Making Movies: Fly Fishing Short Film Now Online!

Hi!

Since we’re going away now for some ten days fishing in the norwegian tundra, we decided to give you a special treat: A very exclusive fly fishing short movie titled Slow Walking Water.

Håvard Stubø from JFF goes for the big trout of Ransarån in swedish lapland. The movie tries to capture the mood and soundscape of the journey.

This was my first attempt to shoot a short film, and it was basically just a field test for the equipment (Canon 550d/T2i, Beyerdynamic MC 930 pair, JuicedLink, Edirol). I had to be quite heavy with the directing since Håvard was talking all the time and he is supposed to be the only one there in the film…

The soundtrack was done in Copenhagen with a great norwegian guitar player, Magnus Wiik. He first came up with the theme in solo and I built the rest of the sounds and instruments later on top of it.

So there you have it. Fly fishing short movie. No real plot for this time, only mood from the beautiful river.

Any comments and feedback is welcome.

Tapani Toivanen
Jazz & Fly Fishing

Fishing and Filming in Ransarån

Cheerio,

Here’s a quick photoblog from the Ransarån trip, which happened already two weeks ago. We made the trip with Håvard, Terje and myself aiming to catch some beautiful trout and of course, the arctic char.

Besides fishing, it was a very good opportunity to try out the capabilities of the new video gear that we had gotten. I attempted to shoot a short fishing movie with Håvard as the protagonist. It was a bit hard to make it look like he was the only one there, since he’s always talking… But I think I got a few good cinematic seconds here and there. Stay tuned, it will be posted here soon!

As a learning opportunity, the sight fishing there was excellent. We got one full night of incredible sight fishing. I didn’t catch anything, but had something like 15 opportunities on big cruising fish on around 1,5 to 2,5 kg range. Both trout and the arctic char. Håvard got the nice 1,45 kg arctic char in the end. Just looking at those beautiful fish is the best thing!

Here’s the photos from both the stills that we took, and the captures from the upcoming short film:

Spring in the Upper Itchen

May 30th: Finally back at the Upper Itchen!
As you can see from the video, the ice and snow has just melted, and the colours of the landscape are still very dull. The ground around the river is still frozen, so the water isn´t too warm…
But sure enough, once the wind dies down, the feathermidges start hatching and the trout starts rising. I caught several good fish on this first real dry fly day of the season.

Two days later, I was joined by my cousin Dagfinn, and Erlend Welde from the excellent Norwegian blog www.utras.net. The weather was even colder than the first day, and the action was much slower. We still managed to force a decent number of fish to take our buzzers and hatching midges, but the average size of the fish was a little bit smaller than the first day.
Great fun!

Some pictures:

Next stop: Ransarån!

Video Gear Madness

The following e-mails were exchanged between Joona and me today:

—————————————————————————-
Subject: Videogear!
Sent: Tue, 20 April, 2010 17:17:52
From: Håvard Stubø
To: Joona Toivanen, Tapani Toivanen, Fredrik Hamrå

I have now ordered the following gear:
- Portable travel harddisk – La Cie rugged 500 GB (Petzi style)
- Canon Wideangle lens (screws on to the front of the camera)
- Monster battery for the camera
- Canon DM-100 external microphone with “dead cat” windscreen (supposed to be really good)
- Headphones
- 4 16 GB SDHC memorycards
- Ortlieb waterproof camera bag (all this gear (hopefully) fits in it)
- Extra RAM for the iMac
- 2 big external harddisks for the iMac
- New OS for the iMac with the latest version of iMovie

I already have this:
- Canon HF S10 Videocamera
- A lightweight stand for the camera
- Pro Zigma polarizing filter (adjustable)

I am now officially broke!

We´re getting there, guys!

Håvard

—————————————————————————-
Subject: Re: Videogear!
Sent: Tue, 20 April, 2010 18:27:44
From: Joona Toivanen
To: Håvard Stubø, Tapani Toivanen, Fredrik Hamrå

Man, this is not enough. You can hardly do anything with this.

Joona
—————————————————————————-

God damn it! I really thought I had everything covered, and now it turns out I have to order lots more expensive stuff.
And I´m broke, too…

In Norwegian, we would call Joona a “jævla gledesdreper”.
I don´t know what it is in English. Try google translator for chrissakes.

Stay away from me, Lucifer!

Håvard vs the Volcano

Tomorrow, I was supposed to go on tour in Russia and the Ukraine with my own band, the Håvard Stubø Quartet, but now it seems like it´s all gonna be canceled. God damn it.

The reason is of course the volcano Eyjafjallajökull on Iceland, which is currently spewing out an enormous cloud of ashes all over northern Europe, grounding all air traffic in Norway, Denmark, the UK, western Russia, etc.

Tapani was supposed to come, too, he´s sitting in for the band´s regular bass player, Torbjörn Zetterberg. We were really looking forward to the trip – I´ve never been to Russia or the Ukraine before, and was very excited about going there.

