Interview with Joonas Makkonen and Tero Saikkonen from Tornio in Finland; winners of the first ever Glimmer 2011 48 Hour Film Challenge for the excellent film short ‘Quiet You
The theme for the 48 Hour film challenge announced at the launch of Glimmer 2011 inside the Glimmer Cinema was ‘Independent‘ and the responses from participants were screened on the Saturday 8th October at 9pm at Fruit. (‘Quiet You’ stills used by permission Joonas Makkonen)
1. As you know ‘Peto’ was screened in the International Competition for Glimmer 2011 was this your first contact with Glimmer Short Film Festival?
Tero: I believe it was first time, Joonas?
Joonas: In 2010 I found out [about] your festival, I can’t remember how though. I was going to submit some films in that time, but I was late for the submission deadlines. So I decided to submit films to your festival the next year.
2. This year we tried something new and held a 48 Hour film challenge have you been involved in other similar film challenges?
Tero: For my part, yes. I’ve taken part of Finnish hour film contest for a few years. Then there has been similar contests abroad with good success.
Joonas: Yes we have been involved this kind of competitions quite a lot, actually! First time we entered a 48 hour film competition was in spring 2010, and Glimmer 2011 48 Hour Film Challenge was our fifth 48 hour film competition! And this Friday we will take part in a 72 hour film competition. I try to keep myself busy as a film maker, and so far I have succeeded to be busy : )
3. What difficulties does a filmmaker face when making a film in 48 hours?
Tero: The main thing is you have to develop about everything in just a few hours. When the competition starts, screenwriters start immediately [to] develop the story. Usually in these groups we’ve been developing it together. Everyone is throwing ideas and then the “official” writer starts developing and finishing the story. When I as a cinematographer receive the script, I start to develop visual story telling aspects of the film. I want to try something different in every project. I check the story and then try to idealize what kind of visual look would be perfect for the story. I have to develop [it] in very short amount of time and that makes these 48 hour film contests very interesting. Then with our crew we film the story, usually in 8-12 hours and then the editor starts working and I can get a little break. Then I continue working by color grading the cut of the film.
Joonas: The time limit is a great challenge, but also a good inspiration and a learning experience. When we first took part in a 48 hour film competition, we had a lot of problems; the footage was too high quality for the editing software, and we needed to learn how to handle it. We should have run some tests before the competition. We lost time for things which we just could have learned beforehand. Also it was hard to know how much time we exactly needed for filming, editing etc.
I also feel like the 48 hour projects are very different, because usually you have a lot of time to work out your screenplay. But when you need to do the writing process also inside 48 hours, it really changes the things. The story needs to be made up within few hours. I’m very proud of myself and proud of our team, because the stories so far have been quite creative but still simple enough to do within 48 hours. I feel like I can still learn some new things about film making when I need to do the whole film making process in a short time limit. You need to focus on the most important things. We have found good stories when having this 48 hour pressure on us.
4. The theme for the Glimmer 2011 48 Hour Challenge was ‘Independent’ where were you and your team when the clock started ticking? How did you come up with the ‘care in the home’ idea?
Tero: Last few projects we’ve started our projects in our unofficial headquarters, a studio/edit room in our campus area. We gather together, talk together, get our feelings what’s going on and get the good mood. Then when the clock starts ticking, we look for the challenges and then everybody starts to think various ideas. We think together about the ideas and then Director/Writer starts to develop the idea. He can tell better about the idea for the script.
Joonas: We gathered to our editing room just before the competition started, and waited for the competition rules to be announced. All of our team members couldn’t come in [at] the starting point, but they were coming for the next day’s shootings. We had made some kind of early schedule: the first night is for the story making, and the next day will be the shooting day. And the last day is for the post-production.
When we got the theme “independent”, we started to make up ideas. We finally found this idea about a bit crazy sympathetic man, who needs to yell “hiljaa mulle” (“quiet you”) when he feels in a certain way. I guess a lot of the main idea came from me, and I got some inspiration for the main character from a woman who lives near me. Earlier the woman have yelled to me “you f*cking fool” without any certain reason. And I do not know the woman at all. She just lives near to me. I felt like she must be quite a character.
