Attero Sathanas - ‘His Wanted Position’
featuring Nils Bossius Klintenberg (from my class of 3C), who plays ‘Tim’ in Gothland Elysium. This genre is not my cup of tea haha, but a lot of people like this and I am proud of his work and musical talent.

by intelligentlight

While I have been working slowly on the editing of Gothland Elysium
I have also started pre-production on the next project Broken Circle III: PARALLAX. In one way Parallax is a lot easier to produce than G.E, since Parallax will only be around 10 minutes long i.e 1/3 of G.E. Parallax will also be filmed inside a studio, pretty much all in front of a green screen with motion tracking. That will make things a lot easier in some ways, but complicate things in other ways. ^^ So I think that this project will need a very detailed script of both the story and also the VFX, since all the backdrops will be 3D rendered. I have narrowed the story down to four different (virtual) locations though, so it shouldn’t be too complicated. Parallax will be a small(ish) project which we work on while we plan next year’s huge project Island of Illusion, which will be 5-10 times bigger than G.E. I haven’t had time to chat with Markus in a while, so he might have some new story outlines or fantastic plans too. ^^

Parts of Parallax will be created by my students, so in a way it will be a fun school project. I think that we will need about 4-6 students as 3D artists for this project. I will try to finish the first rough version of the script and then hand it over to Markus and let him do his magic (that he does so well) and improve it. ^^

We have many ideas, but since time truly flies I think that we will work on these three films probably until the end of 2011.

by intelligentlight

P.S
Oh, and the photo above is just some gothic art which I found inspirational. It has similar colorgrading to G.E.

Hi again,

Our trailer for G.E is now online and we hope that you like it! You can watch it on our trailer-site: http://www.intelligent-light.com

or on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOJ5KCzUPOA

or on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/9768596

I wrote a ‘Post Mortem’ about this trailer when I finished it last week and I have attached it below here.

Trailer ‘POST MORTEM’ (Feb, 2010)

I initially named this trailerproject ‘No Regrets’, because I wanted to create a trailer which I would be proud of and not see things in it, afterwards, that I wished I would have done differently. I had a pretty good idea of the design of the trailer from the start, but I still played around a lot to get a better feel of it. I wanted it to be a mix of a movie trailer and a music video for many reasons. One of those reasons was that it works for this type of art-house movie and another reason was because neither Markus or I wanted to make a typical movie trailer. There are too many of those already. When we started this project back in ‘08 we decided not to make a typical Hollowood:ish movie, because in most cases that equals “Fail” for us. So a narrator with a cigar-voice, instead of the intro texts, was a big NO for this trailer.

The trailer was cut and rendered in 1080p and we wanted a trailer that would look good both on a huge LED TV, but also on mobile devices such as iPods or iPhones. And it does! ^^

After I found the song ‘Intangible’ on Jamendo.com I knew that this was the song for the trailer. It had the same speed and flow as the film. The real soundtrack is done, but we can’t use it online at the moment, and I do not know if this song will make it to the final film - but I hope so. I had another song from the start, but it was a bit too depressing. At first I was gonna use just one song, but I found that the intro with the texts were more creepy with that scarier song, so I kept the design with two different songs.

The intro texts were a lot longer in the beginning of the project and I knew that they had to be shortened down. So Markus and I discussed a few options and he helped me to cut it down. I wanted the texts to be timed just right, so they stayed there not too short and not too long. Both Markus and I could read them just fine and I eventually tried the intro with many students and they could also read the texts before they faded away - which was good.

This whole project was a fun educational experience to learn how to produce movies on “the next level” and I created the trailer before the actual film edit to learn this new and modern production pipeline. So I wanted a trailer that would reflect something that was somewhat similar to the final film, productionwise. It was a lot of fun and I have spent around 50-60 hours on this trailer - including everything except filming it of course - and I have no real regrets about it now. I now know the tools a lot better and I feel more confident about starting an editing project that will end on somewhere around 500 hours haha… Since I created it before the actual edit, I haven’t even touched any of the audio files from the film. I initially did some tests with lowering the music at certain points and adding audio, but it took away the feel and flow of the entire trailer. So I didn’t continue down that road. That’s why it’s more of a music video trailer now. For those who miss conversations in the trailer, you will hear 30 minutes of that in the final cut. ^^

