Internship at Nukufilm, Niine 11, 10414 Tallinn, Estonia 

Myself working at Nukufilm 

It’s mid-March, and two weeks passed since I started here at Nukufilm. Finished my first props already, which got approved and so I am waiting for my next task while sipping coffee and listening to the head of the studio complaining about the weather, as it turned out, the winter returned. As it was for me the missed winter wonderland, for everyone else it was pure misery after having the cold-bloody and long period of darkness and depression due to the lack of sunlight. Different from ours, the Estonian winter means from November till the end of February mostly 5 hours of daylight, freezingly cold up to -15, and melancholic faces everywhere. And just as it happens to be, I arrived in Estonia, when the first glimpse of sunlight was hitting the surface of the tired faces, now I know why everyone smiled on the day of my arrival. 

Lasnamäe district after a snowy day in March 

As I started out being an assistant prop maker in two ongoing projects, I soon got to know the third project, which will occupy most of my time; The stylized and one-to-one adaption of an illustrated children’s book by Jonas Taul called “A Serious Thought”. It is about a young boy having his first existential crisis and I surely felt being set into a similar situation when I started working on the props of this project. I assume it was the strategy of the studio to create the equivalent of method acting into the prop making. 

Different Props for the Short Film “A Serious Thought” by Jonas Taul 

As I first glanced at the simplified style of the sketches of the objects, I marked it as an easy task, but what followed was my story of an ordeal for gaining pure perfectionism. To build a symmetrical object consisting of a blank-white-textureless surface; Stop motion is known for having textures; was a pain in the ass. To make the endless felt hours of sanding the surface bearable, I ended up listening to podcasts about philosophy. There is a certain humor in it, listening to talks of Arendt, Derrida, Latour, etc. while trying to get the perfectionism of CGI in Stop-Motion. It surely made the repetitiveness meditative.  

A collection of finished Props 

I couldn’t think of giving up and there was nothing more satisfying than when the director finally gave the thump up. In general, the working environment at Nukufilm was gentle and it offered me not the feeling of having dense pressure to reach a certain standard, but to be able to use the working space to learn and make mistakes. And in this, I was able to shine and get more secure in my field of work.  Nevertheless, I started to miss a little bit the multitudinousness of also working on the other projects. When I did again make a silly five-second mistake which forced me again into days of sanding, I just wished to have a break from the black and white.  

Linnahall in Tallinn, a reminiscence of the soviet time 

Now the late period of coldness started to fade away and even though I was an admirer of the frozen and in my opinion poetic landscape, I was looking forward to the week of blossoming, where spring would start. Nature started to be a good relief towards the more moderate and repetitive activity in the studio, they were complementing each other perfectly.  

Wide Landscape behind the Kopli Area 

That’s why I used my weekends to do trips. As soon as I got to the countryside, I sometimes felt like being in nowhere just surrounded by trees and a wide landscape, mountainless and absent from any human being. As I was standing beside the abandoned-looking bench and the sign marking it as a bus stop, I was not sure, if the non-English-speaking bus driver will pick me up. Those situations in solitude made clear how dependent I am on the device I have in my pocket. Google Maps got to be my best friend during my time here. I was always able to return to Tallinn.  

One of the few swamp pathways, you can find in Estonia 

It is the beginning of May and within one week the environment underwent a substantial change of its appearance. Now the forgotten soviet ruins started to be ensnared by beautiful flowers and the landscape started offering a colour range that is unimaginably beautiful to the human eye. While the abandoned places were claimed by nature, visitors started to take the central part of the urban area, and Tallinn got crowded by now.  

Ruins of the Aegna Island 

And in Nukufilm, the arrival of spring meant that the row of ongoing celebrations would start by now, every week flowers were brought into the studio, which meant that someone’s birthday was celebrated. From the outside, it was nice to participate in it, but since my Estonian hasn’t gotten better by now, it was that time where I felt mostly isolated. So mostly it ended in thanking for the finger food and going back to work. 

Restoring Fruit and Veggies for the film “Zoobox” 

The tasks became more varied by now, I was more involved in all three projects again and besides making props, I was now also helping on the set by either restoring objects or making minor adjustments. My curiosity also got bigger, and I started to look around at what everyone else was doing, asking questions and noting down things. And while my daily notebook got filled with scribbles of certain observations, the days also got longer and the nights shorter.  

Set design of the short film “Where do the grown-ups come from?” 

The time of the never-ending sunshine started until it ended up in the longest day of the year, celebrated here as the “Jaanipäev”, the Estonian Midsomer. And as the big fire was burning, I was already in the middle of my last task, making an animation test for the water scenes in the movie “A Serious Thought”. 

Jaanipäev celebration in the town Viljandi 

As it happens, they started to trust me with the task of finding a solution for the stylized water animation. As if I was a scientist, I experimented around on my own for a month with different kinds of techniques for imitating a flowing surface. It was truly exciting and inspiring also for me to discover new solutions. Yet the repetitiveness also didn’t leave me alone here, but to be honest with everyone, I guess that’s part of working in the professional field and I got a lot out of it, repeating after repeating the same thing made me truly learn it and improve my skills.  

Experimenting around animating water for “ A Serious Thought” 

The studio is starting to get quiet, a few people are still here, and the other ones already left for the tranquillity. I am one of the last ones, cleaning up my space.

Like always the ending feels odd, there is just a silent breath of wind when you are closing the door, and a Head Aega; Good Bye; follows. 

Last Day at Work