Onboard Diary

This is not serious...

Moments between shots during the filming... No comments.

Multi-camera

The cosmonaut has not ended

We know we haven't been around for some time. We are really sorry. The end of the filming was extremely exhausting, as well as chaotic, and we had more trouble than we expected. With this post, we'd like to apologize for our absence, as well as explain what happened to us, and which is The Cosmonaut's current situation (furthermore, we want to show you some pictures taken from the film shooting).


First of all, the big news is that the main filming of the movie is finished . Sunday 10th of July was our last day of filming in Latvia, where we have shot 95% of the film. Riga and its surroundings have been the best Russia we could have ever wished for: it has offered everything Russia has, except Russian "bureaucratic" troubles :P Thanks to  Forma Pro, our associated production company, we have found soviet style locations that have played the part of Star City and the rest of The Cosmonaut's scenarios.

These have been 7 weeks of a hard filming. We've had never-ending days, bad life conditions for our technical team (the small budget also affected the quality of the beds we slept in!), trouble with locations, problems with the team, family emergencies that left us weak... More than once I heard someone in the team saying " I've never had such a bad time in my life "... But people kept on getting up and giving the best of themselves at the shooting every day. That's why we have been able to bring back home two hard drives filled with material from the movie. With our movie.

There are many people we should thank for helping us get here. The biggest thanks go to the team members, both Spaniards and Latvians, who have worked so hard day after day in the shooting, and also to the part of the team that stayed in Madrid. Thank you, really.


Secondly we want to thank you, our producers. You saved The Cosmonaut . When we went to Latvia at the end of May we didn't know how long the filming was going to take, because we didn't know if we were going to have money enough to finish the movie. We have not only finished the film thanks to you, but we also have breath enough to start the post-production process. Thank you.

* Regarding the "Save The Cosmonaut" campaign: we know that many of you don't have your contract or patch yet, but we were not able to send as many as we wanted during the filming month. Now that we are back in Madrid, we are catching up by sending 200 letters every day, so you will have your order / contract soon. Thanks for your patience!

Nonetheless, as I was saying at the beginning, this doesn't end here. We still have a lot of things to do . The first is to finish filming, the second is to edit the movie and the transmedia, and the third is to distribute the movie -and the transmedia- (did anybody really think that the movie would be finished after shooting? :P)


As we said, we have shot 95% of the movie, but there's still a 5% left, the part we couldn't shoot in Moscow (most of it constitutes the Moon Files, the most important transmedia piece). We suffered a big bureaucratic problem that prevented our actor Leon Ockenden from travelling to Russia for the two days we needed him to shoot there: we couldn't get his visa.  

We start the filming!

May 30th 1934, the first cosmonaut to conduct a space walk, Alekséi Leónov, was born.

First images of the movie

Listen up! This is one of those really important entries, and also one of the most beautiful ones.

Here we go!

The title of this post sums our current mood up in three words. There is less than a month left for the shooting, and we don't stop working. We have reached such an extent that Carola had to have a meeting in the office toilet the other day because the office was occupied... with more meetings (Carola have asked as for making it clear that she was not making any bowel movement. She just went in there to isolate herself from the office noise. Clear it is).

Our team is now moving around four countries: Russia (where we work with Phenomena Films), Spain (of course), Latvia (Telekompanija Forma Pro headquarters, our newer partners) and London (where Nicolás has the last script sessions with the actors).

Even so, we have got some time to film and edit this fifth video diary, because we want to keep our commitment of having you precisely informed. In it, you can see us working without a break so The Cosmonaut comes true. For instance, Nicolás shows us some amazing locations in Latvia we are going to use in the movie.

It's worth watching it. Enjoy it

12 moments to remember from these two
weeks travelling, by Nicolás Alcalá (Director)

1) We arrive in Lavtia and it's not as we have imagined at all. It's a beautiful country, with a lot of light, fresh air, with infrastructures as if it were a Central European country, with transports, signs in English, and many places ready for tourism. Besides, it's lovely. The contrast with its soviet past makes it fascinating. This starts good enough!

2) We meet Julie, Igor and Stas, our Latvian production team on behalf of Forma Pro. They are filled with passion for the project, and they delight us.

