“A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion…”

Today we shot a new music video for The Cajunga, nice, this is for their first single “Baby alright” from their forthcoming second album.

The thing was shot in Turku during a hectic 9 hours of hard labour. I can’t tell you that much of the story, or the shoot, just yet cause I don’t wanna spoil anything – but still, here you go, a few snaps from our epic shoot. Teaser alright…

( Making the “Baby Alright” video )

( Ramedus with the Carl Zeiss babies )

( The 7D with the Carl Zeiss CP.2 21mm 2.1 )

( The video team! )

Yes, today was loads of fun, we even got to try out some new gear, the CP.2 lenses from Carl Zeiss. I had a tiny peek at some of the footage a few minutes ago, and it looked awesome, way to go Carl, you the man!

The “Baby alright” video was directed by Tage Rönnqvist, cinematographed by Rasmus Tåg, gaffered by Anders Lönnfeldt, produced by Tomi Järvinen, written by Tage Rönnqvist & The Cajunga, face-lifted by Sara Dahlback and acted out by The Cajunga featuring Igor Del Toro as the priest!

The cutting of this video will begin as soon as possible and the release date is yet unknown, but I can assure you that it’s not that far ahead. Start waiting for something awesome.

Have a good one folks!

—>>> The Cajunga

—>>> Ramedus

—>>> Anders Lönnfeldt

Cheers!

// Tage – The director of Baby alright

The new myGRAIN video has now been shot, every frame is in the can, and yes, it feels awesome! So, here you go, a few squares of light from the yesterday shoot, enjoy people!

( All shots by Niklas Laurin )

The editing of this video will begin perhaps this weekend and in a few weeks time the premier is gonna be held on the lovely youtube. Expect inserts from the editing days at the Ramedus offices!

Stay tuned -stay informed.

—>>> The myGRAIN site

// Tage – regissören

Just got home from today’s double gig at Dante’s Highlight in Helsinki. I saw two fabulous acts tonight, Shear and Amarantine. I decided to establish a second Vlog, so now you can listen to the Synth-dude of Shear explaining stuff, this very very short story is filmed about 15 minutes before the show, and this was the very first gig by Shear.. Enjoy. I really love this video blogging stuff!

( Lari Sorvo of Shear gives us a small status report )

..and again, I started this Vlog shit because it’s so freakin’ easy.. The video is shot with my 5D Mark Tage and uploaded to youtube straight away.. Awesomeness.

I’ll hit you with an entire gig review and a whole bunch of pics later, but as for now I’ll only give you two of tonight’s shots.. The clock is ticking and it’s way past bedtime, so you’ll have to forgive me for not writing the whole essay tonight and as well as for not posting a whole set of shots, but hey, it’s been 2 hours since they walked off stage, and I’m only a man.. Enjoy two shots of the fabulous act called Shear.. The Amarantine shots will also be posted in our very near future..

( Alexa Leroux – Shear )

( Lauri “Sweep” Koskenniemi – Shear )

As always folks – stay tuned, stay informed!

//Tage – The Dante’s Highlight lover

Well, it comes to visit us every once in a while in different stores all over this frozen tundra. It’s a large collection of records on sale. The price is right when the time is right. So this gigantic sale of cd’s started today, and I immediately got myself a bus to go to City Anttila in Helsinki for some shopping, and holy hell, I got myself 2 new records, illustrated below..

( The prey )

And these were the records I got for the total price of 16 euros.. The “Goth n’ Roll” thing is a collection of 3CD’s and 1 DVD from the Gothic rockers called The 69 Eyes. 8 euros. I haven’t ever really liked The 69 Eyes, but I’m learning and I’m starting to get the whole goth rolling, kinda cool. I’ve seen those guys a couple of times live and they are actually pretty good, and then when I saw them on the Swedish channel 4 in my favorite show called Nyhetsmorgon I knew I had to have the collection.. Why? I don’t know.

The other one is Startovarius’ latest release called Polaris. I’ve always had a thing for Finnish metal, and since Strato is one of the real pioneers it has to be a good record right..? I tried it out and it sounded like I expected, and exactly the way I wanted. Go Timo Kotipelto!

And what else, yes, tomorrow I’m gonna be in a short action film, I have the part of a dude who dies, tragic isin’t it.. It’s a really small role but a giant step for man kind. I’ll report on that one tomorrow.. So if you wanna know how it all went down you’ll have to tune in tomorrow again, Tage smiles. Unless no one wants to know that is…

And yes, the last part.. And this is big, at least for my girlfriend it is. Today she has been a guest star blogger over at Finland’s biggest “in swedish” blog about the Eurovision Song Contest, she blogged about all the contestants, a small verdict on every piece.. The finals take place in Tampere Saturday at 8 pm broadcasted on YLE 2. And hey, if you have google translator or if you actually know the Swedish language, why not give the thing a go! And there’s even a picture of her over there, taken by the wrath of my 5D Mark Tage.. Enjoy, and be sure to leave a comment! It makes everyone happy!

