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Saturday, February 3, 2001:

I squeezed the graphics, especially on the first page. I hope one can tell the difference (in speed) when loading the pages.

Friday, February 2, 2001:

I don't know if I can still call "journal" this page in which I write at such random times... It's been a rather hard month for everybody, with plenty of shooting, nights in a row. I gather you know this film has no budget, so you probably realize that most of the people involved in its making also have a so-called "normal" job providing some wages. This means one simple thing for us: work during the day followed by shooting at night. So there really wasn't much time left for me to update this site. But I finally made it today! I'll try to compensate this longer on-line absence by an "in extenso" entry.

I thought to improve the site from the point of view of  its speed, namely cut down on graphics, optimize it and even move it to another server if necessary. I'll try to make some changes today, but I can't guarantee you'll see any difference.

But let's go back to what happened during our January shooting sessions. First, we shot winter exteriors, which are links for the winter interiors filmed during the hot summer, in the good tradition of Romanian movies. We shot at night on streets near the the East Railroad Station, inside the East Railroad Station, in the marshalling yard, near railroad cars, underneath railroad cars, inside railroad cars. Those were the last shootings with Serban Pavlu (Pepe) and Rares Pirlog.

We shot daytime exteriors on the streets near the Chamber of Commerce building (Mircea Voda Blv.), with Andrei Aradits, Theo Herghelegiu, Mona Eftimiu. People on the street believed we're a tv crew and that we shot "children of the street" (an obsession of Romanian news and documentaries) - tv truly performs wonders in mind conditioning!

On January 29 we filmed the wedding party scene. Was there any Romanian film ever without a bride? EVen if ours is different? But don't worry, we could not get our hands on a white horse (another cliché of bad Romanian films) . The wedding (actually, the party after it) was shot in the yard of Ovidiu Gyarmath's uncle's house, and the cast were entertained by real musicians. The dressing of the bride was shot in the house of Theo Herghelegiu's father; a few days earlier we shot a scene from the balcony of Theo's grandma... You might say it's "Filmed on Location". Among others, we shot scenes with Marius Bodochi, Gabi Crisu and Clara Flores.

We also had a night shooting in the parc around the Mogosoaia palace (on the outskirts of Bucharest), with Gabi Crisu and Marius Bodochi. It was a love&sex scene, with actors half-naked, at near 0 degrees. Projectors fell to the ground and crashed because of the wind, the electrician got shocked when attempting to unplug them, rain water accumulated in the camera case, which "someone" (we know who...) forgot to shut, but then everything else was perfect.

One of the most eventful shootings took place on the night of January 26th, in a passenger train parked in the marshalling yard of the East Railroad Station. We shot Gabriela Crisu's final scene in the movie.The train was supposed to be moving, so the film director convinced one of the mechanics working there to use a lever to move the train's suspension springs on his "action!" call. The poor man stood there in the cold several hours, near our railroad car, to make the train move!  

Gabriela Crisu left that morning from the shooting directly to another train station, the North Station, in order to take a train to Iasi where she had a performance that night... Marius Bodochi divided his time between our shootings and the 4-5 performances he rehearsed or played in. The photography director, Ovidiu Gyarmath, currently has health problems with his back and participated in the January 29 shooting by phone, as he was hospitalized. Ovidiu Georgescu almost ran into a truck with his car one morning, after a night shooting, because of weariness. It was perhaps the most exhausting month of shooting so far. Even though we filmed a lot last summer, everyone was more available then, and some of us were even officially on vacation. But in January we worked like there's no tomorrow.

Shooting is almost done. What's left is a scene between Gabriel Coveseanu and Mihai Razus, and then a series of scenes in two, in a moving train, between Marius Bodochi and Gabriela Crisu, including their arrival in a train station.