There might still be some hope of making the tour, or at least making the Ukraine part of it happen. Let´s see. Seems like it will take a major shift in the weather or a pause in the eruption to make flying possible…

Well, here´s some video from the bloody volcano:

And these local guys are taking it with a (slightly uncomfortable) smile:

Time Lapse

Hi!

Not exactly Jazz or Fly Fishing, but I think anyone into either of these can appreciate these beautiful shots from Yosemite by Sean Stiegermeier.

Time Lapse Round One from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

Strange Start of the Fishing Season on Good Friday

Like Joona, Fredrik and Håvard, I too have been complaining here many times about how the winter is too long, ice is too thick and how I have my fly fishing gear back in Finland etc… About stuff that prevents us from going fishing.

Well, yesterday on Good Friday I got a call from a friend of mine – a great bass player called Joel. He asked if I would like to go fishing with him. I knew that we were talking about fishing with spinning rods but I still couldn’t resist the offer. It had been too long time since the last time I was fishing.

As we met at the gas station to buy some groceries, it turned out that he only had one fishing rod – and even worse – only one spoon with him. We would have to manage with that.

I had a feeling this would not be an ordinary kind of fishing trip.

Joel, my guide for this trip

When we biked to the place, it turned out that my guide’s secret spot was just next to a powerplant in an abandoned shipyard. I got the shivers as we moved further. This looks like the place Håvard’s monster cod must live in – I remember thinking at that time…

Strange place for cod fishing

I was a bit sceptical at this point

When we arrived, the sea looked so beautiful. I almost forgot that just behind my back was a huge wind turbine flapping it’s wings. Joel took the first cast with his primitive gear. Sometimes fly fishing can get a bit serious I though to my self. It was nice to relax, I had no pressure of catching fish at least. It would be impossible to catch with this gear and only one spoon…

But then it happened! Joel shouted: “I have it!” And there it was. The cod! The big torsk was bending his rod to the limit as he was fighting it. And in the next moment it was gone. Next cast and another torsk was on! This time he got it up after the fight. And the next cast was mine. And there it was again – my turn to fight the torsk! We were having fun without fly fishing – I couldn’t believe it. And with only one lucky spoon!

Here is a short and shaky video clip from my cell phone:

Buying a Jazzcam

As you can see by clicking the “jazzcam” tab above, the quality of the band´s own behind-the-scenes videos leaves something to be desired…

Well, that´s about to change. The last few days, I´ve spent most of the nights online, trying to find a camcorder which suits my budget and ambitions – and what a jungle it is out there!

There seems to be thousands of more or less similar camera models on the market, and all the manufacturers are of course claiming to have the best mumbo-jumbo technology that makes all other cameras obsolete. Searching for camera test videos on youtube or vimeo doesn´t help much either – these videos all feature some geek packing up the camera from the box and then filming some totally useless crap in his backyard. Not helpful.

This is how I look now, after spending way too much time trying to figure out which camera to buy:

To make matters even worse, all the technical camera stuff is totally jibberish to me. It´s all about strange letter combinations and lots of random numbers. And then there´s all the extra stuff you need – lots of weird, shockingly expensive little gizmos – not to mention a brand new computer to deal with the ridiculuos amounts of data that the camcorder spews out. I´m slowly but surely realizing that I´m entering a whole new world of pain.

The good news is that when I´ve worked my way through this personal hell, there will be brand new jazzcam video clips of the band playing and fly fishing popping up like mayflies from the Upper Itchen. Joona has recently invested in a new sports camera which shoots in HD, and Fred has his trusty Nikon D90, so if we can just figure out how to upload videos to youtube, we´re pretty much good to go…

The band´s own jazzcam video clips will of course always be total amateur stuff shown only on this blog, but I´m a strong believer in learning-by-doing, so if you bear with us for a while, some half-decent stuff might appear eventually. You never know. Stay tuned!

Documentary about fly fishing/tourism in Belize

If you didn’t yet have the chance to see this amazing documentary of Belize, now is the time to check it out. If not for the important message then for the amazing tropical fishing footage.

Belize is a country in Central America with rapidly growing tourist industry. The film is portraying two fly fishing guides, Abbie Marin and Lincoln Westby as they chase the Tarpon and the Permit in the flats. They are perhaps the ones that have to deal with the impact of rapid development on the nature the most. Here’s how Lincoln expresses his thoughts about the changes around the fishing business:

Beginning of my life, it was all about killing fish.

Then it turned around to this stage where you’re thinking more about saving them.

-Lincoln Westby, Fly fishing guide

Currents of Belize from McJ Digital on Vimeo.

The Heartache Shopping List

The summer tour´s endless drives gave birth to several important pieces of music. One of the most played themes of the tour was this Spanish/Balkan-influenced thing, which was played in a number of different versions. This one seems to be about what groceries we need to buy. I think it was recorded somewhere in Finland, but I´m not sure.

Enjoy!

Heartache Shopping List