3) We slept at Alisa's house. We were delighted when we discovered that we could use it as a location for Yulia's house in the script. It was one of the locations I was most concern about. Yeah!

4) We visited thousands and thousands of locations, and they are all great. The scouting is brilliant. We are already thinking that this is not only going to be a good movie, but an amazing movie.

5) I wake up at six in the morning. For some seconds, I see before my eyes one of the scenes, totally real: with the actors, the locations we have seen, with the light. It's completely true. It's the first time I see the movie.

6) I arrive in London the week the prince is getting married. The city is excited, but the atmosphere is great (every time I come here it's sunny. I'm already thinking that they turn-off the rain button in my honor). I stay at Lucas and Rafa's place, the guys from Watergun. They have become great friends as well as the coolest production company to the west of the Mississippi.

7) First rehearsal with the actors in The Rag Factory, an amazing place. Everything goes like clockwork. We go through questions and answers about the characters. They are as excited as me. I'm dying of happiness.

8) The rest of the week, we rehearsed in the Instituto Cervantes in London who have been really kind with us. I'm honored they have offered us such a comfortable place where I feel at home. Script-reading, movie-watching... The movie takes shape with Katrine, Max and Leon.

9) The last two days, they were trying on more than 100 articles of clothing Margarita brought in 5 suitcases. We can use some of them, but we can't use some others. We decided we were going shopping the next day to get what we needed. Thanks to that, we have saved money and we are going to have spare budget of wardrobe.

10) 12 intensive hours of shopping in Oxford Street and Candem Town. We found some bargains and great clothes. The actors cannot stop clowning around (here you have a picture of Leon) while they try tons of clothes on; as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

11) ) Finally, I fly to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to meet Damián Perea. Damián is a great guy I met at the immersion program in Los Angeles, who manages (among many other things) the festival of animated films of Las Palmas. He invited me to give a Master class in front of almost one hundred cinema students. I very much enjoy talking to them and their enthusiasm. I have the opportunity to meet Carlos Saldanha, director of Ice Age and Rio. I declare immense admiration to him, and I love his naturalness. These two days by the sea with the festival organization charge my batteries to go back to Madrid and keep on with the endless meetings left until the shooting.

As the stupid bots in Counter Strike would say: Go! Go! Go!

Very Special thanks

Important News

This is a very special post for us, because we are going reveal one of the best and greatest news we have ever had in The Cosmonaut project: we have reached a Russian-Latvian co-production agreement..

We are talking about the production company Phenomena Films, headed by Alisa Green. We met Alisa in the Co-production Forum of the Moscow International Film Festival in June last year. She fell in love with the project, and we have kept a really close relationship since then. But it wasn't until two months ago that she told us she wanted to join the project as co-producer.

She made us an offer we sealed at the Berlin Festival in February: Phenomena Films joins the project with a significant investment of money, as well as production services in Russia and Latvia. In return, 30% of the project's rights and future profits will go to them.

Nonetheless, we couldn't tell you anything about it until this week, when we finalized all the details of the co-production contract, and we signed it. We are really glad to have someone like Alisa in this project. She is the ideal co-producer of The Cosmonaut, since she believes in our business model as much as we do, and she is looking forward to turning Nicolás' script into images.

Moreover, Phenomena has big contacts in the movie business, and they have already started to move and negotiate possible distribution sales to TV channels in Russia and the Baltic area.

We are really glad, because making the movie would not be possible without this co-production agreement. And, of course, the cash injection will be really important; thanks to it, the movie is now bigger, and the results will be even better than we thought.

Furthermore, Nicolás and I travelled to Latvia during Easter to confirm the movie locations. There we met the members of Telekompanija Forma Pro, a film production company closely associated to Phenomena Films. They will be the ones in charge of having the shooting logistics ready in Latvia. The shooting in Latvia will last about 30 days, while we'll only work 8 days in Moscow.

The Telekompanija Forma Pro members are real cinema professionals with extensive experience. They produced "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler", which got three Emmy nominations (out of which they won the make-up award) and one Golden Globe nomination. They have made a great location search work (we never dreamed of having such fantastic locations). They are really excited about the project, and they are really nice and warm people.

