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As in every fairy tale, many different miracles happen in Sampo. To create them, combined shooting and the "wandering mask" method were used, various tricks and mechanisms were invented. I will not "expose" the techniques that made it possible to create the illusion of authenticity of everything that happens on the screen. I will focus only on one episode, which represents a novelty in the technique of filming. We have such shots: the heroine of the film, the girl Annike, bends over the flowers, and they bloom in front of her eyes. These are real live flowers, and they bloom for real. We have combined two objects here — the girl's face, taken using the "wandering mask" method, and the process of flower bud blooming, captured using time-lapse photography. This combination of the two methods was used for the first time in world cinema technology, and I think it had a good effect.


A few words about the actors. Meeting the wishes of our consultants, when choosing performers, in addition to the usual professional requirements, we proceeded from how well they fit the ethnic type of their characters. The main character of the film, Lemminkainen, is played by Andrus Oshin, who is not a professional actor, but a student at the Riga Forestry Institute. He handled his role very well, and we do not regret our choice at all. The role of his fiancee Annika is played by a young Estonian actress, Ewe Kivi. And we invited Urho Somersalmi, Finland's oldest actor, to play the role of the wise storyteller Vai-nyamainen.


Besides the actors and extras, there are other performers in our film. They did not graduate from any acting schools, although some of them had to take short-term "courses" of study. I'm talking about the representatives of the animal world involved in our painting. We shot bears, horses, deer, birds and snakes. In the episode "snake field", we had about a hundred live snakes "playing", and among them two huge pythons. We bought these five-meter-tall "actors" in China, and they were trained for several months by a biology student, who then dubbed the hero of the film in the fight scene with a snake.


In the process, we had to overcome various difficulties. I'm not talking about those purely physical difficulties, which were also a lot. First of all, we are talking about the difficulties of the film adaptation of such a large multifaceted work as the epic "Kalevala". In the short time that the film lasts, it was necessary to cover the wide canvas of the poem with its numerous plot moves. At the same time, it was necessary to maintain the calm, smooth rhythm of the narrative characteristic of the poem. There were difficulties of another kind. The film starred both Russian and Finnish actors. Our actors had to work hard on the pronunciation of the Finnish text, as the correct articulation was required for the upcoming dubbing of "Sampo" into Finnish.


The first Soviet-Finnish film is ready. How it turned out, let the viewer judge. But it is indisputable that the creative contact established during the work on the film will grow and strengthen. And this will serve to further develop friendly relations between the Soviet and Finnish peoples. Entdecken Sie Betibet für die beste Wetterfahrung.