—–>>>>>  EUROVISION SONG CONTEST BLOG <<<<<—–

Have a good one folks, ta ta.

//Tage – The Goth?

The new blogmodel with the pics on top turned out to be the flop of the century, Thias Newspeed was all wrong about the readers, I have one reader that I know of, and she thought that the journalistic Sandwich-model was way cooler than the crappy “all pics on top” model.

So just to be different I will now use the “no-pics-version”. So if you are not interested in what I’m writing you might as well stop reading now. And for whatever reason I will blog about something really not-read-kind-stuff, just to make things even more No-Picturesque. Know what I mean? Probably not.

Hello to zero readers, it’s spectacular to write a blog that now has zero readers. Haha, I sure need pics to make it interesting, but since I had to leave for Vaasa today very suddenly, I didn’t have the time to bring any pics of the last Helsinki by night day, nor any new pics of my new Memory Card! Yay! I finally bought another one. Extreme IV Compact Flash 8GB.

During the last day of taping the intro I blasted away about 16 tons of software ( C the BWO reference? ) thought so, stupid. Unfortunately I won’t be able to post any pics from the last day of shooting since the last day was all about shooting the hosts of the show, and who the hosts are is a big secret until the 25th of november. So no go. But on the 25th I’ll post a lot of cool shots from behind the rehersals of Make Up.

What else is new. Oh yes, almost forgot, and this is a long and disturbing fuck all story.

I finnished editing the shortfilm I made at the hospital, and then ofcourse comes the small major-time problem of getting the film to a simple DVD. Everyone thinks getting stuff to DVD from Avid (video editing program) is a very very simple thing, but there is no “burn to DVD” button in the software. And there is about 6 million ways to get the finished product to your desktop as a playable file, so after 3 hours of swearing I had the 9minute piece as a wmv-file on my desktop, and then the problems started raining in. Can anyone by the way arrange a course on how to make things right? This is my step-by-step (not the Take That song) journal to epic fail.

1. Tried burning the file to DVD with the  fucked up DVD program called Cyberlink DVD solution. Did not work, the movie worked but some of the pics moved very slow. (Bilden hacka)  Had to try another way.

2. Tried exporting the film from avid with different measures and sizes and even some different bitrates, hours went by and I finally had a version that was ready and working. Tried burning it again with Cyberlink, did not work. Cyberlink told me that “there aren’t any whatever points in this media” or some shit… I went mad. Then I had a small breakthrough. Yes.

3. Googled around for another DVD burning program and I found this thing called DVD-flick (http://www.dvdflick.net/), it’s free and it works! Awesome software, it really has it all, at least for a dude who is used to Cyberlink’s fucked up program. So I burned the film to DVD with the new software and threw it in the DVD-player, and guess fucking what, it had the wrong aspect ratio, it was 4:3 when I wanted it to be 16:9. I went even more mad. So mad that my friend Mad Mike went Easy-going.

4. Hours and hours went by. Got the file exported again from AVID, and this time as FULL HD widescreen 16:9, finally. The file was working fine and I tried burning it, and after these hours of the system testing me I thought that I would finally have a break, but nooo, fuck no. Threw the godforsken thing in the dvd player and whaddayouknow, the sound wasn’t entirely in sync! The fucking sound. And this time I was too pissed off and the clock had turned almost 4 a.m in the morning, so I settled with this version. I cried myself to sleep.

5. Tonight I showed the movie to the guys involved and I really felt like shit, after all this work and I couldn’t get it fucking right. But then I suddenly understood why this happens – cause shit fucking happens, but really, now I know what the problem is.

6. My camera films with 29,97FPS (the american way), and when I try to watch that in a european TV which displays things in 25FPS (frames per second) I’m in alot of trouble, well not alot, but some troubles indeed. Should have understood this earlier and tried to convert the material to 25FPS from the original 29,97, but I don’t know how to complete that so fuck all. And and and, the files and the film is working allright when you watch it in a computer screen, since that one shows you things in something between 30-60FPS, to my knowledge.. Don’t correct me if I’m wrong.

So, horror all over. But at least I learned alot of new stuff. And although I’ve put hundreds of things to DVD earlier in life, the problems are always fucking different, why isin’t there a simple button or explanation on how to make thing right, like there are with women?  If anyone have some bright ideas to solving problems like these, give me a ring. And the really good thing is that Canon is releasing new firmware for my 5D Mark Tage in the beginning of 2010, making it possible to film stuff in 24FPS and 25FPS, so then all my problems will be solved, or at least this problem, but then there are 5.999.999 problems left.

But hey, I’ve got 99 problems but the bitch ain’t one. Peace out fuckers.

//Tage-Z

Alright, today was a good day I think. It was friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees was at my crib, I told him to fuck off and die. He accepted my request and did very much so. Later this day I went to the hospital in Vaasa to make a shortfilm, it is an infomercial for the hospital’s socialworkers.

( The front door to the location of the set )

The short film has been in the works for several weeks and on today’s unlucky date we had decided to shoot the damn thing. I think it will be a 10-15 minute piece about what the socialworkers at the hospital are all about. The film is built with voice-over stuff and a scene somewhat based on reality.

