Raul's Take: Day 06: Sukanen Museum

by Raul Viceral, Assistant Director

What a difference 10 hours of sleep makes! How refreshing.

Today will be our last of four days shooting at the Sukanen Museum. It's been great shooting there despite the plane and traffic noise and having to run hundreds of feet of extension cords to where ever we're shooting. Paul's been wonderful, the sets are looking great and really giving C high production value.

As much fun as it's been though, I'm looking forward to the two days we'll be at the old university building in Regina. One set, indoors and no Snowbirds flying over. AND it's 5 minutes up Broad Street from C's studio, no more 45 minute drives home from Moose Jaw at 2am.

Today we started by meeting at C's studio as usual to load up equipment. We didn't have to be at the museum until 1 though so it was a little more relaxed than usual. Once we got in, Kali had lunch waiting for us.

Andrew and Trevor strategize about the shoot during lunch.

At the production meeting, C assures us that today will be a "light day." Only two scenes to shoot. Huh, maybe it will be a light day.

During the meeting, Paul pulled up to show off his jalopy.

"Any of you city slickers wanna drag for pinks?"

After the meeting, we headed over to the field in front of the grandstand where the threshing machine was set up. This is an authentic 100-year old threshing machine that the volunteers at the museum maintain. They fire it up once a year during their annual Threshing Bee which is next weekend. Paul arranged for them to run it for us so C could use it in her film. Awesome.

Some of the gentlemen who were background talent yesterday at the Post Threshing Party scene returned today for the Threshing Demo scene.

C directs the extras on what she wants them to do in this scene.

One of the coolest surprises we got was a visit from Helen Sukanen, who was married to the late Elmer Sukanen, the real Tom's nephew. C got to interview Elmer a few times and learned many stories and annecdotes about Tom, which she incorporated into the script. Elmer passed away this Spring and we weren't sure if Helen would make it out to see us. But she did and we were really glad to see her again. As you can imagine, it was a very emotional reunion for Helen and C. Helen was accompanied by Lloyd and Edith Redden and their friend, Marge Ingolls. Edith and Marge were the first people C met when she travelled from San Francisco to Macrorie back in 2003 to do research for the film. Lloyd drove C out to Tom's homestead the next day which was an amazing experience for C, as you can imagine.

Lloyd, Don, Helen, Marge and Edith.

A little Sisu trivia: Mark's character, Lloyd the store owner, is named after Lloyd Redden and Lili's character Marge Ingolls is named after... you guessed it, Marge Ingolls herself.

Soon the thresher was ready to go and it was time to start shooting. This was another one of C's dream shots that she hoped to get for her movie, so we were all really excited that we were going to get shots of the thresher working. There was a slight chance of showers today, which would've nixed the thresher altogether. Luckily the rain stayed away and we got some awesome shots!

Turn it up to 11!

Clara hard at work touching up the talent's mugs.

First we got wide, establishing shots of the farmers arriving at the threshing demonstration.

Step right up gentlemen, and take a gander at the future of farming!

Getting a lot of useable sounds of the machinery working was important. C will use a lot of it as background sound under the actor's voices during the editing phase.

Closer! Go ahead and get right under there Trevor!

One shot I boarded called for a camera angle from inside the thresher looking out at Tom. We weren't sure if it'd be possible but Paul assured us it was safe to crawl under there with the camera while the machine was going. Uh... okay Andrew, give it a shot!

Try as we might, we just couldn't get Andrew maimed or mangled.

"I wanna go home!"

The shots of the thresher working turned out great. It's going to be another wonderful scene in this whole amazing movie.

Will that thing also separate cans from plastics?

We then got tight shots of the tractor starting up for B-roll. It was tough getting it going however. According to the operators, once it gets going and gets hot, it's a bear to restart.

Isn't there a remote control you can use or something?

But they managed to do it and we got some usable footage. Even though we'd gotten all of the shots we needed, Paul and his crew of threshers had to go ahead and thresh the rest of the wheat. So Andrew and I got a couple shots of the farmers supposedly celebrating the threshing machine that Tom designed and built. It was a totally impromptu shot and wasn't boarded at all but it might turn out to be useful during editing.

I think Trevor may have taken this picture. That's why he's on sound.

The next thing we needed was reverse shots of the farmers' reactions to the thresher. But we couldn't shoot the modern corrigated buildings in the background so we had to swing them around so there was just an empty grass field behind them. Things were getting frantic again as the sun was setting fast and we were losing our light. Again.

"So what we have here is what is known as a threshing mach-- HEY! Where'd it go!"

Here's a shot of those annoying Snowbirds, Canada's equivalent to the Blue Angels. They're home base is located a few miles north of the museum and although they don't fly during the weekends, they were buzzing around all day today.

Drat you Snowbirds!

They stop flying at 6pm so from about 5:30 they come around to land at their base every 2 or 3 minutes. Errrr!

We got all of the shots we needed of the extras, but we still hadn't gotten close-ups of Gerry who plays the threshing machine salesman. Unfortunately, the sun went down and got too dark to shoot. Andrew and Trevor tried lighting the scene but it just wasn't working.

"Salesman gets a sunburn scene, take 66!"

After a few futile takes of the salesman in the dark, C determined we'd just have to get the shot another day. So we wrapped the threshing machine set and headed over to the old Diefenbaker homestead (or a replica of it as we found out later) for the Mama/Dami Bedtime scene.

Try not to trigger the pyrotechnics under the bed.

It took a little while to light the scene, and while Andrew and Trevor were working on that some of us grabbed a quick bite for dinner. Luckily Kristine and Kevin got the room set dressed while we were finishing up with the threshing machine.

Zach's character is Dami, Tom when he was a boy in Finland. This scene is when his mama, played by Megan Fries, sings him a Kalevala story before bed.

The later it got the better Zach was at acting sleepy.

We started shooting at about 9 and Zach didn't wrap until after 11pm. You could tell he was starting to get tired there toward the end. Once he was done, C wrapped him and let him go home. Good job, Zach!

Of course, we still had Megan's close-ups to shoot, so we threw Dauminique into the bed again as Zach's stand in.

"WAAAAAA! It's that crazy woman again! What'd you do with my baby!"

Megan wrapped at about 1am so we started loading everything up for the drive back. It had started raining while we were shooting so packing up was a bit on the soggy side.

Hey, I think we've got a tail light out.

It was sad to think our shoot at the museum is over. We had a great time and got a lot of really amazing shots. We'll all miss Paul too, who's been great at letting us pretty much have free reign of the place and getting us whatever we needed. Thanks so much, Paul!

Actually, we do still have to shoot the second half of the Finnish Boss scene. C's thinking about doing that on our emergency buffer day on Saturday. So we'll be back.

One of the hassles of shooting so late is the university is locked up by the time we get back. So C has to walk over to the security office and have them let us in to unload. But they're cool about it, they aren't like Nazi's about it or anything.

This is starting to get old.

All of this hectic running around along with the lack of sleep and going from hot, movie light-filled rooms to cold exteriors has been reeking havoc on our immune systems. So on our way home we stopped off at a 24-hour Shopper's Drug Mart to pick up some Airborne.

Sorry Andrew, I grabbed the last box of adult diapers.

Do you have anything that will treat Lack of Golden Hour Light Syndrome?

Here's a Fun Fact: They don't have Airborne in Canada! Bwuuuh? That totally sucks. So we went home empty handed.

Calltime is at 9am tomorrow. Good news is we'll be shooting in C's studio, no driving to Moose Jaw. Yay! Another "light" day of shooting!

Until next time... adventure!

R-