It's mad to think it's already been a week since I've written on the blog. It feels so long ago, I can't really fathom how well I've settled here. It still hasn't hit me that it's all happening, but I'm loving every minute, apart from maybe the early mornings... This morning we were back to our old 7:15 am bus after our short but very much appreciated sleep in yesterday. It definitely felt like the coldest morning so far, we were promised snow later in the day so I didn't mind it too much. We arrived to the college at the usual time and sat on the couches, which has become a bit of a ritual at this stage, then we had our morning production meeting in the coffee room and talked through everything we would be doing, James, Laura and I would be going to the auditorium with the first years and Taru to talk about editing, Eve would be working with Emmi on international day tasks, and the boys would be upstairs with the camera gear and the second years. So the 3 of us headed to the auditorium with Taru, where she thought us all about the structure and style of editing, which was all genuinely very interesting for me. She had a DVD with her, full of clips from movies, music videos, and short films. The first clip she showed us was from Weekend by Gordad. It was essentially a 7:30 min video of a car driving down a long line of traffic, no edits, just a continuous dolly shot. At the end of the clip Taru asked us why we thought they did that shot for, so we broke off into groups and discussed our answers over tea in the hallway. After our tea-mwork (i'm sorry I had to), we headed back into the auditorium and talked about the points we had made, and watched more clips using different editing styles. We analysed short scenes from The Birds, The Seventh Samurai, and a Michael Jackson music video. All of them very different, but have some similarities or contrasts in their editing. I found the whole thing very helpful, and it made sense of a lot of things I had wondered before. We then looked at very particular editing trends, such as Time, Rhythmic, Spacial and Graphic. We were asked which one appealed to us most, then we were asked to go and find clips and edit them together using those styles. So back to the editing room we went just before we had lunch. Lunch is always an exciting time of the day, not because i'm hungry, but the food is honestly a surprise every day. Today's lunch was a porridge with a red sauce, I decided to sit this one out and had ham rye bread (which I've gotten obsessed with since we got here. Thank you Finland.) During all of this time the boys were upstairs working with the cameras, and Lukasz was working on a short he wanted to film while he was here so they were also kept busy while we were clicking away on the computers. Eve was working away doing prep for International day which is actually this day next week! It seems to be a huge deal so i'm looking forward to that! James, Laura, Cathal, Lukasz and myself actually stayed back so we could work a little longer on things. It's so great finally being comfortable with using Premiere Pro, the first day was a bit of a struggle, but once we were talked through it it's a walk in the park and it's definitely more professional than Final Cut Pro so i'm glad to have it in my skill set now! It also snowed again today, it must be a thing that only happens on Tuesdays, it didn't stick unfortunately but it was nice while it lasted. Also, we were pleasantly surprised with t shirts today. They have Villila on them and it's a very very cool little memento to have from the trip. I can't believe tomorrow is half way through this incredible experience, i'm doing my absolute best to make the most of it! Until next week! - Emily
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It's strange to think we've only been here eight days (excluding the first Sunday when we arrived). I think we all feel as though we've been here for a lot longer, and are really starting to get used to life in Finland. By now, we all now our way around fairly well, we all know the basics of Finnish and the people in the streets are already becoming familiar to us. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but sure... Anyway, it turns out that Tuesday -Friday we're meant to be at work/college from 08:15-14:00, but it turns out that on Monday's we've a 10:00 start and finish at 16:00, so we get an extra half-hour of sleep which was nice. We met Mikko at the bus stop, as per usual, and made our way to work. We were an hour an half early (which wasn't as bad as it sounds) as we were able to hang around the couch area and catch up for while. When we finally had our daily production meeting, it was time to turn our heads to the editing room. While we edited, Cathal, John and Lukasz went with Frej to learn about RED cameras which they've wanted to do for a while, even before they left GTI. From what I've heard they really got a lot out of it. Also, Lukasz and Cathal went to shoot an interview with an exchange student from China studying nursing in Finland. Once they returned they jumped into filming a short skit with Frej in Finnish (naturally, they'd no clue what it was about) During all of this, we continued to polish and edit our scratch videos which Taru watched and criticised positively. We were then told that they're deadline is due tomorrow but I think we're all confident we can get them completed in time. While we finished up our edits, Eve had a lengthy meeting with one of the producers and students about International Day next Tuesday. Emily, Eve, Laura, Mikko and I left for the 4pm bus soon after, while the guys stayed behind for an hour while they finished up filming. We hung around the hostel for a while which was nice.
