Making of The Wyrm and The Maiden Grim (a short film)
Making of The Wyrm and The Maiden Grim
a short fight demo movie
(Go watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQbZrAfXFqE)
As the best projects do, this production started as a conversation in sauna, in midsummer 2017. Me (Arttu) and Joeli were discussing how cool it would be to make a choreography for a movie with the weapons we had just been training with. In training session on the following week this still was in our minds and we started to put together the situations that had happened in sparring.
The goals of the movie were not discussed immediately, since we were old friends and we already knew what we both wanted to do. In retrospect I can list the project goals that were clear when the producing started.
-Making a cool Hollywood-quality fight using real weapons and gear
-Using shields as they should be used
-Using spears accurately
-Only using historically authentic stuff that would fit the Scandinavian context of late 10th century
-Becoming a Youtube hit (still working on it…)
-Learning to plan a fight choreography for camera
We found an agreeing director whom I had helped before in other projects and Eric Raunio of Ruined Films was added to the team.
Pre production
Pre production was fun since I had done a lot of production work in theater environment. We knew a location where we could film in, owned most of the clothing and weapons we needed. One thing that needed to be made was the helmet I use in the film, but that was only a two long evenings of work ofand not too hard to do. I made one bad mistake in the equipment side, though. The spear I use in the film has a butt cap. I was under the belief that the spear and its butt cap that’s found in Finland was dated for late 10th century, but as it turns out I was wrong and it’s from 13th century.
The biggest change in the pre production came when we realised that what we are doing is boring. We needed at least somewhat of a plot for the movie. Well as you most likely already know there is not much of a plot in it, but we did manage to add some amount of interest in it when my good friend, a dancer and an actress, Laura Humppila joined the team.
Laura had no experience with real weapons, but she had a lot of experience with choreographs so she didn’t slow us down at all. I had another problem because of our decision to have a third person. This far Joeli had taken care of getting all the clothing we need, but now we needed to start borrowing expensive stuff that people owned. This is normally ok, but this time they were used in mud and sharp weapons were involved. Also the time period was quite precise. Finally a proper dress was borrowed from a member of an organisation called Graywolves.
The training
As you can see up, Laura was safe and fast to train with. It is super important when training with real weapons that you can trust everyone in your team with your life.
I personally had done quite a lot of training with shield and spear, but always with a shield that has two straps. The viking shield was new to me to combine with a spear. Even though this made it a lot slower to make a choreography that we can present as historically accurate, it had the benefit of learning something new. The strike I do on the right using my both hands, one grabbing the handle of the shield as well as the spear, was discovered during sparring with these weapons. ( You can also notice how cool training outfit I am wearing → )
Joeli and I had done a lot of training with pole arms so for him learning to use a long spear that has a heavy spear head that cuts well… was very quick and easy. This was super cool of course since it helps in a choreography if at least one person really knows what he is doing from the beginning.
The shooting day
When we were finally ready to shoot it was early October. It was raining and windy. In Finland the day was no longer long and when we finally had collected everyone and all the gear and got to the location of shooting, the schedule was quite tight. We were going to run out of daylight in 5 hours and the weather would be completely different on the following day. Also the camera assistant was sick.
As everyone knows stress is the greatest environment to work in, and I got to experience it fully. Knowing the next time it would be a nice weather would be in spring, we worked hard and managed to get it all done well enough before we ran out of light.
One fun thing more to think about was the camera not getting wet. On the left you can see our director performing rarely seen camera-and-umbrella technique.
During the day we all become wet from rain and sweat, and I was super happy that our clothes were made of wool, and that we were not wearing anything fake. While the filming assistant was sick, our team of four managed not to get sick during the rainy and windy day.
Using real gear
To learn the details of our gear read this
Choosing to use shield and a spear was easy because it is the most common weapon combination throughout history. Since the antiquity the shield has been the most common weapon after the spear. Shields are not very popular in contemporary movies about the middle ages. Spears have some
Shield poses a problem in dramaturgy as do the helmets. They are both what all reasonable warriors would use, and they both hide the actors face. (On the other hand,... if you can hide the face you can use a stunt…) Shield also blocks what’s happening behind it, which is especially problematic as they are wielded in an angle well in front of the body.
During this fight I was using both a shield and a helmet, and when making the choreography Joeli pointed out that we must make it so that I don’t constantly cover my face. Eric also needed to run around constantly to get to an angle that showed what both combatants were doing and what kind of emotions were displayed.
As I mentioned earlier clothing up in wool was a great thing for it kept us warm. Using real weapons was not new for us with the exception of Laura, and for me and Joeli it made everything easier, since we truly knew the tools we were handling. The mail shirt and the helmet started to make me regret at the time of the third hour of shooting. Also the shield started to feel quite heavy on the fourth. Anyway the real armour also really works. Laura was able to throw me with logs and hit hard without me worrying that I might get hurt. Also Joeli could cut my ass without a need to worry. The sharpness of the spears also helped. Joeli was able to turn my shield with a trust and there is a point in the choreography where his spear cuts into my shield and my character gets an upper hand because of that. Doing those things using blunts would had been hard. For me using only real gear was the easiest option and made everything simple.
The end result
Post production and stuff
There would be similar amount to write about the post production. Since we didn't really have a budget we needed to wait quite a while for the movie to be ready, since all whom worked for it needed to find the time outside their working hours. We are super grateful to the whole team for putting the movie together. Hopefully the next one has a budget that will pay everyone the money they deserve. To give a hint how much work went into the post production here is the design Marko made about how the drama should work in the music.
I was over all happy with the end result. one more day of shooting would had done good for it and better script would not hurt, but presenting a fight was successful.
As you might have figured out, being truthful to history is kinda important for us. We hope you point out if we have done any mistakes we are not aware of. Those will be updated to this blog and told to everyone so wrong information doesn’t spread or stick.
Thank you
In behalf of Hirdmenn
Arttu
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