I and my girlfriend have two dogs, and the dogs have been also a great inspiration for me. I know I have always those two dogs available for the film projects, so I have many times found some kind of role for them. I just hope I don’t start to repeat myself with the dogs; I hope I can always find fresh roles for the dogs! 
One more thing what was a big part when making up the story, was the actors we had available for the project.
5. In the film ‘Quiet You’ your main character has a special power in his voice. The film reminded me of the, horror-satire novel Lullaby by American author Chuck Palahnuik and the ‘culling song’ idea. Did you take inspiration from Lullaby?
Tero: ?
Joonas: The main actor Marko Haapaniemi have this special sound in his voice by nature, I think. I am a fan of Chuck Palahniuk though, I just loved Fight Club as a film. It is actually my favorite film. I also enjoyed Fight Club as a novel, and also his other books Survivor and Choke. Those are the books so far I have found in Finnish. I haven’t read Lullaby, I don’t know what kind of story it is. So I must say I didn’t get any inspiration from that work. Maybe it is something I would enjoy a lot!
6. What problems did you have to overcome during the 48 hours, in terms of filming schedule, editing, post production etc?
Tero: Well there wasn’t actual problems at all.
Joonas: The starting time was a small problem. The start was 11 pm in Finnish time. So we done the story and screenplay at the night, and at the morning we started to practice with the actors and film the short film.We didn’t have a lot of other problems this time. Well, we didn’t know if the music needs to be done also within 48 hours or not, but the composer Jussi Huhtala anyways done the music within 48 hours.
7. Were you pleased with the end result?
Tero: Very pleased, it won! As a cinematography side, I’m very pleased also. This time we tried to shoot very minimalistic visual style. Handheld, basically just one shot by one scene. Lots of white cold light softly from above to get a feel of what’s happening with this main character. It worked very well and I’m very happy about the result.
Joonas: Yes, absolutely! I was surprised how sort of original story we made this time. “Independent” was a hard theme, and we were thinking if our story is enough independent after all. Especially when the story was invented, I felt that there wasn’t that much anymore “independent” in the final script. But I guess we succeeded to get enough “independent” in the story.
8. Finally how does it feel to have won the first ever Glimmer 48 Hour Film Challenge?
Tero: It feel’s outstanding. Last couple competitions we’ve been resulted to a second place. Now being the first one feels great! It’s very happy to continue to do what we’re doing, because of getting great results.
Joonas: It was a great feeling to finally get the 1st prize in a 48 hour film competition! But the great feedback from the film was also great to have!
I’m just trying to create a picture of your 48 hours spent making Quiet You. Did you get any sleep, how much coffee did you drink, and were there any funny things that happened during filming? Was it the same dog in Quiet You as in Peto? (Peto Dir. Joonas Makkonen Finland 2011) was in the official selection and screened as part of the International Competition programme at Glimmer 2011.
Tero: We’re Finnish, if we don’t drink beer we drink hell-of-a-lot coffee. At least in the projects. We don’t count it in cups, we count it in litres.
The funniest moment was when these guys tried to settle in the small closet. They were having very difficult and hurting positions. I was just continue shooting the shot and try to hold laugh inside me. I was checking how long they can be in that position so I was just shooting and shooting.
Everyone knew each other so we didn’t have to break the ice before project so we had very good mood in the whole project. So anxious to get a new project!
So much thanks to you for keeping the competition! See again next year! And greetings from Lapland!
Joonas: We have two Coton de tuléar dogs. The one in Peto was Adonis the Dog. And in Quiet You the dog was Essi, so her name was the same as her character’s name was. This was because when I was writing the script based on our ideas, I didn’t know yet if the main character needs to call her by her name, to get her in the positions we will want her to be. The both dogs have been in other short films directed by me as well.
Hey it was nice to take part in this competition, lets do it again in the next year!
Quiet You on Youtube
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