We have pretty much filmed everything we need for this film now so that part is basically done. So whatever that is “not working” or “could have been done in in a different way” we will learn from and take with us to the next project. This is how G.E is now and we will do our very best to make a good edit of the entire film. We initially didn’t get the people we had casted for this project and I had very little time to cast new ones. Both Anna (Linn) and Nils (Tim) are two of my students and Miki (Natalie) is Anna’s friend. Nils had some acting experience through amateur theatre, but Anna and Miki had none. But they were all really good and better than we had hoped, so when watching this please consider that this is their first movie appearance and acting experience. ^^

When watching something like this a few people are reminded of typical forest-horror movies such as ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and I thought I’d address that too. The only thing our movie has in common with that, storywise, is the forest - nothing else. ‘Gothland Elysium’ has three different stories entangled into one and is in many ways a more deeper and complex story than Blair Witch. It also has many references to an old famous book. Markus explained it this way in ‘The Boom Brothers’ page above:

“Event though the group’s first film “Gothland Elysium” is another attempt at creating a minimalistic horror movie, it will also be open for more than one interpretation. But recurring themes in the team’s productions deal with inner struggles, the occult, despair, unrequited love, loss and sorrow.”

On top of that I’d say the movie is about love, hate, jealousy and how at certain times and places that can conjure…something.

So I wanted to show this in the trailer: Three teenagers go camping. All seems fine. Something happens. Did their cellphone get the same message as the people who died before did? Why is only Tim in half of the trailer and why is Natalie making Linn walk deeper into the forest? What is Natalie pointing at in the end and the peak of the trailer? Hopefully after asking this the audience would like to see the movie to see what actually happened to these Linn, Tim and Natalie.

Thank you sharing this experience with us.

by intelligentlight

Yes, we are indeed back. I had planned to post this last week (and obviously didn’t ^^), but now - after reading Marcus great post below - I felt the need to continue these topics.

The complicated ending has been completed and after several exciting tests I believe that it works very well. It’s in dire need of VFX, but so are a lot of the scenes and I don’t worry about that now.

I have also spent some time getting the whole post production pipeline up and running.  There are many complex softwares involved and I am working on an official trailer for Gothland Elysium as a mere test of this pipeline/process. This trailer will show a lot more of the film than the earlier mood teasers and present one of the three stories from the film. The trailer, in its current form, is about 50% done and I am hoping to finalize it by mid February. This trailer will most likely have a production quality similar to the finished film. When this new trailer is online I will start working on the first rough cut of the film. Then it’s colour grading, Chroma Key, compositing, other VFX, audio, foley, ADR, music/soundtrack and endless tweaking to go. That will take a while… ^^

Eventhough we might show this film to a larger audience, we will not ask you for feedback afterwards. This project has been a very “educational” and rewarding experience (and a a fantastic ride). When the film is done we will like it and hopefully you will too. ^^

by intelligentlight

No news is good news, right? Wrong. Well, not really wrong either. Luckily, most things can be explained. It has been a long time (Relatively speaking.) since we posted anything here, and the sole reason for the hiatus has been the “holidays” and “getting back on track”. It’s a new year and decade after all.

First things first - Intelligentlight shot the final scene on January the 24th and edited a test-ending for the film which was presented on the 31st…

It was tickling - To say the least.

A heavy stone fell from our hearts and the last demon has probably been exorcised.

On a far more personal note there are just some lines of thinking that baffles one beyond belief in a bad way - If one is not supposed to get emotionally attached to a project, then why the fuck do it at all? Why even try if you are not going to be true to yourself about it? It’s exactly this kind of “professionalism” that has efficiently destroyed a significantly large part of what film-making is all about: Expressing something. The moment you start listening to “the critics”, things are bound to go down the toilet. First of all, people who are not directly involved in the process know just about fuck all regarding the reasons or objectives behind the project. And unless these people have the role as producers or whatever, their opinion doesn’t count in the least.

Adjusting one’s ways to please one or two whining assholes out there is not, has never been, and will never be an option.

by Markus

The Gothland Elysium project was a way for us to “get back in the game” and basically a practice project (but a serious one). So far everything has turned out even better than we had hoped and Gothland Elysium will be completed. But whatever happens to this little film, we will always be proud of it and cherish the good and the bad memories from the days of production.

Lastly, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce our cast and thank them for their hard work this year. From both me and Marcus: thank you all so much for helping us making our script into a film (see cast pics below).

