Kissed with a Fist - Update of TAMK's international short film projectfilm

Story and photos: Niilo Gustafsson.
For about six months ago I wrote here a post (http://tamk-artmedia.blogspot.com/2011/03/kissed-with-fist-bit-of-light-filming.html) about the film called Kissed with a Fist. At that time I and some other TAMK students were living in Salford, England, in order to produce the film. Back then I wrote that “it was almost a year ago when we were first introduced to the idea of coming to England to shoot a film, a lot has happened since that and huge amount of work has been done.” Well, even a lot more has happened since then.

Dave's lovely penthouse.


Our director Iiro Peltonen and screenwriter Liz Chesters were still working on the script and the film isn’t actually about what I then wrote it would be. Progress went on and luckily it did because the way was the right one. The pre-production, hence, was fast but after all we managed to shoot on schedule because the main elements didn’t change. So much time has passed that now I dare to admit I was just a little bit nervous if we would!


For me as producer the hardest part was to find the locations. When making films in Finland you always know someone who can help and usually manage to get the right places for cheap. In a foreign country that is quite difficult. Luckily the living room of our cinematographer Niko Nurmi and sound recorder Arttu Hokkanen was actually not bad as all as the main interior location! Our local production co-ordinator Dave Rigby saved our skins and offered us his apartment to be the other important location (thank you again Dave).

The shoot took us two weeks and they were rough two weeks I can tell you. Happily the young main actor Beth Dyke was so full of energy she endured very well. The technical group coming from Finland also gave us new energy even though they were knackered after the long drive. So much happened during the shoot that I could write a whole post about it but for now I’ll keep it short. In the end everything went ok and we had good times shooting the film. We were probably quite an odd sight with all our big lamps and other special equipment, filming our movie at our home street Penelope Road. Well, if not all the inhabitants were happy about the fuss the children living next door enjoyed watching our work and even wrote us a fan letter when we were finishing off the shoot!
Gaffer Marko Ijäs lighting the location at Penelope Road.




When we had done what we needed in Salford we packed our back bags and headed towards Scotland to have some time off before flying back home to Finland. After having a short holiday our editor Martina Kuitto and director Peltonen started to work with the material in the edit. During this whole autumn they have been building the story and the final cut was set on late September. The next thing that’s going to happen is the work with sound and colour before we can say the film is finally ready.

If you want to support our project, please go to www.indiegogo.com/Kissed-with-a-Fist and donate. That how we can finish the film and screen it so you can enjoy it!
Finnish equipment, English wall plug...