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!

Urbaani Timo - BTS

It's been about four months since school began, and I haven't really been updating anything, so I think it's about time. A little over a week ago we finished the biggest project we've done during these four month. While half the people were working on a music video, we were making documentaries.

Coming up with a subject was hard since I didn't have like a burning passion towards something I'd love to make a documentary about. Luckily Allu and I came up with a fun idea for a mockumentary: we'd make a nature documentary about someone. At first we actually kind of thought that our teacher would just straight up tell us we had to choose some other subject, but the more we talked about our plans with him, he seemed to accept our plans. He also pointed out that our work would be an "urban nature documentary".

Also there were more surprises down the road since a classmate Emmi also wanted to join the project. 

Finally we asked a classmate Timo if he wanted to star in the documentary.

And thus our project had a name:

URBAANI TIMO,

(meaning, of course, Urban Timo.)

Directed and written by: All three of us

In our documentary we followed Timo around for a day, from waking up to going to sleep. We followed Timo through school and through his own documentary about glasses of water, and his after school activies. We also had three experts we interviewed, about Timos in general, about food and then about Timo's documentary. 

We actually filmed a whole lot during the very first day, and the next couple of days we just did interviews and filmed some scenery from Tampere. The whole shoot was almost painless apart from the first day feeling excruciatingly long.

One of the weirdest things that happened was when we were filming in a park. There was a scene were another Timo hit Timo with a plastic bottle. While we filmed another bit, we noticed an older man looking at us. We assumed he's just interested in what we're doing but then he just picked up our bottle and left. It was lucky we didn't need it anymore. 

After that Allu edited a rough draft of the short film, and then we recorded the narration. Of course a nature documentary needs a narrator. Many of our shots would've just been weird without any kind of narration over it. 

Editing went quite smoothly apart us having weird problems with the colours. First time the documentary looked just weird after we got it through Drive. Then it was edited again, and this time it looked alright on mobile phones but not on TV. We actually meant to ask another teacher (who we also interviewed, he told us how Timo is doing a great job unlike us) to help us, but on the school's monitor everything looked fine, and I hadn't brought my laptop, so what happened will forever remain a mystery, I guess.

We're watching the documentaries on 19th, and I'm excited to see what the serious people have done, but also see what kind of reaction our little mockumentary gets. 

The whole project was interesting and fun to make and our group was amazing, and I'm not just saying this because I promised to link them this post after I've published it.

Seven Samurai (1954)

Directed by: Akira Kurosawa 

Written by: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto & Hideo Oguni

A poor village hears a bandit clan is planning an attack, so they hire samurais to defend them.

---

Let’s be honest here: this movie is excellent, but it was a wrong movie.

And by the wrong movie I mean our teacher made a mistake thinking it’s a good idea to make a class watch a movie that takes 3,5 hours. That’s way too long for us to sit on uncomfortable chairs, no matter how great the movie is. And it took us about 23 hours to finish that movie, since we had few breaks and a long lunch break and hey, we went home for a while and then returned the next morning... And I don’t think many of us were psyched about continuing the movie in the morning.

What made some of us even less psyched was that after we had finished the movie, our teacher went through it scene by scene telling us exactly why that scene is good and what’s important about that scene. And that took us about two days.

So instead of a three day long course about dramaturgy, it was a three day long course about Seven Samurais by Akira Kurosawa.

Even though I never want to see that movie again, mostly because of the past three days, I can’t deny this movie isn’t a masterpiece.

Watching this movie in 2017 is a whole different point of view to the movie than watching it like in the 1950s, 1960s... When I first watched it, I thought that the plot wasn’t anything special, it’s pretty typical. But as we discussed this with classmates, the thing is... This movie probably made that plot pretty typical, and it must’ve been something amazing when the movie first came out.

And as we went through the movie scene by scene, no matter how annoying that was at the time, there’s not a single useless thing about that plot. Of course it’s incredibly long and there are long scenes, but that can be a time thing or a place thing. But the story and the structure of the story is close to perfect, or at least to perfect as we know it, as we are used to thinking about the three act structure in plots.

