Tuesday, August 26, 2008

By the river...

Kjell and Fredrik are working on something...



Will it float???



No, a tea-bag isn't enough to make a float sink into the river... finally some tape around a pebble managed to make a nice looking float.




Tommy has been forced to puff on a pipe once again. He quitted years ago but if it's written into the script well.. nothing much else to do but to smoke that pipe!



Director Lee takes a close look at the monitor and makes sure the framing is okay and the actors performed as they supposed to. A common theme of the day is that Fredrik seems to be way too happy...



Finally a complete picture taken by Lee over the location at Skivarpsån. It was a great location visually but the sound from cars passing by was crazy and yeah that dog that barked constantly was also crazy. But I hope that with crew's and cast's patience we managed to get enough clean dialogue to make it a perfect scene.

Meeting da police...

After vacations, partyweekends and a lot of time off we are back on track on this movie making journey. This time John Palmer meets the local swedish police office by the name of Mr Starck played by Tommy Bech. But let's take us from the beginning...

Based on the fact that we had limited access to the location, actors and crew I (Fredrik Larsson) decided to shoot regardless if it rained or not. On saturday the 23th of august 2008 it literally poored down through the sky and I checked the weather every hour and it was supposed to be only a few drops of rain. But on sunday morning it was still raining though not heavily. We decided to take a quick detour and pick up a party tent to put over the outhouse furniture and use that as a cover. After a while of trying to figure out how to build the cover it finally turned out pretty ok.




While the crew worked on getting all the gear up and running Tommy chills and reads a local newspaper. It's such a hard work being an actor... ;)




Lee Friman, director and makeup for the day fixes John Palmer's wound.





Some instructions and discussions about the shootorder.



The soundboy, Mårten Cervin, is really focused on listening.. is it wind or what is it? Yepp, it's wind..





Behind the dirtbag the camera hides. It's raining so a temporary raincover will have to do. The cameraoperator, Kjell Lindman, don't need a raincover - we all know that humans are rainproof, right?

The first shoot of the day turned out pretty ok though we ran a bit late... well, a LOT late...

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Teaser #1

We are back in the UK to the meeting between Nick and Clam. Enjoy!

Monday, July 21, 2008

Who dare to disturb me when I am reading my newspaper?

Joe Monni, played by Deepak Tara, is in his home reading the paper while someone has the guts to disturb while he reads the newspaper... and you wouldn't want to irritate a mob-guy.. even though he is just local mobster...



Fortunately it's just John calling and it all turns out okay.. below we see Kjell working the dolly (mrail) and taking sweet pictures of Deepak. Even though it turned pretty hot in there we all managed to survive.



Well, that was all from the fourth day of shooting "The Russian Captain". Now there will be a short vacationbreak and we wont resume shooting until august. But within short there will be some teaserclips up here pretty soon...

Candy-junkies!

During this the fourth day of the shoot we discovered that a LOT of the people in the crew are candy-junkies... and here we Suzan the scriptgirl taking a deep dive in the candybag...



...and the punishment for eating too much candy? Yes, it's a clapper punishment! :)



...but honestly all of us are candy-junkies and apparantly even Kjell the photographer loves candy... but Suzan was the only I managed to get pictures of while her hand was in the candybag.. :)

Oh my good! What happened?!

It's saturdaymorning and everything is alright.. well, not everything.. John Palmer (Fredrik Larsson) doesn't look too good... and it's not just a case of "bad hair day".. it's just a bad day - period!




And honestly, how would you feel if you looked this way? The universal Lee, here doing makeup, decides that Fredrik needs more blood in the face...




And that's not enough... she decides that he's not dirty enough and tell him to roll over, play dead, look like a seal, eat the mud!!! Good boy! ;)



During this scene Lee is the director and looks very closely on the monitor. Even though it looks weird those papers on the sides removes the sunrays in the monitor... but she might also be hiding from the cops who arrives at the scene...

...and the cop takes one look at Fredrik and say "Let me guess, you're making a movie?".. fortunately it turns out good and the also universal Fredrik who stepped into his producer role when talking to the cops now know what to do when there is another bloody messy scene being shot...

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Back in the UK!

It all started with confessions... One had spent half the night watching a TV-serie instead of getting valuable sleep, another had been partying way too long but it didn't stop him from talking endlessly.. we all know who... well, we who were there anyway...

At the beginning Nick (Philip) and Clam (Benjamin) seemed to be good friends. Getting a cup of coffee and telling eachother funny jokes.



Suddenly someone (the director) started spreading evil words...



...and the friendship seemed to come to an end...



Fredrik (director) and Kjell (director of photography) seemed to enjoy what happens...



...while Mårten, the guy who did sound and took pictures, starting taking 8 pictures in a row of himself... whaaaattt??????



...so what was this scene all about??? Well, you have to watch the movie to know the details but it takes place in the UK where Nick and Clam seem to have some issues with eachother. Will there be a happy ending???

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Something smells fishy...

The exhaustpipe throws fumes in the air, the sun is shining and the fishingboat steers it's way out to the open sea. It's time for a new shootingday and with limited space it's a limited crew that starts to shoot. John Palmer starts to regret he ever left his island.





Being on a limited budget we went out at the same time that the fisherman was doing his daily business. As we became aware the Baltic sea haven't got the huge amounts of fish it once had. Apparantly the Baltic sea is considered to be one of the world's most polluted seas. Hopefully this can be changed for future generations. Anyway, the shooting went pretty well and there were only a few minor glitches with the sound.

Oh, and while shooting we hurried to pack our stuff since we wanted a fullshot of the harbour. Unfortunately I forgot a big bag of gear. Luckily it was still there later that evening when the fisherman went down to search for it. Next time I will make sure I have a checklist over what bags we have!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Welcome to the island...

It's 4 AM on the 11th of june 2008 and we are thundering across the Scanian landscape. A discussion arises if the sun has already rosen and I assure my friends that it hasn't risen yet even though it's pretty light. As we reach the beach of "the island" titled "The Hammer" we wonder were the sun will rise. And then a faint cloud in the distance is painted pink, more intense than any other place on the horizon. We are all confident that there is were the sun will rise. After a bit of panic and fetching the camera we get some nice shots of the sun. It's a beautiful, beautiful morning. I am very happy.



As you can see it turned out perfect. The wind was quite heavy so the steadicam rigged swayed a bit and we still haven't got the dolly-kit. But it turned out to be a very, very nice day. We worked at a hefty pace to. Four hours for what will be about a 2 minute shot. Unfortunately we forgot to take a close up picture of the radio... I hope to fix it asap.

That's all for now. /Fredrik Larsson