Seremonia: Pahuuden äänet
We shot this Seremonia video in one day, it took about nine hours in total including a pizza break. VHS-Klubi brought in all the televisions and hooked them up. They had prepared the found footage on VHS tapes beforehand from links I’d given them. It actually took about the same amount of time to set up then it did to film the whole video. I had a very meticulous script and it was shot in sequence.
We used one 650 watt tungsten gelled to 5600 kelvin to backlight Diina’s bed. The televisions provided the rest of the light. The warm light aka. the rising sun in the window is a 2000W Arri tungsten light with no gels that the gaffer Anna-Mari Nousiainen operated by hand.
The video was shot in 2K, meaning it’s 2048 pixels in width instead of 1920 which is the Full HD standard. Height is the same at 1080. This is the difference between a common theatrical release aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and 16:9 that most flatscreen tv’s are nowadays. Here’s a bit more reading on aspect ratios if you’re into that sort of nerdy stuff. I actually think the small change felt significant and I think I will be using the 1.85:1 aspect ratio more in the future.
We also had a little social media campaign before the shoot. We created a Facebook profile for Tyhjyys Kasvoton and asked people to send dark, black pictures to him. A big thanks to everyone who sent their pictures!
There’s three references to popular culture in the video, but now that the it is done they turned out totally different to their sources of inspiration. So a note to myself, steal as much as you wan’t, you won’t be able to recreate it! But let me know if you think you got some of the references!
Directed, cinematography and edit by Sami Sänpäkkilä
Actor: Diina Bukareva
Vocalist: Noora Federley
Gaffer: Anna-Mari Nousiainen
Runner: Ville Pirinen
Analogue TV’s: VHS-Klubi / Tomi Leppänen, Juuso Ala-Kyyny
Thank you: Random Psÿcles, Erno Peltonen, Seremonia