June 1

Through many different school projects and productions, I’ve gotten to know many different artists, whether it’s their style, problem-solving, or creative thinking. We are all different and unique. It never ceases to amaze me how well people can perform together in a production, even though they don’t know each other or have never worked together before. We all have something in common and strive for the same thing: movie making. But what brought us together, to begin with?

There’s an ultimate competition here in Finland for filmmakers called Uneton48. They have many different categories of productions, but this time it was all about fictional film. Pate, a great sound engineering student that I’ve worked with in the past, mentioned this competition and his idea of putting a team together with some smooth solutions to make the work on set easier for everybody. I loved the idea and always have a hard time saying no to people that I know are amazing to work with. We created a WhatsApp group, but got consumed with school productions and work. The days flew by, weeks, months, until the final call to apply for Uneton48.

This is when things got hectic, but really took off. Another group from the same school as us was also looking to take on the challange but lacked a complete production team. By luck or skill, or whatever you want to call it, we completed each other and had a perfect role for everyone. We called ourselves Team Latebloomers, named by Tomas, our amazing director and scriptwriter.

The day of the competition had come, and we all gathered to watch a live stream presentation of Uneton48, which included some additional information about what the movies should contain. In our case, we were instructed to make a movie about premonition. We all picked up our phones and spent a silent minute on Google, since we barely knew what that word meant. Quickly it came to us, brainstorming began, and the ideas started to flow.

We split up and got some rest, but our director and scriptwriter Tomas spent almost the whole night fixing a solid script for us to use the next day. I can only imagine the pressure.
The next day, we all met up at the location we decided to film at, together with the actors who were called in only a few hours before the set, in a very nice and classy apartment with a clean and personal style. We kept calm on set and even had time to pay attention to detail and continuity. This was a production we all enjoyed making, which was the main purpose. We just wanted to have fun and do what we all love.

My main responsibility was everything technical for the camera, including running, focus pulling, and color grading. As we filmed, we hot-swapped the SD cards about every hour so the editor could cut and put the puzzle pieces together simultaneously during filming. By the end of the day, our editor was almost done with the final cut of the movie. This idea was genius and saved us an immense amount of time.

The next day was the final day of the production, and the movie needed to be uploaded on time. I did a quick color grade, music and sound were added, and there we go. We sent that movie like there was no tomorrow. We were all so happy that we actually managed to complete the challenge. We later got invited to the premiere. It was a great experience to see our own movie, made in 48 hours, on the cinema screen, together with many other amazing productions. We later learned that our movie was voted in the top 10%, and we got invited for another screening for the finals.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t participate in the finals due to a booked daily trip during the event. I spent my day in Tallinn and was in a hurry back to Helsinki in the evening to hear about the results. We made it this far, and I was dying to know the results and if people enjoyed our movie. Was our movie a potential winner?

Pictures speak louder than words.