2015

Mon, Apr 20

<08:39 EEST> It so happens that our movie Pidä Rakkautes saw its premiere around this very time a week and a while ago, on Thursday the 9th, on the biggest of big screens in town at Finnkino. I only came around to report this now as I was deported for the day due to plumbing works -- I only have 2 hours of lectures today.

I guess the premiere didn't strike me as one of the epic culminations of art and fun as the theatrical ones invariably are. This was a more temporally and spatially distributed effort for most of us, so there was none of this collective panicking a week or two before. Johannes the director/cinematographer/editor was of course up shit creek with his work, and I might say he finished it with quite a success. While the early hours did put a damper on the overall festive mood, we did manage a lunch with proper drinks afterwards, followed by a late night party.

Having worked so intimately on it as the sound guy and a minor actor, it is hard to comment on the quality of the end result. I feel my (relatively high) expectations were easily fulfilled, but there was little extra magic beyond that. Of course, this is after having seen one of the raw cuts earlier. Besides, it's arguably hard to induce that premiere magic into a digitally reproduced performance.

Moreover, there is this whole feeling of a more or less commercial project, with different people having different interests more clearly than in theatre productions. It is not necessarily a bad thing for the end result, but all in all it doesn't quite have the fun I look for in theatre. But I guess that's one price to pay when you do something for the whole world to see.