Movies You Made: “Ett livsviktigt möte” (“A Life-Important Meeting”)
Long-time GITS follower Désirée Norland wrote the script for a short film:
A film of a short script of mine has finally reached YouTube. As we “talked” (e-mailed) about it earlier I thought you might be interested to see it. The English title is “A vital meeting” and it is about a stressed mother who needs to be at a vital meeting at her work, but first she needs to take her daughter to school, but the girl wants to play.
I hope you like it.
More background from Désirée:
The producer is Sx2 Productions on Åland (part of Finland). I saw an ad where they were looking for a short script to produce and I pitched them one of mine and they asked to read it. Unfortunately the script I sent them would have been too expensive for them to produce, but they liked my style and sent me a story in return, asking me if I wanted to develop it and write a script of it. We agreed on the terms and I wrote them the script: A vital meeting.
The Swedish title is actually more spot on: “A life-important meeting”. In Sweden we often say that something is “life-important”, like your life depending on it, without really reflecting on what we are actually saying.
A funny thing is, I knew this would be filmed in January, but I didn’t think about that when I wrote the script. In my mind the mother was biking in the summer and in high heels. It did work out quite nicely anyway, but I learned a lesson there.
I wanted the bus crashing and the mother’s stress be connected in some way, but she could not possibly cause the actual crash, so when they misses the bus the daughter says that it is Fate, “grandma says these kind of things is Fate”, something the mother dismisses.
The daughter was a fun character to write because in everything she says she is wiser than her mother, as children tend to be as they see things for what they are. She asks if the meeting is more important than her, and then “but mom, dad has the car today”, “but mom, I’m too big for that” (child seat on the bike), “but mom, I’m not allowed to sit here” (sitting on the back of the bike) and finally “but mom, wasn’t you in a hurry to your meeting?”
Director: Simon Jansson
Photo: Simon Holmström
Script: Désirée Nordlund
Music: Stäni Steinbock
The mother: Malin Jingstål
The daughter (Pia): Sara Sjöholm
Images from the production is found here.
The film won first price at ungVERA film festival 2010 for directors under 18. It also won price for best music.
I had no idea I was working with a group of teenagers. They handled everything very professionally. Simon Jansson — the director — was 14. I think he has a grand future ahead.
Congratulations, Désirée.
If you have been involved in the writing of a movie and it’s posted somewhere so I can embed it, please provide key info in contacts for another possible “Movies You Made” series.