Riga part 1. - scouting and enjoing

After the exhausting filming episode at the "lovely" beaches of Salacgriva everyone was more than pleased to finally get to shower and to eat food that didn´t have sand in it. First thing we did as we arrived to Riga and checked in to hostel we headed to get some food. I can assure you that a pizza and a cold beer hasn´t tasted that good most probably ever before!

The first day went off quite lazily. We wondered a little in the old town of Riga and headed to have a little picnic at a local park. Everyone was quite tired from the beach and we really hadn´t had a day off since we left for the trip so it was really pleasant to have a day off.

The second day started off by having a little breakfast at the coffee downstairs to our hostel and from there we headed to scout for some locations and also getting some pickup shots. Although the old town of Riga is really idyllic it had changed within the time to be also the center of tourism in Riga. That made the location scouting a little bit harder but we managed to get something done never the less.

The Third day was some what looser than the day before. Because our actors arrived at the end of the week we wanted to have some freetime also. So apart from the casual location scouting we just took it quite easily. The only thing we were looking for again were the locations but for that we always carried a map with us and marked the addresses up.

On the evening and the night between third and fourth day (Wednesday and Thursday) in Riga we decided to film the sunset and sunrise shots. For that we wanted to have as high as location as we could get. We wanted to have a really large shot over the city as the sun went down. Thanks for the good service and all the politeness that the locals had towards our project. We didn´t have any problems at any point while filming in Riga. We had some ideas for the high locating. The best happen to be on the top of one hotel that had a 360 degree view over the city. The timing was perfect for us and to top it off we got a perfect lightning storm also for the shots.

The day was long and even thought we were quite tired from all the scouting, shooting and walking we still decided to get up early and head for the same location that we got the city view to get the sunrise also. We got approximately 3 hour sleep that night and headed off to the location. It was more or less 2km walk there and for our surprise the place was closed and we couldn´t get to the top of the building even thought we checked the opening times earlier. Before arriving to the location we had our first and only incident with the law. We were trying to record some atmosphere sounds on an old monument and supposedly it wasn´t such a good idea to sit there at 04:30 with an suspicious device. After all the policemen were kind to us weren´t too interested in what we were doing so by just moving a little bit away from the statue we were alright to carry on with the recording.

Now back to getting the sunrise shot. Thought it was a bummer we couldn´t get to the location we wanted the sunrise looked astonishing never the less. At the same time we found two of the main locations we were looking for so despite all the lack of sleep and long walks we were happy with the results.

On Thursday we shot couple of shots with stand in actors and scouted for the rest of the locations. It was more or less just preparation for our main shooting days. We went out to eat well and concentrated on relaxing and getting energy for the upcoming missions.

The rest of what happened on the main days of filming in Riga later on. Hopefully withing couple of days.

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-SPF