And as an action movie on its own, Seven Samurais is amazing. It’s so emotional, which was a bit hard to grasp the first time, when I just wanted it to end and I wanted to go home. But after we viewed some scenes again, I actually understood them, and they actually hit me. And yes, some plot points are weird because of the cultural differences, but that doesn’t make them any less emotional. You might wonder why something happens, but it still hits you.

The biggest problem of the movie I can actually blame on the translator. The names of the characters were barely mentioned in the subtitles, so the first time watching it was really hard keeping a track of who is who. The first time the only ones I knew by name were Kikuchiyo and Shino. And since some of the scenes are so dark, it’s even harder to keep a track of who just died and who’s doing what, and when you don’t speak Japanese, you can’t trust your ears as much.

I absolutely adore this movie but also I kind of hate it because of the past three days. I hope to one day watch it and actually enjoy it, appreciate it properly. Right now I can just say, amazing movie, horrible experience.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

10 / 10

Hamlet Goes Business (1987)

Directed and written by: Aki Kaurismäki

A bizarre black-and-white film noir reworking of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. After the death of his father, young Hamlet inherits a seat on the board of a company controlled by his uncle that decides to move into the rubber duck market. But Hamlet is suspicious of the circumstances surrounding his father's death...

---

I've read few plays by Shakespeare, and seen even fewer live, but Hamlet will forever remain my favourite. So, when we had to watch and analyse a Finnish film for school, I turned to my dad, because obviously I wanted to see something by Aki Kaurismäki. Even if we did these in groups, I kind of chose on behalf of the rest of my team. My decision was mostly based on always been interested in Hamlet Goes Business and having read and seen Hamlet live, well, a weird adaptation of Hamlet, I thought that might give me some insight to the film.

Like I wrote before reviewing Drifting Clouds, the actors in Kaurismäki's movies are very stiff. There's basically no emotion in the acting comparing to Hollywood movies. During Drifting Clouds I wasn't a big fan of that style, but it suits Hamlet Goes Business. It gives a certain contrast to the somewhat theatrical dialogue and the fact that this is based on a play.

Also I was surprised to see how good Pirkka-Pekka Petelius was as Hamlet. He's mostly famous for being a comedian in many sketch shows, and this is honestly the first serious role I've seen him play. Of course this is a black comedy, a spoof of Hamlet, so the role is still not entirely serious.

While I love most things about this movie, it's that ending that kind of bothers me. After seeing this film several times I'm already used to it, but it still feels very separate from the rest of the movie. It's added by Kaurismäki, which might explain that. I could go into lengths what bothers me about this, but I'd rather not make this review sound exactly like the analysis we did in class, and also I don't want to spoil you.

The music chosen for this movie is amazing. The classical music and rock music go very well together. Most of the time there's a great harmony with what we see and what we hear, but even when there's not, it' amazing. And oh, the cinematography... Weird angles and crooked shots are so great. And of course the whole movie being in black and white amplifies the whole feeling. With colours, it wouldn't be the same film.

Hamlet Goes Business is an amazing take on Hamlet, and a great satire on business world. While it's clear I will not like all of Kaurismäki's movies, I can appreciate his work and I'm glad I've found a favourite

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

9 / 10

Film Student Update #1

Guess what!

Well actually you can pretty much guess already if you read the title of this post.

I'm now officially a film student.

Today I started at a "adult education collge" (Honestly, that sounds just wrong, but there's no better phrase for that, becaus "people's high school" sounds even worse) and I'm going to be studying films and TV with other people. And it's not going to be just studying everything theoretically, we're going to be making short films and stuff like that!

So I thought, since I'm running a blog about movies and since I think my blog played a crucial part on this, since mostly this shows my passion and my knowledge, and has made me a better writer and a better film-viewer, I might be updating something here every once in a while.

Mostly it will be anything of interest to me: something I never noticed before, or just an update on how I can't watch movies anymore without noticing every little mistake. We'll see.

And thank you to all of my readers. You might not comment much, but still the stats have kept me going with this blog. Love ya!