We are fully concentrated in concluding field production now. There is just one month left to shoot!

To top off, we leave you with the fourth issue of the Cosmonaut Diaries, where we introduce Alise Green, the producer from Phenomena. In this video you will also meet Julia Blatún (who has collaborated with us since the project began) and Aleksander Konovalov (Moscow production).

We hope these news have made you as happy as us. So far, we have achieved everything we've put our minds to, and we are finally about to shoot the film just as we wanted. But this is just the beginning :)

Urgent: we are looking for old cameras... and a bunch of other stuff

This is the kind of posts we would like you to spread the most. We have some unfinished production issues considering the proximity of the shooting, they are becoming more and more urgent. It would be great if you could help us with some of them.

On the one hand, we are looking for a digital camera like this one to make some tests. We are also looking for magnetic cameras, the oldest possible and working. It would be better if they have video output to shoot.

Besides, we need a kind of big garage, room or warehouse in Madrid. We want it to turn it in the spacecraft interior, to make some movie shots.

Finally, we have a lot of unfinished tasks in Wreckamovie. The most urgent are getting photography material and baby bootees for our sound team (even though this seems a joke, it is not; click the link for the explanation).

If you can directly help with something, write to hola@elcosmonauta.es as usual. If you cannot, we ask you for spreading this information as much as you can.

Thanks once more.

Advance party

Hi Carola... What are you doing by the check-in desk to Moscow at the airport?


- Hi Carola!

- Hi!

- What are you doing by the check-in desk to Moscow at the airport?

- Well, the thing is that I came to see a mini-team off...

- Mini?

- ...because they are going to start the shooting of The Cosmonaut with snow as an advance team.

- The shooting of... W...What?

- Yes! We need some snow shots, and they are going to shoot them.

- For how long?

- One week. They are going for one week to shoot full shots, continuity shots and together with one of the actors we will introduce to you soon.

- Ok. Anything else?

- I want to go, but cannot because I'm not Russian.

Pre-production Diaries Vol. 1

In the interest of keeping the openness that distinguishes us, from this week on, we have decided to start a series of entries in order to tell you how the film pre-production develops (remember we are shooting in June!). For that purpose, we have asked the production team... and those are the tasks they have been working on for the past week:

• Advance party management, snow shots.
• Visa management to travel to Russia.
• Preparation of production templates and lists.
• Preparation of databases of the whole team.
• Preparation of the location dossier.
• Purchase of the camera equipment and first proofs.
• End of the actors management. A post dedicated to them soon!
  

Impossible objects to find: a Sokol suit

At the time of facing a shooting, every period movie tries to get certain props. If the film is set on the soviet cosmonautics of the 70's, as ours is, it's much more complicated.

Nevertheless, we were not prepared for the mess of trying to get a Sokol- K suit. This is the first version of the suit Soyuz spacecraft pilots still wear today. The "K" means that they are pressurized, prepared to face an incident such as the one happened to the Soyuz 11.

We had several options, but they have been turned down on the way:

1- Buying it at Zvezda, the national factory that makes the original cosmonaut suits. At first, a couple of months ago, they told us that there was no problem to hire it, or even make a new one for the movie, with really good conditions, because they "wanted to collaborate". The main problem lies on the helmet: they have just told us today that they cannot do anything for us, not even hiring it, telling us the excuse that there are neither material stocks, nor time for the orders. They refuse to make it in any other material, and they say that they have a really strict plan of making the helmets that comes straight from the Ministry of Defense.

They gave us the option of buying a Sokol they have for 75.000 € (!!)

2- Buying it in Moscow at really high prices : We could have the possibility of hiring a suit in Moscow for 1.000$ a day. The same contact has offered us a suit for 10.000$ (they are sold in EBay up till 20.000$); but this option is quite far from what is worth to us and what we can afford.

3- Hiring a seamstress in Kiev , who has already made similar suits for another film. We have seen the pictures, and, even though it has a really professional ending, it's not a real Sokol. You can tell that they are not the same materials, etc. But of course it would be much cheaper.

4- Borrowing it from a museum . There are loads of museums around the world, mainly in Moscow, that have the same suits, or similar ones in disuse. We have already confirmed that the doors of this option are closed: they neither hire, nor even want you to look at them. 