Thank you for visiting our production blog and your continued support. Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year!

by intelligentlight

Miki Terasaki as “Natalie”

Anna Hedqvist as “Linn”

Nils Bossius Klintenberg as “Tim”

]]> http://blog.intelligent-light.com/?feed=rss2&p=813 http://blog.intelligent-light.com/?p=806 http://blog.intelligent-light.com/?p=806#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:21:31 +0000 Markus http://blog.intelligent-light.com/?p=806 Each and every day the last month have consisted of barely comprehensible fractions of episodes mostly spent in a darkness that just doesn’t seem to let up. (We had exactly three sun hours during the entire November.) It has been pitch dark when I’ve forced myself out of bed with greater and greater effort, each time cursing over the fact that it has to be impossible to go into hibernation until April. And it’s pitch black when I leave the office building. (Which on one hand has high windows, but they happen to face a mostly empty asphalted area beneath a mostly dark and clouded sky.) These episodes merge together in an impeding vortex of  thoughts and impressions, making even seemingly easy decisions turn gradually harder and senseless. They shouldn’t be. It has almost come to the point where the business hours have been a chaotic vacation and the spare time has become monotonous and soul-shatteringly boring work that temporarily only can end by suffering through it. Without any doubt has this been an exhausting trip through an unusually uninspiring part of hyperspace.

The last and missing part of the film has naturally been a big part of this void-wasteland merry-go-round. The  project has had a very frightening and accurate striking distance and hasn’t been easy to steer away from mentally. But seeing the chances to complete the film fading away on the trail of a bolting demon is what has been most frustrating to endure.

This far.

That is until intelligentlight came up with a plausible and brilliant idea that also seems possible to carry out. This was definitely a turning point after the latest setbacks. (Scheduling conflicts, economic issues and so on.) We may not be on the track yet (Seeing how we have to plan the next step around this idea.), but we know where the bloody track is again.

by Markus

This was a vivid night.

I was really sleepy when I got home from work yesterday; I have been working nights way too many times lately. Therefore the night ended very early last night - I went to bed at 8:30 p.m. (after a really nice hot bath) and I was planning to enjoy a book for an hour or so…but failed that miserably and fell asleep the instant my head hit the pillow…

…I slept non-stop until 7:30 a.m. the following morning and I had some really, really vivid dreams that night. I think that most of them occured maybe the last 4-5 hours of sleep. I remember a lot from the dreams and I had forgotten that I dream a lot of interesting dreams when I sleep longer. That’s not a really hard equation really… Anyway, I especially remember two dreams and I don’t think that these were intertwining, but the last one was so - extremely - vivid that I could probably describe most people and locations from it for at least a half an hour. And none of people I met or the places I visited exist in real life. That dream was an awesome trip. That got me thinking today. Many of my short stories and most of the movie scripts/story outlines that I have written, or currently writing, are loosely based on my dreams. Broken Circle III: PARALLAX (which we will start to work on during spring of 2010) is based on a dream I had about six months ago and about half the story of ISLAND OF ILLUSION (2011) is based on a dream I had about a month ago. When I got home today I spent 20 minutes just writing last nights dream into a bullet-based story outline and I called it THE CITY OF GLASS. Maybe that too will be a shortfilm someday. I know that I’d like it. *laughs*

I know for a fact that Marcus also has very vivid dreams sometimes and maybe that’s it…maybe that’s our thing, maybe that is the theme of the Boom Brothers? ^^

Dreams are very interesting to analyze and while some people think that dreams are just the brain cleaning up and “defragging” the impressions from the day, others think that we visit alternative dimensions, while we sleep, and that we are just as awake in those as we are during the day. I’m sort of in-between these theories at the moment and just a happy observer. I have also worked on a Swedish TV-series which had dreams as a topic, so maybe I - or we - should dig deeper in this field…

While having some nice dreams lately I’ve had a few nightmare daydreams. They are not many, but not few either. I quite often get reminded of that Gothland Elysium is not yet finished. We still have about of weekend of work left of filming to complete until we can sit back and enjoy Christmas (and start editing yay). Most of us - me included - are just too busy these days to have free weekends and this one is not different. Half of this weekend will be spent working on my thesis and the rest - hopefully - some much needed R&R.

I had a brief crash course in script writing with my students yesterday and I showed them some small parts from my scripts, as examples, and while discussing these projects I once again was reminded how time truly flies and that we got to finish the Gothland Elysium project as soon as humanly possible.