We also had Chinese Takeaway for dinner today which was nice because we've been cooking the past few days and haven't really eaten out yet. 'Til next Monday! ~ James. So here we are, just finishing up our first week in Pori. As we mostly relaxed today I'll reflect on the rest of the week as a whole more so.
The week just flew by, as we were constantly kept busy, thus the reason for our relaxation day today. Only a third of the way into the trip, and there's still so much to learn and see. We've been given a brief idea of what to expect from the college work wise, but even if we didn't know it's so great to be in that work environment. We're kept so busy with all the projects during the week that I'm glad that we have time at the weekend to just relax. It also gave us time to actually explore the town of Pori a good bit more. One thing that really stands out to me is how empty the town seems, everything is just well spaced out I think. It's such a beautiful location. As for the week ahead, I await with anticipation. This whole experience is almost dreamlike, I'm incredibly glad I've gotten this opportunity. As today is Saturday and the fact we were out celebrating Saint Patricks day on Friday night, we all decided to treat ourselves to a lie-in. Not having to get up at 6 a.m was pure heaven. Once noon rolled around, we all managed to haul ourselves out of our beds and down to the kitchen for a spot of brunch. All of us had different tasks we wanted to complete so we decided to split up and venture out into the quiet city of Pori.
John and I were determined to go and check out a music shop that we see every morning on the bus headed to college. To our surprise, the walk to the music shop was not a long one, but unfortunately was a pointless adventure as the shop closed at 14:00 p.m and we arrived at around 15:00 p.m. In defeat, we decided to try and find some food and some wifi to plan out what we would do next. We ended up in the Finnish version of McDonalds- 'Hesburger', and googled where the closest museum was. We finished our meal and headed off to the try and find Porin Taidmuseo which is a museum in the heart of Pori itself. On our way to the Museum we came across the central Pori church known as Kirkko in Finnish. It is the largest church in Satakunta and also one of the largest churches in all of Finland. Unfortunately the theme of the day continued as the church was also closed. We still explored the large memorial site based in front of the building to commemorate the Finnish soldiers who lost their lives in the war against Russia. We continued our quest to fill our day with exploring interesting and cultural things. When we made it to the area of our desired museum, we were surprised to find out there are actually 2 other museums on the same street, which was good to know for future reference. Finally, we made it to the museum, but alas, it was closed also. Even though online it says the museum didn't close until 6pm, like all the other facilities in Pori today, they decided to wrap things up early which we found to be interesting. At this point both John and I were getting cold and decided to head back to the hostel. When we all regrouped in the hostel, I found out that Emily, James, Cathal and Lukasz all went to the large shoping centre, Puuvilla. There was a celebration within the shopping centre they witnessed but had no idea what it was for, but it involved a lot of balloons which livened up their shopping trip. The rest of the evening involved hanging out in the hostel, playing the whisper challenge and cooking dinner. - Eve Today in college we watched and analysed a Finnish film called 'The Clan - Tale of the Frogs'. It was directed by Mika Kaurismaki, the brother of the famous Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki who won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2017 Berlin Festival. We analysed the film in terms of European Art cinema and its representation of Finnish culture and character. After the film, Laura, James and Emily went back to editing of their Scrap videos using Premiere Pro. John and Cathal were taught how to use the Blackmagic URSA and how to light up the set to get the best possible picture quality from that camera. In the meantime, Eve was making a banner for the International Day at the school and did some translations while I was writing an outline for a film that I plan to shoot here in Finland. For lunch we were surprised to find out that they served Irish Stew just for us today. The stew seemed to be prepared with a traditional recipe and there were plenty of potatoes to go around for everyone. It was very delicious and it was a small reminder of home. Later on, Taru wanted us to do a short video for St. Patrick's Day. I was directing while Cathal was an actor and assistant director and Jon was acting in it. The students at Villila Studios helped us set up lights and decorate the set to look like a pub. We used the Blackmagic camera and got a really good video that will be edited by one of the students and put up on Facebook later. To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, we are meeting Taru and some of the students in the Irish pub