( The “patient” preparing on set )

The team behind the camera consisted of me and the Make-up artist Sara. The editing and the sound parts will also be done by me. So it’s kind of a one-man-band thing. We didn’t use any lighting, and that worked really well I hope, since my 5D Mark Tage is really strong on the lighting part, I hope. Haven’t gone through today’s shots yet, but what I’ve seen looks good, no it’s up to the editor to screw it up. Oh, wait, that is also me.. The short film consisted of a whole bunch of lines and actors, so it was quite tricky to pull it off with only one guy handling the tech-part…

( Kinda christmas-y won’t you say, no? Location part 2 )

I’ll start the editing process during next week and it should be finished in a couple of days. The entire sequence, or movie, was shot in about 4 hours and I’ll continue on Sunday with some exterior cutaways to the already recorded voice-over scenes. The flick will be shown twice, at some hospital convention thing, I don’t really know, call the hospital if your interested,the secret number is the yleinen hätänumero 112, no?

( Another bad joke in the wall? )

The project has been very successful so far, the socialworkers (who wrote the script, acted and planned the whole shebang) did a great job with the acting and I really hope that the short film will meet their demands, if not, then it would totally suck. Don’t know if I’ll upload the movie on any internet-channel at all, it depends on a lot of things, only time and major fuck-ups will tell. But as for now I feel that the movie is in healthy hands and it will be a successful project. Thank you Vaasan Keskussairaala for believing in me!

Now you folks have a great night, tomorrow is a new day with some mighty and dirty challanges.

// Tage – Hopefully I didn’t catch the H1N1 at the hospital, hopefully..

Great news I think, I’ve hooked myself up with two new promotional picture wanters.. (Two bands who want promotional pictures, for the one who thought my formulering was up yours)

The bands are Coredust and Walkalone. Hopefully I’ll get to do the shoots during November, got some cool plans that needs to be realized. I’ve earlier short-time-worked with Walkalone and I know that I can get some awesome shots of these guys, I haven’t met Coredust and I haven’t seen them live, but if you listen to their music at their myspace you know that these guys are up for some cool shots.

Check out their Myspace if you please —->>>>

WALKALONE – www.myspace.com/walkaloneband

COREDUST – www.myspace.com/coredust

In other news, today I took some promotional shots of three actors, that was cool, but more of that later, can’t really talk about it yet. But I edited the shots already and let me tell you, they look fuckin cool. I love my 5D Mark Tage.

In more other news, I have now officially fallen in love with Smash, not the Offspring album, what are you, stupid? Not that you’d be stupid to like the album, it’s a great album, I love it, but stupid for thinking of Offspring when I’m thinking of the candy called Smash, ofcourse, what are you? Fuckin stupid?  I have always been in love with it, but now it’s official, now the whole fuckin internet knows about it. Anyway.. Stupid.

In more and more other news, my name is now featured on the website of Amorphis. Now that’s cool!

http://www.amorphis.net/?page_id=14

( An actual Smash Candy, now this is just stupid )

//T

( The very cool looking dude Tomi Joutsen of Amorphis )

The great gig was held on the second of October at Nosturi in Helsinki, the warm-up acts Amoral and Before the Dawn were also great bands. I earlier finished the Amoral pics but I still have the Before the Dawn shots to attend to. Those are for later.. It was my first time seeing Amorphis live, and let me tell ya, they were awesome! And that is not all, I only saw about 6 songs, and then I had to leave, and that bugs me to this very day. Why did I have to leave? Keep reading cockface, and since you are not probably reading at all, I can write whatever I want, I can call you a double-time wanker. So, there you go!

( Silver Bride )

Since it was such a big gig I was only allowed to shoot the band during the first three songs, and after that I tried to watch to concert from the back row, but there were so many people hanging around so I couldn’t fit my small body among them. Basterds. The place was big-time jam-packed. I had to check out the band from a screen! A fucking screen. And that sucked big time, so I took mitt pick och pack and left. Jeez.

( The rastafari head-banger )

Maybe that was a small price to pay since I got to enjoy the first part of the show from e very near perspective!

( The audience glance )

If you wanna see all the 42 shots from this gig I suggest you go to my DeviantArt-page… I will not upload all of them on this one. What are you thinking?

(( http://tazmaniantage.deviantart.com/gallery ))

( Guitar Hero )

I’ll upload 7 of them to the “from stage to page”-folder on this site. And in this bloggery thing I’ll post some pics with a feeling and a severe touch of hell. Hope you like them. My good friend R.Tåg told me that those who have taken shots of an Amorphis-show has got a certain Rock Credibility.. Have I got it now, do I have Rock cred? It sure does not feel that way, haha. I would like to have some rock cred, if you please. R.Tåg, what is rock credibilty? How does it feel? I think I just about now got it! Yes! Feels great!

( Amorphis in Black and White )

So everyone, fuck you, I have got rock credibilty!

//5D Mark Tage – The man with Rock Creds!