That crash course was a lot of fun, but that was a scary day.

by intelligentlight

So where do we go from here and how do we get there? I guess there is one last destination on this surreal trip. Resting or relaxing is not an option until it has been reached.

by Markus

Of all prolonged shooting days so far, the fifth and “last” (At least in what now is widely well-known as the “filming area”.) proved to be the most difficult and exhausting one. We had more or less dreamed real nightmares around the execution of the “driving scene” in the beginning of the film and had already (With less than noticeable success.) tried to figure out how to shoot it - Especially since none of us (With the exception of Intelligentlight.) actually have a driver’s licence. But this is not the Real World - This is the world of moving images. Under creeping dread, we realized that there is nobody who says that we can’t do it three separate takes. So that’s how we did it. And it sort of worked, even if I had to film and record the sound at the same time. Who needs CGI when you can cheat properly?

This amazing experience was followed by a short lunch break (Where my beverage mysteriously transformed itself from a state of being lovely to becoming stale and virtually undrinkable piss.) with the discussion topics bordering on the criminally insane. (If those had materialized as a “cast and crew”-commentary track on a DVD or something, we’d all be locked up before midnight.) Well, on to the aforementioned difficulties. Of all the millions of square-meters of forest, we just had to pick the wettest, most bug-infested and geologically most awkward spots a few hundred meters away from no man’s land. The thing that made the whole business worse was that we still had to keep up the illusion that it at least still was “early fall” instead of “it’ll snow any bloody day now”. Which meant that we had to avoid filming the millions of brown leaves on the soaked ground. But at least we got some nice “Norwegian Black Metal album cover”-shots of the coniferous forest. The Weather Goddesses were on our side again - No wind and no icy bursts of rain. Just the autumnal Gothlandian paradise. (Oh, yeah.)

One scene took much longer to film than it was intented. We didn’t fall behind the schedule, but it was somewhere around this point I started to feel the “forces” trying to turn the whole thing on its head once again - The very same forces that had driven us out there in the first place all those months ago. It became gradually more and more difficult to set up the scenes and maintain what was left of the so-called focus. And a few times, everybody’s collectively subsiding energy more or less forced the whole process to a halt. (“But freezing temperatures and wet feet ain’t refreshing either.”, says Captain Obvious.) It was clear that we all were getting more and more tired as the hours crept closer and closer to the sunset. And more scenes needed some instantaneous improvising under undeniably fucked up discharges of knuckle-biting insanity. (However, everything must have turned for the better when we saw two beautiful ravens on the light-gray sky, because everybody knows that ravens bring good fortune.) All during the jubilant ride that ends with a frontal collision.

The last scene for today was filmed under not very nice conditions, and it was simultaneously also the most critical one. I more or less held my breath all the time. But judging from the dailies, the actors (And the camera operator.) nailed it like a high-powered nailgun. It looked awesome nevertheless. That very moment said everything.

It hasn’t been said too many times yet, but the appreciation the crew feels towards the actors can neither be expressed nor described. While it certainly was a relief for everybody to wrap things up “over there”, the addiction to the brief and impermanent visits to the parallel world will once more show how unbearable separation angst can be when it surfaces. In the worst moment possible.

by Markus

Things are looking good for “Gothland Elysium” (G.E) again! While we wait for time to fly, so that we can get the last days of filming done, we have been working on various things (just like Markus mentioned below). I am really looking forward to reading his new script “The Switchman” by the way!

Anyway, back to the point: my new script is called “IoI” (Island of Illusion) - at the moment - and about half of this film is based on a strange and interesting dream I had around two weeks ago. I figured that I better write all this down while I still remembered it and I have. But now, after a few nights of writing, the story has become a lot more interesting. This script feels really promising so far and it is about 40% finished now. Most of my free time, in the following weeks, will be spent working on G.E though and I hope that we can start editing in the beginning of December. So I’m not really sure when I have will have a first draft complete for IoI, maybe sometime during December. We’ll see, G.E is priority one now - but I also want to finish the IoI-story to see if Markus likes it. ^^