later, to show them how we celebrate this special day in Ireland. We hope everyone has a great St. Patrick's Day! - Lukasz As we don't have a lift to the college anymore, we had to get up at 6 o'clock today to get a bus into college for 08:15am. Luckily Riku came by our hostel to make sure we didn't get the wrong bus. At 11 o'clock everything we had done so far in the college would come to fruition in The Live Studio Interview. Laura presented, asking James, Emily and Louise all about Erasmus and "What would you do if...?" questions. We did a quick rehearsal in the morning so everybody knew what they had to do seeing as we only had one chance. I was quite nervous as the very first shot was a slow zoom in on our Laura, our interviewer, on a lens I hadn't used before. Once the clock hit 11 o'clock our audience started to arrive. Our studio director Eve went through everything they had to do and made them feel comfortable while we framed out cameras. Luckily the Interview went really well and Freya was quite impressed with us. After we finished, it was time for lunch. After lunch, Riku and Josephus called John and I to go on a location scout for a music video we would be working on. The location was a old cabin in a secluded part of Korpikumpu, in a forest that was covered in a foot of snow. This made it hard to get to, but we managed to get there with only a couple of slips on the ice. Once there, we shot some test footage which they would use for the music video. Louise invited us out for a couple of drinks because it was her last night with us in Pori. We popped into the Irish pub and bumped into the owner who has been here for 20 years which was very insightful. We are all pretty wrecked but, tomorrow is St.Patricks day and we cant wait to see how the Irish over here celebrate it. ~Cathal Today we got up at 7am to be in college for 8:15am. In the morning, James, Emily and I got set up in our own editing room and started working on what are called Scratch videos. Scratch videos are artsy, abstract videos that are trying to get an important message across. Emily picked the topic of supporting films, James picked the topic 'Love is Love' and I picked Donald Trump. We had never used the Premium software before in GTI so today I learnt a new skill. We first started off by downloading clips off Youtube and then getting music for our videos. About halfway through Emily and I were called upstairs by Taru to start rehearsals for the interview/discussion that is being recorded live tomorrow. My job in this project is to be the interviewer. The first rehearsal didn't go too well because there weren't enough questions and the people I was interviewing did not have enough time to prepare their answers. But after a while, we slowly got the hang of it. Lunch time in the school these days has been full of quite some eventful and questionable times, with most of the group not ever really knowing what the food actually is. Today it was fish soup, but don't ask me what kind of fish it was. Some of the people from the school sat with us at lunch today, which was nice as we hadn't really gotten to talk to them properly until today. Louise came and sat with us during lunch and told us about the bus timetable for tomorrow. We had great fun teaching each other Irish and Finnish, and James learnt how to say chocolate spread in Finnish, and we all had great craic laughing at him as per usual... After lunch Cathal, John, Lukasz, Emily and Eve went back to the studio to work on some technical preparation for tomorrow. Me and James made are way back down to our editing room and continued to work on our projects until Lukasz and Louise came down to me to help me develop some questions for the interview tomorrow. Then we packed up and went back to the hostel to get ready for the ice hockey match at 5. -Laura Cathal and John were on cameras, whilst Lukasz and Eve were directing. Emily was working in the backroom helping switch between cameras. James continued to edit for a while until him and Emily were called up to be interviewed during rehearsals for tomorrow. We did about three practise runs until it was time for lunch Lunch time in the school these days has been full of quite some eventful and questionable times, with most of the group not ever really knowing what the food actually is. Today it was fish soup, but don't ask me what kind of fish it was. Some of the people from the school sat with us at lunch today, which was nice as we hadn't really gotten to talk to them properly until today. Louise came and sat with us during lunch and told us about the bus timetable for tomorrow. We had great fun teaching each other Irish and Finnish, and James learnt how to say chocolate spread in Finnish, and we all had great craic laughing at him as per usual... After lunch Cathal, John, Lukasz, Emily and Eve went back to the studio to work on some technical preparation for tomorrow. Me and James made are way back down to our editing room and continued to work on our projects until Lukasz and Louise came down to me to help me develop some questions for the interview tomorrow. Then we packed up and went back to the hostel to get ready for the ice hockey match at 5.
