the hour of living
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    • das team
    • dan absalom (ivor)
    • pepe belmonte (the singer)
    • adam berzsenyi bellaagh (codirector)
    • gregor brändli (director of photography)
    • sam fordham (theo)
    • gary grant (harry)
    • charlotte heinimann (gabrielle)
    • georg isenmann (production manager swiss unit)
    • livia krummenacher (production assistant swiss unit)
    • sebastian michael (writer, director, producer & george)
    • jay ramirez (continuity & styling)
    • moritz anselm schermbach (camera assistant)
    • christoph schwegler (werner)
    • andrea spolarics (eva)
    • pascal verdosci (coproducer)
    • david wade (conrad)
    • geoff widdowson (sound)
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shoot day 13:

17/10/2010

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'are you saying that people in cornwall have no sense of humour?'

gear change today as we shoot our first three scenes in an urban setting: at a restaurant that is something of a basel institution and arguably does the best salsicce risotto this side of milan (though we don't get to taste any of it on this occasion), at the busy main station where half my family patiently get off and on trains and travel up and down escalators pretending to be fellow passengers, and at werner's flat, which features the coolest juke box any of us have ever seen (but then we are at the home of the man who's been dubbed the 'john peel of the alps!) - walk on the wild side has never sounded quite so good...
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shoot day 12:

15/10/2010

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"mooh."

with everything currently running a day ahead, today's mop-up day turns into clear-out and departure day. but additional footage is being shot on the train journey that theo, the singer, our DP and his assistant go on, while the others travel by people carrier.  only adam and i are chancing it with the much-heralded snow, together with much of the equipment... we have to wait till we can hand over george's house to its rightful owners tomorrow.  oh and geoff our sound man finally gets the cows to speak to him!...
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shoot day 11:

14/10/2010

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"don't you worry about the snow, the snow comes from the north: it'll take a while to get here..."

as we're ahead of schedule, today is mop up day. the boys ignore any sign of a hangover and get up at six to shoot some wild track sunrise footage, and everybody is getting ready for departure from the mountain one day early, mainly so as to escape from the snow that is forecast to fall here by the weekend in abundance. meanwhile, our man from the alp who is going to take george's house back from us on saturday and put it into hibernation is unconcerned about the weather. his local knowledge and sangfroid notwithstanding, we're nevertheless clearing out tomorrow and moving to 'base camp' so as not to risk getting stuck on the last mile which won't be ploughed if it does snow on saturday...
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shoot day 10:

14/10/2010

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‎'i took a train late last night
deep into the countryside'

although the sky isn't quite blue enough to stand in as a blue screen, the bed sheet i've been sleeping on is. and so thanks to otherwise benign weather, fortuitous circumstances and excellent team work, we wrap the safiental part of our shoot one day ahead of schedule, which gives us time to regroup, recover and prepare for the second leg, down in basel...
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shoot day 9

12/10/2010

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‎'eva says you've got a memory like an elephant.'

with a 7am start, we finish shooting all the 'ordinary' mountain scenes by 9 in the morning. last night pepe belmonte joined us, so now the first couple of scenes with the singer which sound and look just perfect, plus a 'blue screen' test, courtesy of a spotless sky...
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shoot day 8

11/10/2010

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‎'george: if dad could hear you now he would be howling with laughter.'

a three hour hike up a steep mountain (from our 'base' at 5,000 feet to 7,500 feet), carrying our equipment, yields results: the views and the vistas are breathtaking. stills to follow, but we think we've just gone the extra mile, near-perpendicular...
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shoot day 7

10/10/2010

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‎'because out here you realise that nothing stands still: everything is in motion. very slowly. it's comforting. disconcerting too, but comforting.'

shoot day 7: the weather keeps playing ball (and serving blinders) and so we're now ahed of schedule, which is a good place to be in on this kind of shoot in this kind of lo...cation. an extra night shift with the camera and some super-snazzy software downloaded via an iphone reveals that there's a whole lot more to the sky than meets the eye...
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shoot day 5:

7/10/2010

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'i'm not serious, i'm not humorous: i'm factual. why?'

theo's very cool fine-checkered coat throws up a technical issue but our DP manages to solve it and so all scenes that need to go into the can by sunset today go into the can by sunset today. plus: soundman geoff has got everything he needs from the cows, we believe, except a moo...  tonight the starriest starry sky i've seen in a long time.
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shoot day 4:

6/10/2010

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‎'i wanted time to slow down. time was running away too fast i couldn’t... i didn’t want to keep up; i didn’t want to have to keep running'

there are only evening and night exteriors now before the beard goes, but they're restricted to a short window of ideal-light-opportunity today and tomorrow, so there is a degree of pressure on now, but the weather plays ball. also on set today, a very good friend and the very nice lady from the local press...
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shoot day 3:

5/10/2010

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‎'yes. but silence too is addictive: the endless lure of inaction.'

rain scuppers close-ups in the scene where george tells theo what he's doing up here (thinking!) but the man and his extremely beautiful dog turned up bang on time, as did the rolling mists.
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    due to the horrendous evils of spam i've had to set comments to 'approval needed'. but please feel free to comment: i won't censor or hide you; this really is just to spare us all the intrusion of unwanted advertising for decidedly crap websites.

    sebastian

    i am, i suppose, the instigator of this project.  i wrote it, i'm producing it together with pascal verdosci, i'm directing, together with adam berzsenyi bellaagh, and because i've got adam codirecting, i'm even acting in it. but really the impetus for it came from our director of photography gregor brändli, who said to me 'october i'd be available to make a film'. and we'd been meaning to make our first feature ever since we first worked together, back in 2005...


    so it is, as you can imagine, a complete team effort, this, and we are fortunate to have on our team people with years of experience, as well as complete novices who are just starting out.


    i'm sure this will make it both solid and fresh at the same time...

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    banner image from our footage, shot on location in safiental, switzerland
an optimist film by sebastian michael
©2012