Flashbacks and backpacks

Even thought we had quite a loose schedule for our filming trip to the ever beautiful Baltic countries there was just so much happening all the time that it was almost impossible to write down any notes or memories at the time and even more impossible to try to update this blog.

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we´ll promise to get you back on track on what´s going on. Let´s start off by going back to the beach.

Day 3: The day started off as any other day at the beach. The weather was more or less the same it had been before. For our luck we had most of the shots from the beach already filmed and the whole day went basically just by waiting for the sunset. We went to our now traditional shopping trip to the small town of Salacgriva and for our surprise there was still one ticket left for the bus for our actor (Oskari Koivula) to get back to Tallin. After getting the ticket, more water and booze for the "karonka" hopefully happening in the evening we headed back to our camp.

By that time some of us went to scout for new locations to shoot the sunset cause we wanted it to be as epic as possible. Thought the place where our camp was had a view that was really good we wanted to check if there was something even better nearby. We drove about a 1-1.5km away to the next stop near the beach. After a small walk on the beach we realized that it was nice didn´t differ that much from the location our camp was in so we decided to head back to camp. We jumped back to our car and just when we tried to turn back to the road nothing happened. The gears didn´t do anything. It was just loose and the car didn´t move an inch. Everyone got off the car and after a small round of calls and some random people checking the car it was quite clear that this was at least at this point the end of the road with this vehicle. We didn´t know more than that even thought it could be just a minor failure it was for sure that none of us could repair it and there wasn´t anyone to repair the car before next monday. Thanks for the help of some nice locals, we got a lift to our camp with all the stuff we had in the car. (just to make clear how in the middle of nowhere we were the locals tried to call us a taxi but even they couldn´t explain the place we were in)

Thought you might think that this is would be the end of our journey you are wrong. After some thinking and planning we got one of our actors to come pick up the car when he was coming to Riga for the shots we were filming in Riga and we found out that there was a bus stop near our camp that the busses to Riga went by.

The day went by and for the first time it started to look that we might catch the sunset that we were waiting for. We only had the sunset shots left and couple of smaller shots to film so when the sun started to go down and shine its last beams of light to the cloudy Latvian sky we were more than exited that finally we are getting what we came to the beach for. There was more than 7 rains in the horizon but for some weird (and lucky for us) reason the sun set to the only clear part.

After all the waiting in the sand, sleeping in the sand, eating the sand and having sand everywhere you might expect sand to get we had gotten all the shots we came for the beach for and the first "karonka" could start. The night was long and everyone had a good time. Some of us even hiked back to our car to get the final bottle of beer we had left there just to find out that it was the most terrible beer any of us had ever tasted and the evening ended by shutting our bonfire with leftover from that beer.

Day 4: The day started off with Oskari mumbling something outsides the tents. After a while we found out that non of us had put the alarm on and Oskaris bus (yes the one that we got the last ticket and had to go twice to the town to get it) had left about 30min ago. Luckily Oskari is quite a macgyver and doesn´t get too easily upset. We wrote "Tallin 14:00!!!" on a piece of paper and Oskari went off to try to hitchhike about 250km back. In the end of the day we received a message from Oskari that he had gotten to Tallin and to the ferry just 15min before it left. There was also couple of good details to the story but to keep it short all in all went well.

The rest of the crew just chilled for the rest of the day, planned what we would leave to our car and what to take with us to Riga.

Day 5: We had an early wakeup at the beach cause even thought we were there for just 5 days and there were six of us it took quite a while to pack our camp. We had to do one trip to the car to leave our tents and such there cause there were no need for them for the rest of the trip. Everything went on schedule and we were heading off to Riga as planned on an early day bus.

When we arrived to Riga we found out that our hostel was really on spot and the keepers were the most polite we had ever met in an hostel. Thanks again Doma hostel, we really enjoyed the stay!

For the stories what happened in Riga keep checking our blog here and then. Hopefully well get back up to date within this week. At this point we can already say that the filming trip to Latvia and Lithuania was a success after all the adventures, misfortunes, goodtimes and such.

www.silentpaprikafilms.com

-SPF