Commercial - BTS

First course of the year has been about commercials. And there's pretty much no theory involved, apart from the first day when we watched a few commercials made by previous students for our school.

So like the previous students, we too are making commercials for our school. Our idea came from our director, and it features a short clip made in the fashion of 1920s silent films, featuring six characters, representing our different syllabi: a director / cinematographer, an actor, a journalist, a photographer, a psychologist and a teacher. 

Our producer dabbing while holding a
prop skull

I actually got a role I haven't done before: I'm in charge of costumes and props. This has been challenging mostly because I don't have any theoretical knowledge on what costumes are supposed to look like. Another challenge is that our wardrobe isn't so great. It's surprisingly good, but looking for certain items may be challenging. As I'm writing this I've found pretty much anything: all the clothing and luckily some actors found their costumes in their own closets. 

But to be honest I've enjoyed the prop part more. Mostly because most of that stuff came from school and I got to choose these really cool old cameras which I'm completely in love with. Like even though this has been stressful because I know nothing about being a costumier, all these cameras are pretty much worth it.

Our first day of shooting was 16th of January at Valkeakoski, where we shot a scene where the characters were lost in a snow storm in a forest. We had a lot of technical problems though. Like right from the start Kaj had forgotten half of our cables back at the studio, which resulted in an angry message from our teacher. Setting up lighting equipment in the woods took a long time and the biggest problem was our snow machine. It apparently wasn't meant for a situation like that and it kept freezing, so eventually our snow storm didn't even have snow in it, just a hazer (and our producer faking a snowfall in front of the camera by dropping snow)

That was a long day and it got dark before we were finished. We started at 7.30 in the morning when we left Tampere, and I was home at 8 PM, so... 

As a costumier I didn't have much to do except help carry things and turn on the fan when we shot.

Another day of shooting didn't take as long because it had only one shot, but we started at 7 to set things up. Most of the actors were late though so we couldn't start as soon as we wanted. After that there was disassembling (what the fuck is the right word for that?) of the set which took a while, and then... It's done. There's only editing left. 

Except for me, I have to wash the clothes and return them. I'm hoping I'll have the energy to do that.

I'll be making another post once the commercials are up on YouTube and post them then!