, Directing, Short Doc, Edit, Makeup, Music, Best Film, Production Design and Adapted Screenplay.

After the show I went back to the office and we watched the whole film from start to finish. It’s shaping up. There’s still too much talk in the second act, which I will have to get to flow better, but the beginning is good and ending will be good once the VFX start to shape up. We discussed this with mrs. Fang and agreed pretty much on everything, and then went for a meeting at one of the possible sound post production facilities rather close by, in the Russian quarters.

I suddenly got this terrible craving for good Russian dinner; maybe some borsch-soup and some unapologetic meat dish accompanied with a total balalaika show. I’m going to have to find out what’s the best Russian restaurant in Beijing, and head over there. Report will follow.

Then, back to the office. We started to work a bit more with mrs. Fang on the edit, and had a chat with Max about the cut as well. We agreed to work tomorrow and then show the film to him and discuss what needs to be done.

Ohh man night alone, awake are *long*. Around midnight you think maybe soon you’ll fall asleep, but no hope brother, engage *this* train of thoughts and you’re up next two hours. Two am, as you first yawn a bit you close your eyes, put away the book and try… and then this thing pops into your head, and there we go again. At 4am, wife – currently in Spain – messages she’s going to bed. I know I won’t be going to sleep, not before the breakfast. So the last hours from four am to seven am I wait for the breakfast to begin, then haul my ass downstairs, eat quickly and hop back up for few hours of shut-eye. Ten am, the room service bangs on the door. I scream I don’t need room cleaning and slap the “do not disturb” -sign on the door. At 11 am they call my room: can we now clean your room. No, thank you. At 12 am I must get up otherwise I’m late from work too many hours.

Coming back home I realize I forgot the do-not-disturb -sign on the door. So the room is messy and argh I just can’t win I assume.

Today, we finished the first round of the cut. We had managed to make the story flow nicer and become more compact, but still I felt it was too long. In the last moment I suggested throwing out quite a big segment in the beginning of the movie – at least give it a try – to see if we would survive without it. I think we might get away with it, but I do admit some character would be left a bit shallow… but then again, we have a lot of characters already. Not everyone needs to be explained thoroughly, leaving a bit more to the actors themselves.

That’s what the whole editing process is, it’s compromising the story for the flow of the movie. You can’t take out forty minutes of scripted footage without losing some intricacies, but if you would put it all in the film, people would walk out bored to death halfway through. It’s a compromise, and your job as a director and as the editor is to make it as seamless and unnoticeable as possible, the fact that it is, in the end, a compromise you’re presenting on the screen.

Today is a Lantern Festival in China, the day when traditionally the Chinese New Year is celebrated. Lanterns are lit and families gather together. We cut the day short today so that mrs. Fang could go with her family, and I stopped by at the Beijingese restaurant I frequent at, eating a bowl of egg yolk and tomato soup and some sauted cabbage and mushrooms. I must say it wasn’t the best dinner I’ve had here, but satisfied me.

Back at home, a quick nap and a movie, then waiting for yet another long night to begin.

Video of the day!

Since I now can add some videos to my blog (I only now realized how to do it), I’ll be putting up a Video of the Day from now on, from somewhere along the production. The first video is from Day 82, when we shot some action sequences at the old Rhizao port. In it, two stunts try out a jump.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).