For the last ten days we shot only seven days and the rest were day offs.
After the first half of the production, some people left and another came. Stoyan Radev, Veselin Zografov our sound man and Vasil Goranov the documentary guy left the set. Stoyan was very much balancing with his presence throughout the entire creative process, he was the oldest, most experienced and respected person on set, so he brought with him a real professional, disciplined work ethic. When he left and probably because most scenes were covered we somehow started to lose the motivation and the energy day after day. The crew and cast started to feel irritated and nervous, the passion and patience started to evaporate gradually, but we still managed to maintain the rhythm and the work which gave us a successful production.
Toni changed Veselin and he started to record the sound instead him and Imthias Kadeer(Indy) an Indian friend of mine came from Dubai to take pictures for the promotional materials. He is a Canon ambassador and he visited us for four days in order to help us getting nice images for the promotion. Also Marin and Jordan came for three days to shoot the aerial footage and to cover some of the scenes with their drone. We chose to hire professional aerial photographers because first of all we wanted to use a proper quadcopter and they had a hexacopter with a pilot and camera operator and because I wanted the aerial footage to be really well done and with a motivation behind every shot.
We had another unexpected visitor who was Val Todorov. He is an independent filmmaker and he released in 2014 his debut feature film BULGARIAN ERES . Val Todorov, Vasil Goranov and our team are probably the real independent micro budget filmmakers in Bulgaria who managed to create a really solid body of work with very little budgets or even no budgets. At the moment of writing this book Val is finishing with the post production of his new feature film TRANSFIGURATION or TATI I LOVE YOU which is another real example how for 15 000 euro very talented and obsessed filmmaker can pull off a fantastic independent feature film with really high creative and production value.
Suddenly I got another problem but this time a healthy one, one of my teeth got inflamed and extremely painful. I had to go to a dentist in Rudozem in order to get it less painful. However I started to drink pain killers because it was difficult for me to get focused and in condition for the shootings. Thank god we had to cover less and less difficult scenes from an emotion perspective, however we had some tricky scenes waiting ahead of us. With the accumulated pressure and all of the stress, we decided to take a rest and we took two day offs between the night shots and the next days.
During those two days we hiked around the mountain but we so much were involved and focused on the film that we were carrying the camera with us non stop. That's how we managed to shoot some of the best and most beautiful scenes in the film. Like the scene with the horses from the dream sequence. We met those wild horses completely randomly and I felt that it would be so in tune with the entire story and its theme to have them in the film. So Gergana went to walk beside the horses and they allowed her to reach very close to the herd so We were shooting her just how she was walking and I immediately felt that this would be in the film for sure.
When you are making a micro budget film it is extremely important to stay open and vulnerable for any kind of chances, gifts and signs from the universe around you. It is insane to write such a scene for a micro budget film, just the idea to bring twenty wild horses on some high mountain meadow sounds ridiculously expensive and difficult from the producer's point of view.
In the last days of shooting I was more and more an observer and less a director, probably because of the pain or just because of the fact that we had done most of our work I felt an urge to let the things happen by themselves. On top of everything the cast and crew were very much knowing what we were doing and what were the reason and the goal from every shot or a scene which we made. I very rarely brought the screenplay with myself, which in reverse was almost non stop with me during the first part of the production.
I had one very hard scene. This was the most difficult scene for me. A scene where Yordanka's character Lily had to catch a fish, to kill it and at the end of the scene she was boning it. Having in mind that I am a vegan since nine years and prior that I was a vegetarian for another seven years, it was a heartbreaking experience. I wasn't feeling comfortable not only from the act of killing but from the fact that it was done for our film. So I was involved in this unnecessary act of violence, I somehow justified it with the facts that this fish would be eaten for dinner but still I was not feeling comfortable and at ease with this scene. At that same day I promised to myself that I would do anything possible to become the film which we wanted to be, the film which purpose is to celebrate the liberty and the awareness, the joy, the life, the present moment, the health and wellbeing of us humans and the planet.
I knew from the very beginning, that if I want to show to the people how distant we are from that state of wellbeing and of pure happiness, which NATURE represent, I can achieve it only by using the contrast between our twisted and messed up minds, with our desires, thoughts, actions and reactions which are so far away from the nature and its natural flow and the NATURE itself. This scene and the fish killing, gave me so much motivation and reason to walk the entire journey despite all of the positives and negatives. I knew that I owed this being and to this life to continue the journey and to finish it with the same intention and vision with which we started.