The script for IoI will be around 30 pages (i.e around 30 minutes long) and have around 3-4x more actors/characters compared to G.E. My guess is around 40 characters, but only 3-4 mains so not that complicated. IoI will be a much bigger production, but my gut feeling now says that we actually can get this film done. It is still easier to create than PARABELLUM, which we will hopefully have enough resources, cash and people to create sometime during 2012. ^^ (Only time will tell…) Anyway, after I had written 8 pages of the IoI-script - and finished the introduction - I wanted to create a graphical theme/profile for the film and also a concept poster (hey, it’s fun OK ^^). You can see that one below and I hope that you like it. As always, in Firefox, right-click the image and choose the top in the list to view the image in it’s original uploaded size (the online PNG is a small version) And yes, there is a good reason why the cross isn’t reflected in the water. ^^

by intelligentlight

While we now do our uttermost to kill time in the most rampant way imaginable (That is, until we can get back “out there” to film the remaining scenes for this year’s project.) the edginess and the expectation is driving us up on the walls. Meanwhile, we’re keeping some kind of distance to it all. (With the sole purpose of avoiding getting devoured by the contagious and exhilarating one-two punch energies around all things “Gothland Elysium”.) So we decided to begin planning the project(s) for 2010 and beyond.

So far, we have both been writing down some new ideas that will eventually begin to form one or two new screenplays. Intelligentlight is working round the clock (It seems!) on the script for a short film entitled “Island Of Illusion” - A horror tale grounded in mysticism and alternate dimensions / worlds. We exchanged some e-mails earlier tonight and he spontaneously feels that it could turn into something really good, original and imaginative. And I have began exorcising ideas for another screenplay with the working title “The Switchman”. It’s a psychological thriller / drama that centers around a bunch of very damaged individuals in a neighborhood that begs to be wiped off the face of the Earth.

So let’s see where these winding roads leads us.

by Markus

This third (and FINAL) teaser was created for the fans of the Gothland Elysium project and does not represent the final quality of the film. (This is a low quality 720p-version of the original 1080p video.)

It’s fun, yet challanging to create teasers for a short film. A trailer is almost out of the question, because it would probably give most of the movie away. I might try to create on later on anyway. So, these teasers are well…basically just a tease for our 30 min:ish short film “GE”. And…my guess is that this is the last that you will see (in video) from this project for about 3-4 months. The editing, ADR, sound, foley, music and VFX will take that long because we all have regular jobs which always comes first. But please stay tuned! ^^

The teaser is available in HD on Youtube, Vimeo and Facebook video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czH7Juj652o&fmt=22
http://www.vimeo.com/7317705
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=188405004601

Enjoy!

by intelligentlight

We now have just 4-5 more different scenes/locations to shoot. These are quite small, so I think that we only need 1-2 more days of hard work and then everything is shot. However, it’s really crucial that we shoot 3 of these scenes before winter hits us in the face. The other scenes need to be created during late fall or even winter; so we actually need to wait to shoot those.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed once again.

by intelligentlight

May it take a turn for the best very soon.

by Markus

Even if I could bet both my last and stolen money that intelligentlight could pull it off anyway, it’s an utter disgrace not to be able to help. But no matter what, desperate times usually call for desperate solutions.

by Markus

“Canon to give 5D Mark II a cinema boost”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10379373-264.html

by intelligentlight

The preparations and the discussions build up the anticipation by the minute, but at the same time, the very same anticipation takes turns to show its insufferable side on which it’s near-impossible to figure out a way to “do some time” before it will be possible to escape out there again.

by Markus

Yes, indeed! We have now created a second teaser for the fans of the Gothland Elysium  project. Like the first one, this tease does not represent the final quality of the film.

The teaser is available in HD on Youtube, Vimeo and Facebook video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIxz1×5b6Zg&fmt=22
http://www.vimeo.com/7185045
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=181601369601

Enjoy!

by intelligentlight ]]> http://blog.intelligent-light.com/?feed=rss2&p=578 http://blog.intelligent-light.com/?p=566 http://blog.intelligent-light.com/?p=566#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:47:41 +0000 Markus http://blog.intelligent-light.com/?p=566 The second official teaser was edited together by intelligentlight while we exchanged some scattered thoughts and suggestions during yesterday evening.

It’s now on-line at the usual places.

