Varma Mackor

I need to get better at updating my blog, so that I don't have a million things to tell you when I finally do... I don't even know where to start. The beginning, maybe. Okay, yeah. Well, I'll keep this short because I just woke up, I have my coffee here next to me, but I'm not sure it'll be enough jump start my brain this morning since yesterday was the last day of shooting my short film Varma Mackor, and like with any other shoot, the day after you feel sort of hungover from all the adrenalin and energy and coffee, plus reality takes a moment to get used to as well. Also, another reason I have to keep this short, is that I have to leave soon, I'm meeting up with Tove at Östermalmstorg to get the harddrives from her, the harddrives with all the material, I'm kind of freaked out actually... but first things first:

Pre-production. One big rollercoaster ride. But every bump in the road was dealt with quickly and smoothly, and things pretty much fell into place, over and over again, which in of itself is unheard of I think, so I was harbouring some "too good to be true" pessimism already. But the first day of shooting, we were in a school in Salem, we had a ridiculously short time to get the stuff we wanted to get from the two scenes we were shooting, a lot less time than what was needed to get them, actually. We also had, around us, fifteen kids that "belonged" to us and were extras in the scenes, as well as eighty kids that belonged to the school and were curious about what we were doing. But for some reason, things fell into place again and we actually finished ahead of time. My "too good to be true" suspicions increased.

The next two days of the shoot we were in the producer's dad's house and shoot the kitchen scenes and the scenes in the doorway to the brother's room. And long story short, I can't even begin to tell you how extremely happy I am about the stuff I have. The crew was great, Tove did an amazing job with the photography, and Edvin the scenographer was literally amazing, both with the scenography and as a person to work with. He was calm, concentrated, humble, had an eye for details, was patient with me when I got all excited and wanted to help decorate the brother's room, any other scenographer might have got annoyed because I stepped on their toes, but he was just amused and let me bounce around and then concentrated on his thing. In the end, all the material we got, both in the kitchen and the room, looked amazing, I got some seriously excellent stuff out of the actors, who were all amazing as well. Wilma who played the lead girl is a wonder, I have never seen anything like it, and everyone else have reacted the same. She is so focused, so nuanced and natural, she has this aura about her, she is so intelligent, and no matter what directon I gave her, she took it and used it, nothing blocked her, not even the ridiculously long and difficult lines of dialogue that she had. I mean, the stuff that she got to do this weekend, emotionally, mentally, and even physically when we did her POV shots and she had to sit on the floor between Tove and and the table and try and reach her hands up and repeat her actions from the scene, it was extremely tough stuff to do, for a grown-up experienced actor, and for a child actor, it's basically impossoble. I mean, to get natural from a child actor is tough enough. I have to stop praising her now... but you'll see when the film is done, she's just incredible. They all are.

Anyway. Since I'm so happy with everything, you can understand that the "this is too good to be true" feeling has increased to epic proportions and why I'm freaked out about getting the harddrives with all the material on them now, I'm thinking I'll either be robbed on my way home or get hit by a bus...