With this scene my intention was to intercut the two ways of getting our food the first was hunting the second by growing food. We decided to film the killing of the fish which was so powerful and real, that I felt it like manipulating reality, and somehow it wasn't acted, it was a real act of violence filmed, more like a documentary. Probably that's why it felt so powerful and emotional.
In the last days we had lots of scenes between Gergana Pletnyova and Kristian Milatinov. They had a really tough time together, they lacked chemistry which suited our story but still was difficult for them to act together. I remember the scene in the glasshouse where Gergana lost her temper and started to shout at us that she can't continue to act in this scene if I don't get involved and give the right directions for Kristian. What happened was that she really was agonizing and she thought that he didn't react properly to her state. In fact when I was watching the scene everything was absolutely authentic, her pain, his insecurity and overall their messed up relationship. However, Gergana couldn't keep the pain for so long and she wanted straight directions, I then changed the scene and its dynamic with more distant interaction between them, as if they are still in love, but the previous takes where Kristian was lost in the moment and she was suffering with her entire being left in me the impression that the actors extremely subjectively look at the situation and the scene. Which leads me to the conclusion that only the director has the right to shout CUT we have it, because as far as the film is concerned, only he must be aware of the true nature, dynamic, and authenticity of certain performance, scene, sequence or the entire film.
They had two sex scenes together which in reverse went very easy and without any drama, both of them act professionally and were very honest and open during the shooting process. It was even quite funny and easy going during their scenes. However when we went to shoot the scenes in which they were at in the waterfall, it appeared to be one of the most physically demanding scenes. The water in this small mountain creek was so cold that after few minutes their bodies started to shake by themselves and for them to say their lines correctly was almost impossible. On top of that the sound from the waterfall was destroying our audio recording, we had to do ADR later on for this scene for sure. This was the fist scene for which I wanted to use an aerial photography so our arial crew started to shoot their scenes from this moment on. It was quite difficult action scene in which Kristian had to jump from a cliff into the river. It was lots of fun and it felt like a big budget film, because of all the preparation and rehearsals before the shooting. We again were running against the clock because we wanted to shoot as much as possible aerial shots for those two days for which we were able to hire Marin and Jordan. Luckily Marin was a very experienced photographer and Jordan was an excellent pilot so they managed to cover almost all of the shots which we wanted to have it from bird eye perspective. Working with them was very easy, because Marin really quickly was getting what I wanted from the shots.
Their last shot was actually the last shot in the film. Mind that it is a huge spoiler of how ends the film. We had to shoot our last scene of how Gergana Pletnyova enters naked into the villa's swimming pool. The scene was happening early in the morning and we decided that she will be alone in the swimming pool and Marin, Jordan and me would hide in the villa. Despite being 17th of August the water in the pool was freezing cold. Gergana wasn't feel in condition that morning but we didn't had another chance to film it so we had to do it or we would have missed one of the most important scene from the entire film. We had to do two very long takes around seven minutes each, of how Gergana was approaching into the middle of the swimming pool and then how she was leaning backwards laying on her back. The first take did well but I thought that the water ripples were very big, because the drone was very close to her and swimming pool before to lift up in the sky, we went for second take. Gergana was already freezing but she didn't say anything against my decision. When we were getting the second take done I saw how Gergana was getting up from the water but she looked very dizzy and somehow without energy. Over sudden she collapsed in the pool and under the water. I managed to run and jump inside the pool, I lifted her up, but she was unconscious for couple of seconds. Her head was really cold and her blood pressure very low, that's why she fainted. Yavor appeared very quickly hearing me screaming for blankets and that she was fainting.
We carried her out of the swimming pool and covered her with few winter blankets. Thus was how we wrapped our last scene in the movie.
During the second part of the production we had another guests, they were some of the crew's girlfriends. Yavor and I allowed them to join because we wanted everybody to feel at home and to be as friendly as possible and we wanted the atmosphere to stay really positive and to keep the feeling as if we were like in a kind of a vacation. Saying that we did a really unprofessional thing because when people out of the creative process come on set everything changes. Just the presents of other people makes the professionals involved in the making of the film less focused, disciplined and the organization starts to lack its structure and intensity. We felt that some of the people needed fresh air and somehow we felt obliged to give them a bit of slick in order for them to feel better. However, I wouldn't do it again just because at the end of the day all of us were there with one and only goal to make a great movie despite all of the limitations and obstacles.