If you've watched our Fiat 124 Spider episode, you already know that the weekend of filming didn't exactly go to plan. If you haven't - shame on you!
Kidding, here's the 411: We were suppose to film the new Jimny ages ago. Suzuki Finland were gonna lend us one, but all of a sudden they stopped answering our e-mails. "Screw journalistic integrity: Suzuki should stick to making scooters or food blenders for all I care!", I caught myself thinking just as a privately owned Jimny rolled up in front of my eyes. Well - not literally, but on a certain internet-forum I'm semi-active on. After a short chat I found that the owner was a top bloke too, and was ok with us using it for filming purposes over a weekend. Ok, the Jimny was now back on our shared calendar blocking in one of those rare blank spaces in our shared near future.
As that formerly blank calnedar-space neared us, I contacted the owner to set up the details. At this point one rugged, off-roady and boxy little piece of detail had changed: the owner had sold the Jimny, and gotten a Fiat 124 Spider in return. "Ok, never mind. I'm down for a little ND-platform action!" I thought to myself and informed Jerry about this. "Cool!", I think he's reply was.
From thereon out things started spiraling out of control and downwards like a helicopter without a pilot: Jerry wasn't available for the weekend after all, my script had to go through a second re-write, I wasn't finding anyone to help me with presentation and drive-by shots... Well, after a while I did, but guess what?
Crème de la crème, we managed to lose all of the material he filmed...
This all sounds like a one shitty weekend, no? It sure was shaping out to be just that. The only positive thing about the weekend was the car itself, but most of the driving I had done over the course of those couple of days were traffic-jams on ring-roads and through the cobble-stoned streets of central Helsinki which in a sporty car like this makes a perfectly sane man type "mental hospital" in the sat-nav... Sure, the roads around the filming locations were great, but that's the thing with "creating content": it's a bloody curse. You're too focused on your camera angles, shutter speeds, microphone gains and so on, to actually enjoy the wailing of the skinny rear tires or the rare glimpse of low-on-the-horizon early autumn sunshine. After all - one is messing up your audio and the other is making the camera light-exposure impossible to setup.
When the sun started to set on that beautiful Saturday, I resembled a water-soaked limb biscuit with a 2007 expiration date. Rollin' (pun intended) with the roof down half of the day also meant that my nose was running and I was feeling feverish. (Look - I'm from Finland, so if the sun is shining and there's no snow on the ground, the roof stays off even in 5 degrees centigrade!) Sitting in one of the best bang-for-buck rear drive chassis, one of the best weather conditions you'll ever find for spirited driving in Finland, great driving roads stretching out in each direction... And I hadn't really enjoyed a moment of it. I promised the owner to bring the car back that evening, so I gave the top bloke a call to tell him I'm done with the filming.
I was ready to go to sleep and wake up in 2025, but then the top bloke said: "There's no hurry, bring it back tomorrow." I still remember how I felt when those words came out. It was like having multiple lap dances from warm and cuddly cups of ginger-infused green tea to sooth my feverish, numb head. My nose stopped running. My neck stopped aching. My fever was gone.
So I drove into the sunset with one of the best simple, light and fun cars you'll ever find, and I did the same thing the next day. I enjoyed every second of it - the weather, the car, the connected feeling to those great roads, the notchiness of that manual shifter... I had mounted my cameras to the car, so I filmed quite a lot of this, and even repeated some of the lines from the day before, whilst ensuring that my personal enjoyment was still top priority. And you know what? Almost all of the shots I ended up using are from this particular drive, not the one before.
We have a saying in Finnish, which roughly translates to "a task well prepared is a task half-way done". I'd like to meet the person who came up with this, tell him or her they're wrong and if it's a he, kick him in the nuts.
-Joona
Kidding, here's the 411: We were suppose to film the new Jimny ages ago. Suzuki Finland were gonna lend us one, but all of a sudden they stopped answering our e-mails. "Screw journalistic integrity: Suzuki should stick to making scooters or food blenders for all I care!", I caught myself thinking just as a privately owned Jimny rolled up in front of my eyes. Well - not literally, but on a certain internet-forum I'm semi-active on. After a short chat I found that the owner was a top bloke too, and was ok with us using it for filming purposes over a weekend. Ok, the Jimny was now back on our shared calendar blocking in one of those rare blank spaces in our shared near future.
As that formerly blank calnedar-space neared us, I contacted the owner to set up the details. At this point one rugged, off-roady and boxy little piece of detail had changed: the owner had sold the Jimny, and gotten a Fiat 124 Spider in return. "Ok, never mind. I'm down for a little ND-platform action!" I thought to myself and informed Jerry about this. "Cool!", I think he's reply was.
From thereon out things started spiraling out of control and downwards like a helicopter without a pilot: Jerry wasn't available for the weekend after all, my script had to go through a second re-write, I wasn't finding anyone to help me with presentation and drive-by shots... Well, after a while I did, but guess what?
Crème de la crème, we managed to lose all of the material he filmed...
This all sounds like a one shitty weekend, no? It sure was shaping out to be just that. The only positive thing about the weekend was the car itself, but most of the driving I had done over the course of those couple of days were traffic-jams on ring-roads and through the cobble-stoned streets of central Helsinki which in a sporty car like this makes a perfectly sane man type "mental hospital" in the sat-nav... Sure, the roads around the filming locations were great, but that's the thing with "creating content": it's a bloody curse. You're too focused on your camera angles, shutter speeds, microphone gains and so on, to actually enjoy the wailing of the skinny rear tires or the rare glimpse of low-on-the-horizon early autumn sunshine. After all - one is messing up your audio and the other is making the camera light-exposure impossible to setup.
When the sun started to set on that beautiful Saturday, I resembled a water-soaked limb biscuit with a 2007 expiration date. Rollin' (pun intended) with the roof down half of the day also meant that my nose was running and I was feeling feverish. (Look - I'm from Finland, so if the sun is shining and there's no snow on the ground, the roof stays off even in 5 degrees centigrade!) Sitting in one of the best bang-for-buck rear drive chassis, one of the best weather conditions you'll ever find for spirited driving in Finland, great driving roads stretching out in each direction... And I hadn't really enjoyed a moment of it. I promised the owner to bring the car back that evening, so I gave the top bloke a call to tell him I'm done with the filming.
So I drove into the sunset with one of the best simple, light and fun cars you'll ever find, and I did the same thing the next day. I enjoyed every second of it - the weather, the car, the connected feeling to those great roads, the notchiness of that manual shifter... I had mounted my cameras to the car, so I filmed quite a lot of this, and even repeated some of the lines from the day before, whilst ensuring that my personal enjoyment was still top priority. And you know what? Almost all of the shots I ended up using are from this particular drive, not the one before.
We have a saying in Finnish, which roughly translates to "a task well prepared is a task half-way done". I'd like to meet the person who came up with this, tell him or her they're wrong and if it's a he, kick him in the nuts.
-Joona
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