Dirt, Dust & Desperate

When I bought a cardboard shack by the railroad tracks I knew exactly what I wanted to do to it. Tear out the whole inside and make it like a boat in the desert. Finnish style. That was the easy part. It was the giant yard that threw me a wild curve. Finally a dust storm blew in and required a massive clean-up. I called the contractor and told him to bring in the rocks.

image by mc2006/sxc.hu

image by mc2006/sxc.hu

They tore down the back fence and brought in the earth movers. It was all filmable. I got out my Canon and started to shoot. Two guys plowed up the weeds, dust, dirt and leveled the ground - the whole place, house included, goes downhill. Then they started laying in 42 tons of rock. I couldn't believe it but then saw the bill. It said 42 tons of rock.

Inspired, I added singing to my guitar lessons because by that time I decided we could make a music video. Eki is a musician and I had confidence that he would turn the raw material into something that wouldn't make us cringe. Pals were sceptical. They had never heard me sing a note. Or moved away from me at parties where there was group singing because I was so off-key. I thought it was nervy but but what-the-hell depended on Eki to pull it off.  When it was finished Eki said, "Not bad, next time do more closeups."  (see: "Tiny Ton of Trouble" on Youtube).

Q. Have you ever used Kickstarter to raise money for your projects?

A. No. But I've read a lot about people who have. And they've been successful. It's crowd sourcing and seems to work. You have to do a five minute video of the project and make your pitch. You have a limited time to raise the money (I think it's usually around three months). Maybe we'll try it for our next project. I'm sold.

Next month:  Eki Takes a Vacation. I hope.

Eki Pulls an All-Nighter

Image by Krappweis / sxc.hu

Eki and I had a date. We made it about one month in advance - this guy is always booked. Hard to reach. BUSY (a dirty 4 letter word). I was going to be in Helsinki one week. And there was a weekend. So we had only one day and a lot to do. We agreed on Friday. At 10:00 (a long time ago I learned the hard way it's not good to talk to Eki before ten). I called to tell him I'd pick him up. He was groggy. Told me he got to sleep at 6:00 AM. We decided to meet for lunch and work afterwards.

I called again at noon. He sounded a bit better. I picked him up, we had lunch and went to the studio. I love SpaceWhale and am always glad to work there . We were going to edit "@TINY ton of trouble." And finish "Bayonne: sleeping beauty" - a little five minute travel doc that I had shot about two and half years ago. It began to feel good. Fun to see all the raw material start to turn into a finished product. Eki working his magic: mixing the pictures with the music, distorting the colors, computer-animating certain scenes. But he was pre-occupied. And his cell kept ringing. Frantic conversations. I finally asked him to explain in English what the hell was going on. He said they'd worked all night on a sports program that was going to be broadcast on Saturday (the next day). People were waiting at the TV station for the finished product. But the computer kept crashing. I hate that word.

His face turned all red and blotchy. He was nervous. He said the computer wasn't working. I was completely clueless about this disaster. Finally he said he had to go home and try to finish the program. He said never in his entire career (more than 20 years) had he failed to deliver. I groaned. We agreed to meet on Monday - one day before I was to leave. Well he didn't fail me. We finished everything. I left Helsinki happy ready to start shooting again. But not Eki.

Q How does a small film company like little margie productions get projects commissioned?

A The first stage is development, which consists of researching the project and then the preparing a proposal. It includes a title, premise, one paragraph blurb, synopsis, treatment, sources of financing, bios of the company and crew. Then pitch it to the TV station and hope it clicks.

1 June 2013: Dirt, Dust and Desperate

Footnote by Eki

Q: How do you edit a 50 minute documentary in four days?
A: No sleep.

...in hindsight, that "all-nighter" was a train wreck waiting to happen from the getgo. There was way too little time to edit to begin with. Usually you can roughly estimate one hour of editing for each completed minute of the programme, for simple work, if you're well prepared. We only had four days, about 2/3 of it (estimate: 4 x 8 hours of editing = 32 minutes of programme).

Image by Fry2k / sxc.hu

But that was the only way it could have been made at all - welcome to the schedules of the sports news world - the content is best served fresh. We thought we could pull it if everything went fine and we worked 12+ hour days. There was no other option really, the slot for the show to air was already set.

But to say we were well prepared was unfortunately not exactly true, as the shooting wasn't even finished when we started editing - which i didn't know at the time i agreed for the gig, and neither did the production company. Without going into details, there were surprise turns in the plot that needed extra footage to be explained - always a possibility when documenting actual events.

Also, when things start to go awry, they usually do so in many different, overlapping ways... so, in addition to not having all the footage when we started editing, a lot of the footage we had was either not properly logged (content listings missing or inaccurate), or didn't work at all due to compatibility problems with the files / the editing hardware.

Summa summarum, we were soon in a big doodoo. And this is where the "no sleep" part comes in.

We managed to finish the edit at 6 am Friday morning (which took a bit more than just one all-nighter as said), but at that point, it was still just a list of edits in the computer, not an actual broadcastable master. Or, masters to be more exact - there were two commercial breaks within the show, so the master was to be delivered as three separate files.

