An Action Packed Week

Tuesday begun with an alarm clock starting its beautiful ringing at 5.00am. It was the 2nd of the 3 morning Acrobatic Body Control (ABC) training days that I'm having for the Finn-Aiki aikido club. The trainings begin at 7.15am and last for 60 minutes. This time we had it at the gymnastics area at Myllypuro's Liikuntamylly (Eng: Sports Mill) in Helsinki. I normally train at the gymnastics area but it was a new thing for the aikido people. They seemed to enjoy it as the floor was softer than a budo tatami :)

Although, the class is very, very early in the morning it wakes up pretty well. When I teach, I also take part in the physical part. Not as much as the students but enough so that I can feel in my body what parts are getting tired. And as I'm getting physically tired, it means that the students should feel tired as well. Then I'll change the strain to some other area of the body so that everyone can train with at least 80% efficiency through the whole class. Even though, I'm the teacher it is still very important for me to warm-up my body as well. Usually, towards the end of the ABC classes we do more advanced techniques which requires more from myself as well, when I demonstrate them.

After the class I had few hours to chill-out and prepare for the evening. Me and my mentor H-P Virkki had been assigned to a new TV-series as 'actors'. We didn't get to have any lines to say... :D But we were chosen to do the physical parts. Johannes Hentunen (also seen in the Yakuza Diares - Blooming Flower as one of the bad guys) was also with us doing the same things. On Tuesday's shootings our role was to thrash up a warehouse. It's always nice to get to destroy places with a permission. The director enjoyed the show, so I guess we 'acted' it pretty well :D

Wednesday we had another shooting day. This time our job was to runaway from machine gun fire. The special FX guy Ari Arvola had rigged an exploding glass, and then he was also responsible for creating the sparks that came from the bullets hidding the background stuff. Me and H-P did minor stunt falls as we jumped away from the gun fire. We only needed one shot, and again the director came away from his monitor with a wide smile. H-P went to make a quality check, and he was satisfied, which is more than enough information for me.

I'm always happy to work with H-P because with his over 15 years of experience as a professional stuntman he has loads of information about loads of stuff regarding filmmaking. I know it'll take me a life-time to master this field of business. And as the industry is evolving constantly it means that there will never be enough time to learn everything. But again, constant development and opportunities for that is what I seek personally. I wouldn't want to imagine living even a day when there's nothing new to learn. Life is just too multidimensional and complex in order it to ever be static or 'routinized'. I love living. It's better than TV ;)