-Laura So today started significantly earlier than yesterday, we all got up around 7am, not willingly, but we did it. We hopped into our van to Villila Studios at around 7.40am, no Louise or Taru today (Taru overslept). As James said, the day begins with a production meeting in the Auditorium going over our agendas for the day, we (who are referred to only as 'The Irish') were shown the slow-mo video that we were in yesterday, which was meant to be serious but is hilarious to us, I think the majority of us belong behind the camera. Taru also brought us a present, Irish tea! We were all far too excited about it, which the other students found hilarious. They love their coffee, but don't quite understand the tea infatuation we all have. We spent our day upstairs in the studio (which is unbelievable), and set it up for the multi-cam shoot that we're working on for the next few days. We all helped setting up the wires to connect the camera to the systems in the back room, which may seem like a simple task, but even with help and guidance from the other students we all managed to mess it up in the same way, but we got it... eventually. The type of multi-cam shoot we'll be doing is a Talk Show with the first years. They're doing their own one, which we got to watch and see how they do it before we tried ourselves, thankfully because then we actually knew what we were doing! Our crew consisted of Tommi (a Finnish student) on the soundboard, two Finnish students Venla, Miiko, and Cathal and John on the camera, Lukasz as the Director in the cutting room, Eve as studio director, Laura as presenter and myself on the cutting board, not the right term, but I basically push two buttons to switch to different camera at the directors request (which was far easier than I thought, when I was asked to do it I freaked out a little bit, but Emmi (one of the Finnish students) literally spent 2 seconds explaining it and i'm practically a professional now. She also taught me how to say 1 ,2, 3 and 4 in Finnish, which may come in handy if i'm ever doing a multi cam shoot with a Finnish student directing! We did a few run throughs before we actually did a full one under the watchful eyes of Frej who was the teacher of this class and knows exactly what he's talking about. It's all so professional here. We had a few breaks over the course of the shoot, our lunch today was a mystery beige lump (which we thought was mince, pasta and cheese, still not 100% certain). I didn't expect the food to be so different. Some of us had one on one meetings with Taru so she could really peg down what we wanted to do, so she can cater to our needs as much as she can. So James, Laura and I will start editing tomorrow on Premiere Pro which i'm very excited about! It's a programme I've always wanted to use so this is such a great opportunity. The day absolutely flew by. We got talking to a few more of the students and actually learnt their names, which I would share with you but I did not learn the spellings, I'm getting there... one step at a time. We also got to show off our (very limited) coupla focal to some of them, they seemed impressed, that or they're just very polite. Tomorrow is our last day with the van before we have to get the bus ourselves, which rumour has it leaves at 7:15am in the morning... which is 5:15 at home. This may prove a struggle, but Riiku, one of the Finnish students who studied in GTI will be getting it with us, so we should be fine. We're also going to see the local ice hockey team playing a game which i'm really excited about. Some Villila alumni work there so we're going to get a chance to see how their multi cam system works, which we'll be extra appreciative of as we're working on multi cam at the moment. Just as I sat down to write this it started snowing. Eve was so caught up in the excitement, in the process of informing the others, she fell. Twice.That's basically it for today, hoping to wake up to a winter wonderland tomorrow.
- Emily Our official day one started at 9:30am when Taru and Louise came to meet us at our hostel. They allowed us to start late because we were travelling all day yesterday. The journey to the college was filled with the wonderful Taru going through a bunch of facts about the people, places and history of Finland which was super interesting. When we arrived at the college 20mins later, we were met by some of the students and staff before our first production meeting (which is how each morning is started, which makes sense because the days can extremely hectic). Once the meeting was over with, Taru gave us a "brief" tour of the place -- brief meaning it lasted the best part of an hour but we all so happy to be there it flew by! After that it was time for Lunch (A weird hot-dog-sausage type thing I don't think any of us were too fond of), then we were shown their collection of cameras (RED Scarlet's, and Black magic Ursa's). As a welcoming to the country they filmed a promotional video a little while after, to send back to Ireland. During this we were asked to walk in a straight on line towards the camera, and strike poses. Lukasz tripped, which ruined our last take. It was a lot funnier than it sounds. After college, Taru then accompanied us to the Puuvilla Shopping Centre around the corner from our Hostel. When we arrived back, we ate and then Louise brought us exploring (they've an Angry Birds themed playground here - I don't know why, but we lived for it!) When we eventually found the only Irish bar, it was closed. Overall, I learned quite a bit today and made friends, not just with Riiku (an exchange student who came from Finland to GTI last year) but also with a Spanish student in our hostel who says he's staying here for three whole months.
We've an early start tomorrow, 08:15am to be precise. So stay tuned as Emily continues the summary of our Finland Adventures. Until then, James. Our Erasmus journey begins at 4:30am in the morning at the Galway Bus station. We got the five o'clock bus to Dublin, catching up on some sleep along the way. Dublin airport was almost dead silent, which suited us as we weren't there for too long before we got on a three hour plane journey to Helsinki. The flight was more comfortable than a Ryanair flight. Once we had arrived in Finland, there was a noticeable difference in the aura that people had about them, it was very quiet. Moving on from Helsinki we got on a three and a half hour train journey to the town of Pori. The train journey was incredibly scenic with many picturesque views of frozen lakes and frozen over fields. Once we arrived, it was now dark. after a long day of travelling, we were glad to find that our hostel was very accommodating and comfortable. We now look forward to our first exciting day of work placement tomorrow. We can be sure that the people we'll meet will be extremely friendly and welcoming.
-John |
Media 2016/17Cathal Kilbane Map of Finland |