I set the masters rendering and went home to catch some shuteye before Maggie's edit. I wasn't too worried... i'd be a little tired, but apart from that, we could concentrate on "Tiny Ton" for the whole day.

Oh, how wrong i was.

When i returned to the studio, admittedly still a little cross-eyed and grumpy, i found that all three renders had crashed. And i had no masters.

We can now jump cut to ten PM, which is when i finally had the deliverables on a hard drive, after many increasingly terriying failures to render the show out, with slightly varying settings, on multiple different machines. Finally, i had to resort to making files that were not the way that was specced by the broadcaster - it seemed my editing software of choice simply wasn't able to render out files that were without crashing (likely a file size related issue with QT). We ingested the ad-hoc files to the broadcasting company's systems and... black. No sound.

Well, that made us miss a beat or two, but it turned out it wasn't a biggie - the system there was just configured so that it automaticly converted non-standard files to something usable - without giving any indication that it was processing the files for an half an hour or so each.

Our program aired on time the next morning, once again we dodged the bullet, albeit barely. I didn't watch it, i slept. In fact, we were also so busy in the edit that we never had the time to watch the whole program through from start to end. So, i've never actually seen our all-nighter.

A BIG ton of trouble

@TINY ton of trouble (2013)

It's only 2:58 minutes. And when I look at "@TINY ton of trouble" it looks easy. First of all it was nervy of me to think that I could sing a song, even if I did take guitar and voice lessons twice a week with a patient teacher: Sharon Riggen. What kept me going was Eki.  He didn't know it, but when people looked at me like I'd lost my mind I told them, never mind Eki, my editor is a musician. He'll fix it. Poor Eki didn't have a clue that I was throwing his name around.

Last September I showed up in Helsinki and we planned to spend one day working on the project. To my surprise he thought the tune I wrote (lyrics and a few bars of music that came to me in the car) was pretty good. Then he went to work on the music. It sounded like a real tune when he played it on the guitar. He recorded it and plopped the earphones on my ears and told me to try to keep time to the music. I sang it line by line over and over and over. And thought this is a disaster with a capital D. But we kept going.

10 hours later after he chose the best parts and maggalized it - something he does to make the voice even and sound better - we listened to the finished piece.  I was a bit shocked, maybe he was too. It sounded  kind of good and I thought the images would carry it along. We agreed that he would finish the edit by Christmas. Eki always says his job is to put out fires. A lot of people call him when they're in trouble and need a finished edit by yesterday. Well there were conflagrations galore because by March "@TtofT" was still on the shelf. We decided to do it when I was back in Helsinki. It's always a kick to work with Eki, especially in his new studio, so it was worth the wait. But when I told him I loved making music videos and couldn't wait to start the next one, I thought I heard a groan.

Q You and Eki have worked together for a long time, how do you manage to get along?

A Eki has a few choice phrases to keep me quiet. For example: "It's rendering." And "Shut up Maggy."

1 May 2013: Eki Pulls an All-nighter

Hollywood in Helsinki

The last time I was in Helsinki to work with Eki he was excited.  I mention this because in the 20 or so years we've worked together it has been me who was the high-flying kite.  One time he told me to "be quiet" my enthusiasm wore him out. So this was a new Eki.  But when he took me to the soon-to-be-ready SpaceWhale studio I understood. This was no good-ole-boy man-cave where the guys get together to jam and have a beer. This was the real thing. It was big and airy. You could actually make movies here. And music.

SpaceWhale is a non-profit music association.  Eki (Halkka), Era Mikkola and Teemu Konttinen are three musicians, who've kept their day jobs, but are serious about their hobby.  They wanted to create a place where bands could rehearse, record demos and even make actual records and broadcast quality music videos (Little Margie Productions is in the process of making "A Tiny Ton of Trouble").  One of the aims of the association is to advance the music life in the Helsinki area, another is to make the facilities for visiting (non-pro) musicians free and affordable for professionals. Half of the studio is built for video use and renting it out for commercial productions, which brings in most of the income to cover the costs.

Inner Circle is an affordable way for clients to use the studio and be sponsors for the non-profit association. The member companies pay a monthly, reasonable fixed fee for 24/7 access.to all the facilities. They include:  a cyclorama with two greenscreen walls and floor that's ready for shooting. They also have a decent (Eki never over-rates anything) small light kit at their disposal. And some tracks, dollies, grip gear, etc. All are included in the studio rent. In addition it's in a great location with direct access to the outdoors:  Vattuniemenkatu 19, 00210 Helsinki, http://spcaeswhale.fi/ 

Q:  how do you and Eki work together, he' s in Helsinki and you seem to be on the road half the time?

A:  There are all those Monday morning phone calls.  Sometimes they get results and sometimes I show up on site with a whip. But we always have some project in the works.