And it has one of the outlining and revealing moments from the film - A moment that says more than a thousand words.

by Markus

As for that Sunday now, two days ago, something magical did happen on the set. At some point, the three lead actors in the movie made that intangible transition from themselves and into their characters. I’m not sure if the saying is true - That “the guy who plays the devil actually has to be a bit like the devil”, but they all simply became the persons that they had decided to play. These characters were born after we had written the final synopsis back in October / November last year. For us, they were already “real”. (Well, as real as fidgets of the imagination can be.) But it was still astonishing and enigmatic to see them come alive. It was an assault on all senses. (And I mean that in the best way possible.) A mental overload. (Especially when they switched to some method acting and characterization that isn’t even in the script - That was just fucking awesome. We are humbled beyond words.) It’s like writing a story and suddenly meeting the characters face to face IRL when you least expect it. I mean, what the hell could possibly be more efficient for tearing down the thin veils that separate reality from illusion? (Apart from maybe hard, hallucinatory drugs?)

There is a book in the film (”The Divine Comedy”) that we refer to visually and metaphorically in a way. (Except that “Dante” is a chick… And… Except that… There really is no “Dante”.) But the physical book in the movie is in fact one by Swedish filmmaker Kay Pollak, and it’s called (translated) “To Choose Joy”. One of the actresses read a certain paragraph from the book aloud and a crushingly overwhelming insight dawned on me: That there was no other time when this part of the film could have been made. Each and every moment, good, vexing and awful, had built itself from within towards this particular event. I mean, think about it - We finally got the best possible weather that we could have killed for with the deadline of Mother Nature breathing down our necks, the best atmosphere oscillating between that of a joyride and the chaos in side-splitting lunacy, a well-prepared crew and possibly even more well-prepared actors. (Not that I’m saying that anybody wasn’t well-prepared, but I was a bit… Off…)

And why was that book there in the first place? No idea. It was as far as I remember a gift and I have seen it in several copies in various places, but it could also have been any book in the world that I created the fake cover for. It was also pointed out - That “To Choose Joy” pretends to be / fills in for the “The Divine Comedy”. I’ve begun to realize what makes certain film-makers exploring the same themes over and over again until they have carved out a niche for themselves. It must be the drug. And the only way to feed the addiction is to keep chasing it, no matter what.

by Markus

The third day of filming was truly a battle against the cold (yet sunny) weather, fatigue, light, and time. The entire day was one fast race (with some evil opponents)! While we shot the last scene our last camera battery was dying and most of us had - due to a very long day of hard work - trouble standing up. But we made it! Markus describes the day in a superb way below, so I won’t go into more detail and basically say the same thing in this entry. Below you can find some behind-the-scenes “Kodak moments” from yesterday. ^^

The 15 gigs of data from yesterday is now on three different hard drives and that feels very good. I have looked through the dailies and in whole I am quite pleased with the result. The majority of the shots look really good; if not even better than from day one! We had really nice - yet difficult - lighting conditions yesterday with a lot of sun and (annoying) clouds. That changed the lighting every minute or so and a few of the scenes have some overexposed parts, but nothing that can’t be “fixed in post”. Some scenes simply look amazing and these are right out of the camera! The pro-lens really captured the light in a beautiful way.

We still have quite a few shots left to shoot and time is running out now, but today I am not worried one bit - today I am happy because of yesterday. ^^

by intelligentlight

It once again defies expressions of near-euphoria to work with people who counterbalance one’s own numerous weaknesses, shortcomings and mental overturns, especially during a treacherously addictive undertaking like this one turned out to be. For zero to max in one magic moment. It all comes down to avoiding the one-way rollercoaster-rides straight down into the abyss. This project finally feels very real like a scorching fire - You need the warmth badly, but you get severely burned at the same time. Beyond the point of no return, it’s impossible to shake the reflections around the whole experience even for one whole hour - No matter how profoundly healing / damaging it is. The presence of the Paradise unseen creeps back into the mind with unmatched precision, slowly turning this day into a very long and empty detour back to something that may feel “safe”, but that insidiously looms in a corroding state of stagnation. (Yeah. Those terminal and with time more and more obvious “warning signs” in life that usually hint that a change is very much needed.)

I can’t wait to see the dailies, continue the “endless” discussions, plan the next step, get back to filming and everything that’s in between - In other words: Sense the motion that was felt yesterday. That ride into that parallel world. It’s a new drug with the characteristics of others drugs - The rush strengthens you momentarily, but it will ultimately leave you weakened and shattered. I for sure feel the withdrawal symptoms right now…

by Markus

For me personally, the night before was a mix of short periods of anxiety-infested sleep and more or less constant white-knuckle worries around what foul trick misfortune would play on us this weekend. But sometimes no news is good news and the phone call from the second Boom Brother around 10 A.M. contained nothing that makes one wonder whether we’re cursed or not. Our crew was much smaller this time (Yeah, all right!), we had only one camera (Two would have helped, obviously.) and we had less time to finish the key scenes.

