Flying these days has lost most of its glamour for me - perhaps I've overdone it, perhaps the security measures put a spell on it, perhaps 'cause I'm just going to work. However if your destination is NYC it is still magical to arrive. Lots of movies I like have the city as backdrop so you are always walking on exciting and slightly holy ground.

Stayed at the Bowery Hotel which for us Dutch folk is a throwback to the good old days of colonial power when NYC was called New Amsterdam and 'boerderij'/bowery is dutch for farm. It freaked me out when the lady checking me in spoke dutch to me, as if it was a set-up and I was going to be asked to look after the chickens next.

But nothing exciting like that happened and I landed safely in my room.  Ready to screen my film I tell myself.

George crossing the townsquare in Castel del Monte

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We've  locked the film although it is just for the 'test screening'.  What the hell is a 'test screening' exactly? No idea. I didn't do one for CONTROL but it is very common in the States so there we go.

For this screening we're putting proper sound onto the picture which is also being graded albeit on HD, not film (yet).  It is exciting to hear the sound coming along so well.  As usual, it is a bit too much so we cut out a lot of birds and distant dogs barking.  But the sounds of footsteps on stone and the guns firing become very real.

My good friend Herbert Gronemeyer is doing the score for the film and we have 3 nearly finished pieces for the movie to put into place for the screening. They sound exactly right to me and give the film a real emotional lift in important places.

Security on the Campo Imperatore during filming

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Whoever said that Sweden can be cold in the winter wasn't wrong.  We filmed the beginning of the film at the very end of our shooting schedule: Late January in the middle of Sweden, Ostersund.

We filmed on a frozen lake in -20° celsius so that was tough on everyone, especially on the actors.  Other than the cold it was just a splendid time - wonderful light, amazing white landscapes and short days filming.

George had been able to grow a beard in the time between the end of the Italy shoot and this Swedish part, so there are two very different looks to him in the movie.

We shot a ferry crossing while we were standing with equipment and 5 vans ON the ice -that is how thick and hard the ice is. That is, by the way, not the picture shown, as that is the film camera and the snowmobiles, which is how we shot most of the Sweden section.  It is fun driving these, but beware if you sit on the back of my snowmobile and decide to go backwards.  You might find out that Sweden is very pretty horizontally.

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