Next month: A BIG Ton of Trouble

52 It´s a Wrap

One of the toughest tasks making docs is seeing a project through the first idea, development, production, post-production and then the hard part - getting it out there to the public. Eki and I are good at it. Very few of our projects have fallen into the black hole of Bright (un-realized) Ideas. But still, I´m surprised we stuck with this blog for a year, It started on a whim and then we got into it.

image by bluegum / sxc.hu

The life of a small film company is a cliff-hanger. There´s never enough funding, commissioning editors disappoint and people who would make great subjects back out. But we´ve been at it for 19 years and have made productions that we´re really proud of. For me the series 10 Finnish Architects comes out on top. It was our first big, BIG project. One of our CEs made the off-hand remark: "But Maggy that´s 100 minutes of film." I pooh-poohed her with:  "No, no it´s 10 ten minute movies."  That long, long project (it took almost two years from start to finish) was fun, traumatic, exhausting and a crash course from Eki to me about making movies

"marihuanaland" is next on my list of favorites. Eki and I financed it ourselves because we both believe that pot, especially medical marihuana, should be legalized. End of story. We also plan to edit and publish online littlemargiedocblag under the title: Diary of a Mom & Pop Film Company (99 cents).  Making movies is so much fun you just don´t want to, maybe can´t, stop. "Action!"

Lesson 52:  Once you get the itch just scratch, scratch, scratch.

littlemargiedoc-blog will take a three month break while on the road.

51 A Tiny Ton of Troubl

image by kovik / sxc.hu

Bought a cardboard shack on a plot of land and decided to write a song (country western, of course) about it. Have been filming since the start and even Eki seemed excited about the idea. The renovation was damn hard and discouraging at times but writing a song is really daunting. I listen all the time to DAC (David Allen Coe), Merle (Haggard), Willie (Nelson) and it seems so easy. But no, not.

I´m also including shots of the town, which has John Ford scenery (one of his main locations isn´t far from here in Ridgeway). And twelve churches and seven saloons. The saloons get all the business. One is right across the road - it´s a great place to drink beer, meet locals and hear music.

The climax of the music video is a Wild West party. It´ll be in a couple of weeks. My guitar teacher, Sharon, and her uke group will be the entertainment. She insists we do a duet - play and sing. And chose "Home on the Range."  I groaned. But found out that simple old-fashioned tune is hard to learn. For the last five weeks I´ve tried to nail it. There are five chord changes and they come up fast. If my mind wanders for even a second I make a mistake. But at least she has me singing in tune. Not like when Eki, Era and I recorded "The Old Gray Mare" and I was hopelessly off-key. When we edit A Tiny Ton of Troubl we´ll put it on youtube. DAC, Merle, Willie watch out.

Lesson 51:  Bite off more than you can chew. Always.

Next week:  52 It´s a Wrap

50 10 Words Every Doc Filmmaker Should Know

• 01 Ambient Sound: background sound to add atmosphere to the sound track (also known as "atmos" and "wildtrack. Eki is a musician and is great at enhancing the audio.
•  02 Animation: one of the things I love in the edit is when Eki animates something. He´ll add a person or object. Or show how a building changes. It might take two hours of work and be on-screen for a few seconds so he rations me.
• 03 Boom:  the pole that holds the microphone out of the shot but near enough so that it picks up the audio.
• 04  Color Correction: after the edit Eki goes through and balances all the colors so they are the same tone throughout. We choose what  color direction we want: bright, shady, blueish, etc.
• 05 Copyright: the artist´s legal right to the use of his/her work. Copyrights can be a minefield. Any doc filmmaker, however small, should be au courant when using someone´s music, art, books, etc.
• 06 NLE (non-linear editing): allows you to insert footage anywhere in the edit without having to remove what was there before.
• 07  Rough cut:  first edit of the un-finished film. You might have one, two or more rough cuts.
• 08 Steadicam: a stabilizing device attached to the camera and worn by the photographer. It allows him to walk through the scene and creates a long fluid shot. Very effective. Our steadicam man is Antti Hacklin.
• 09  Time Code: the seconds, minutes, hours on the top of the film that lets you synchronize the audio and the video. Also a big help in the pre-edit when you want to pick out the best shots.  
• 10  Zebra Striping: lines seen through the camera´s viewfinder that tells you when a shot is over-exposed. 

Edit by Eki: I'd probably define NLE:s by it's difference to old school tape to tape editing. In the stone age (when i used to ski to old school both winter AND summer), the program was cut together in a linear fashion by copying one shot at a time from the source tapes to a master tape, starting from the first opening shot and ending to the last bit of credits. If you then needed to change something in the middle... you were screwed, as the timing of the shots was fixed - the tape doesn't magically stretch or compress to fit the new material you want to put in the middle. With a NLE, making such a changes is trivial, one can easily shuffle shots around in any order. In practice, all current computer based editing systems are NLE:s, so the "NL" part of the abbreviation is unnecessary baggage really.

Other than that, you mostly got it close enough  ;-)


Lesson 50:  Learn the lingo

Next week: 51 A Tiny Ton of Troubl