So the half-hour drive in a packed car ended about a kilometer from where we stopped filming last time. Instead of a quarter of a kilometer. (I’m glad nobody stabbed me for this, because it was all my fault.) So about 20 minutes behind the schedule we picked up where we left. The first concern was the surroundings and if they had changed so much in a month that it would cause a jarring continuity fuck-up. But it looked great through the camera and then we started. One hour went by fast and we were back on the clock again, despite the few interruptions (Both intentional and unintentional.) from passers-by.

Two hours later, we had moved ahead to the part of the film that has loads of static shots in one specific location. We ploughed through a majority of the script under the positive influence and the equally positive and highly infectious insanity courtesy of our great and amazingly patient actors. It’s almost like time stopped for a while. (And I kind of wish it had, considering that this was a balls-to-the-wall attempt to get somewhere after the aforementioned setbacks.) Last time out on the “battlefield”, we thought we had been lucky like the most successful card-sharpers in the Wild West for finding the actors who really fit in their parts like hands in gloves. This day cemented that feeling at least a dozen times over. Now, we know that this film couldn’t be made without them. And it wouldn’t have been a fraction as madness-inducingly fun. Sometimes, I had to pinch myself in the arm because I frankly stopped trusting my own senses at one point… And furthermore, it’s now quite easy to see how it’s possible to get violently sucked into something and not be able to get out. It’s like that old saying: “Everybody builds castles in the air, but only drunks move into them.” But either way, the fathomless gratitude that we, the film-makers, feel can’t be explained in words. (Especially not today on the set.)

After a short lunch-break around 2 P.M., we proceeded with the filming. We were constantly reminded of the fact that it’s mid-October - Especially when the sun started to set quicker and quicker. When the sands, the batteries and everybody’s energy levels finally were running out, we quickly shot the scenes that we had to shoot right there and now. And even if everybody sooner or later starts to lose focus, I think we nailed it. The temperature started to turn from “a bit too cold” to “fucking freezing” around 5.30, which pretty much was a good sign that it was time wrap things up. We quickly went through the script once more, and didn’t find any scenes that we had missed during the course of the last hours’ filming. (It would be so very unnecessary to have to go back there once more for a handful of shots. It’s not exactly walking distance to the set for any of us.) The next shooting day will most definitely be somewhere in the Göteborg-area.

The darkness approached fast and the fifteen minute hike back to the car was a very long one back to the real world again - The bags and the equipment suddenly felt heavy like hell, the craving for coffee started to be a real problem, the idea of someone’s paradise was nowhere in sight anymore and the milk-acid started stinging like, well, acid in arms and legs. But it wasn’t all that awful to be back in the warm car and on the road home.

I can only conclude this entry by saying that it was a surreal and satisfying day on all levels and that I once again hope that everyone had a good time. I’m not sure if our temporary bad luck has turned to good, but if it has, today was the ultimate proof of that.

by Markus

With that said, we hope that you enjoy this one!

The teaser is available in HD on Youtube, Vimeo and Facebook video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5FqOCknl_M&fmt=22
http://www.vimeo.com/7116446
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=178997019601

by intelligentlight

After Gothland Elysium has been finished and distributed to various filmfestivals we will start pre-production on our next projects. Our current schedule can be found here (or by pressing “Projects” in the top menu):

http://blog.intelligent-light.com/?page_id=619

Our next update will hopefully be a happy one about the final big day of filming Gothland Elysium. ^^

by intelligentlight

by intelligentlight

Either way, filming continues next Sunday over an even tighter schedule than before. However, the very autumnal atmosphere may cause a bit of a continuity problem, plus that it’s not exactly warm and pleasant outdoors anymore. (Not that it actually has been that for three years or so.) But everything will go as planned this time, the almost jinx-like obstructions notwithstanding.

by Markus

But seriously… Some things that happen are just excruciating on so many levels…

by Markus

We are deeply saddened by the reasons behind this and the subsequent uncertainty that inevitably follows, and we can merely hope that everything is going to be all right for those involved…

by Markus