Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504940
48 FA L L 2 0 2 3 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y PRODUCTION I once heard these wise words about filmmaking: "If it's hell the first day, it will be hell all the way." I immediately recalled that because this was hell. I have never seen more mud in my life, really. I can't even describe how dirty and muddy this set was. There was so much mud that we couldn't even move our sound cart. I mean the wheels would stop working so we had to drag it like a box every time we wanted to move. And we were moving a lot! The set was as big as two football pitches in length and four pitches in width. Later, the production gave us (and also every other technical department) a 4x4 ATV which we used to move around with our equipment. The first couple weeks of the production were not so bad because the temperature was still below zero and the ground was frozen. But in April, the mud started to melt and we started to sink in, literally. People were losing overshoes, our ATV got stuck, even Hexatron [crane vehicle] got stuck in the mud once. There was mud everywhere. We spent almost an hour everyday just cleaning the equipment after the wrap. That only added to already long working hours. We were basically shooting from dusk till dawn plus travels. I didn't realize it back then, but thinking about it now, it was extremely exhausting, especially for Ondrej who spent most of the production running in the trenches with the camera operator and the grip guys because booming from above was simply not possible due to "Spanish riders" and many other obstacles that were in the way.