So, right now we are a bit disoriented. We don't know which option to choose. But we might decide to take our first option: use the orange cosmonaut suit that has been together with us for so long. What do you think? Do you have any other idea?

Imagine how hard is to get one, that we have found out today that a real cosmonaut, Alexandr Balandin, has had some REALLY similar problems to the ones we are having now: he wanted to pay Zvezda to make one. They first agreed, but in the last moment they refused to do it because they didn't have time or materials. Not a single organization or museum has lent him any for his own exhibitions. Purchase prices are high even for him, etc. So, we are not the only ones who are having problems! The good thing with this is that Balandin has also offered to help us in anything we need.

So, what do you think? Do you know where to get one?

Do you think possible to find a sponsor for this historic suit? For instance, in the case anyone wanted to buy it, just tell us: after using it for the shooting, the suit will be theirs.

Can you help and advice us?

Re-writing (again)

Yesterday we showed you an image of what is about to come. This time, instead of images, we'd like to show you a video. It shows how Nico is organizing himself in order to re-write the script. Every inch of his bedroom is now covered with pics of the locations, aesthetic references, technical details, timelines, etc. Hope y'all like it:



By the way, please remember that our new teaser is about to be released. Remain patient. Give us a few more days... we need to dose expectations!

Re-writing

The Training

I'm re-writing the script and the transmedia again.

Timeline...

Fly me to Moon (The Cosmonaut files)

Transmedia is a narrative tool that allows to expand the ways of telling a cinematographic storyline. New technologies allow the development of a story on several platforms to be boosted and expanded therefore given the spectator a new experience.

- Photographs taken by Andrei as the film progresses. We can see the transformation of the character through his pictures.

- Technical reports of all the missions and incidents that happen throughout the story.

- "The Cosmonaut letters": Pieces ranging from 1 to 3 minutes, based on a dream like world with a voice over of different characters (one by each piece), that tell the relationship and feelings between them, from when they first met until the end of the movie..

- [Spoiler] "The Moon Files": the film recordings and images that tell what really happen when Stan lost communication with Earth up until his arrival back to Earth. 

- Shortfilms y Sequences: Sequences that will be shot by the crew or by guest artists with certain limitations such as location and characters. They will be unlocked as you keep progressing through levels on the video game developed for the iPhone and iPad.

- [Spoiler] "The dreams of the Cosmonaut": We will see dream like and hallucination sequences that deal with Stan at the end of the film, once he got back to Earth.

Some of these proposals, will be chosen by the fans in word and image contests, some of them will be shot by the film crew or by guest directors.

- Phone Calls: Telephone calls between characters, only audio, that will explain some details of the story. They will be broadcast throughout the internet and radio at specific time slots. These broadcasts will be interlaced with the story on some creative unique ways, for example, on some ads at determined hours and announced beforehand..

- ARG: Alternate Reality Game. A game that will be based on the universe of the movie, but it will also take some ambiance from the real world, and its theme will be about the lost cosmonauts and the documents that acknowledge or not this series of "urban myths".  All along the movie, clues and hints will help the participants to unravel the mysteries that surround the space race.

- "What do you want to be when you grow up?": 5 pieces for the cellphone platform, with a duration of 2 to 5 minutes, that will narrate Stan and Andrei's life before entering Star City. We will see them when they were once pilots dreaming with the idea of becoming cosmonauts. The last episode will be downloaded on the same cinema that premiers the Cosmonaut and the ending will follow the first scene of the movie.

IndieFlix is going to distribute The Cosmonaut

We have just received great news: like the title of this post announces, IndieFlix is going to distribute our movie. For those of you who don't know them, they are an important american film distributor of online independent cinema. 

This agreement implies that The Cosmonaut will be streamed (Low Definition Video-On-Demand) through the IndieFlix website on a non exclusive clause. This non exclusive clause is vital to a project like ours, giving us the liberty to distribute the movie on any chosen medium.

In all truth, we are very happy to have this agreement. We have always loved IndieFlix for it's support to the independent cinema and their wide array of options for the creators. We can't them thank them enough for their trust on our project. We sincerely hope not to disappoint them!

Screenplay

Work in progress.