Helsinki looks to become a location for movies and commercials
Locations guide presents the best shooting spots for Eurovision media crews
By Merituuli Ahola
To look at it, one would not think that the scene being played out here had anything remotely to do with the Eurovision Song Contest finals that will be arranged in Helsinki some six weeks from now.
Sitting in the middle of an uninhabited lump of rock just south-west of the summer beach island of Pihlajasaari is a grey helicopter, its motor idling. The pilot Timo Heloaho stands nearby in some low scrub that is just about all that passes for vegetation, and waits for the passenger he has brought here just a few minutes ago.
The passenger is currently scampering along the rocks by the shore, with a large digital SLR in his hands.
The passenger with the camera is Ilkka Mukkala. His job is to scout for suitable locations for production crews making movies and advertising spots.
Now he is putting together a portfolio of locations in the Helsinki region, a kind of "where-to-go" guide for the media professionals who will be coming to the capital for Eurovision. Helsinki is expecting to welcome around 1,500 of them from the beginning of May.
In terms of Helsinki's profile in these things, the song contest offers a decent bit of visibility, since the show - with its rehearsals, semifinal, and final - lasts a full week.
And the City of Helsinki is hoping that the international media would find the time and interest to do a little coverage of the venue itself, in between their reports of what goes on backstage or in the Helsinki Arena spotlight.
Hence the locations guide, which will list the most interesting spots for filming hereabouts - places like the Market Square, Suomenlinna, the Nuuksio National Park in Espoo, even Saunabaari, which is neither a sauna nor a bar, but a service centre for the elderly in the suburb of Maunula (though it was once a public sauna that could accommodate as many as 500 bathers in an evening).
The intention is to make the guide a permanent tool, accessible from the Net.
Putting together such a guide doesn't come cheap. The tab of around EUR 76,000 is being met by a marketing firm owned and funded jointly by the cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen, and by Uudenmaan liitto, the umbrella organisation for the Uusimaa region that surrounds the capital area on three sides.
The firm's CEO Tatu Laurila hopes the guide will be of particular use in the image-building competition between major cities of the north, in which he fears Helsinki is not punching its weight.
"We have to make use of any and every opportunity to raise our head, since Stockholm and Copenhagen are still a great deal better known among tourists and the business community than is Helsinki."
Laurila sees those reporters who will be flying in to cover the Eurovision Song Contest antics as having considerable potential for puffing Helsinki to a wider audience.
"Eurovision is followed primarily by culture and music journalists, who have a slightly more broad-minded take on their surroundings than, say, those who cover sports events in a particular city", he argues.
Helsinki is still rather licking its wounds from the 2005 Athletics World Championships, which brought in a host of journalists but did little to boost the city as a whole - and the weather didn't help...
If the decision were up to Ilkka Mukkala, out there with his camera on that barren skerry just off the coast, Helsinki would be marketed to film crews particularly as a nature subject - and in fact only as that.
"A good many production crews find it a very big deal indeed that they can get onto an uninhabited rock like this in five minutes, or put themselves in the middle of a national park in three-quarters of an hour at the outside."
Last summer, Mukkala helped a Japanese group to shoot a commercial for outboard motors in the Suvisaaristo archipelago in Southern Espoo. The Japanese wanted to shoot in the coastal waters of Espoo, because access was a great deal more easy for them than hiking off to a genuine wilderness lake somewhere in the middle of Russia - which is what the Espoo scenery was pretending to be in the advert.
So the crew spent their days in the good-looking "wilds" of Suvisaaristo and their evenings in the luxurious Hotel Kämp on the Esplanade.
They got out of Helsinki exactly what film crews so often want: a classy hotel, developed infrastructure, and near-instantaneous access to the shooting location, however "remote" it may look through the lens.
"This is Helsinki's strong suit. The places are close at hand and the working conditions are easy, and you do not even require permits to film in the street", explains Mukkala.
Sometimes you get a double benefit, in that a photographer or graphic artist who makes a trip to Helsinki is so smitten by the place that he wants to come back later and work there.
A couple of years ago, the art director for the Pull and Bear chain of fashion stores became besotted by Helsinki.
He wanted the clothing line's fall/winter collection catalogue to be shot in Helsinki, and so the Spanish-based company's fashion shots were taken last summer in Helsinki trams, in the Esplanade, at the main railway station, in the Pasila railway yards (!!), and in the Nuuksio National Park.
It is not always easy to tell that it is Helsinki in shot, but it is. And probably the word of mouth feedback among professionals is worth more than the public's recognising the sights.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 1.4.2007
Note: This article is one in a series following the way in which Helsinki morphs itself into a Eurovision host city. The 2007 Eurovision Song Contest final will be held in the capital, at the Helsinki Arena in Pasila, on May 12th.
Links:
Pull & Bear Fall/Winter 2006/2007 Catalogue (see if you can spot the locations!)
MERITUULI AHOLA / Helsingin Sanomat
merituuli.ahola@hs.fi
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| 3.4.2007 - THIS WEEK |
Helsinki looks to become a location for movies and commercials
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