The Diary of Sauli Hirvi

Oma Kaupunki Campaign

Sauli Hirvi — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:37:08 +0000

Last month, me and Marko Rantanen went shooting around the Helsinki metropolitan area for Helsingin Sanomat omakaupunki.fi ad campaign. “Oma kaupunki”, which translates as “My city”, is a site where people can exchange tips, events, news and services. The campaign theme is “Greetings from the neighborhood. This is what Oma Kaupunki is made of.” All the ads show how people can collaboratively participate in documenting their home town.

I shot with my Pentax ME and Marko used his Hasselblad XPan. I wanted to use film cameras to get a casual feel to the photos, like they were shot by ordinary people, but still remain stylish enough to be used in advertising. The look is largely based on my personal snapshots and the handwritten, care-free typography by Jenni Juntunen plays an important part.

The print ads are comprised of short collaborative stories about Helsinki with thematically related pictures.

The campaign also contains two fridge magnet outdoor ads where people can arrange words that describe Helsinki. The magnets are free to take home with you. And if that wasn’t enough, we have a multi-user banner where five persons per banner can arrange virtual fridge magnets.

Fridge magnet outdoor ad

Fridge magnet multi-user banner

“For free” ad in stores around Helsinki

Post-it sticker ad

Marko hanging from the ground

Some of my photos allocated for this campaign

Online Guide to Orchestration

Sauli Hirvi — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:05:51 +0000

Composer and orchestrator Thomas Goss has a great video series on Youtube called Online Guide to Orchestration. He goes through the different elements and techniques of the craft in an interesting manner. He also has great score-reading videos in which he breaks down classical pieces, one of which I’ve embedded as an example below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi9VwSq-vbo

MilkyTracker

Sauli Hirvi — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:45:12 +0000

Yesterday, someone on Reddit posted a chip track they had made on MilkyTracker, a multi-platform Fast Tracker 2 clone for modern computers. Naturally, I had to try it out immediately. I still remembered most of the commands, but the interface was a bit hard to use after almost 15 years. For example, copy and paste are done with alt-F4 and alt-F5, respectively.

Chip music has a special place in my heart. They are small and elegant, and their limitations are the source of inspiration. Even Timbaland infamously agreed.

Here’s my 15 minute chip tune test: [See post to watch QuickTime movie]

New Song — Stars

Sauli Hirvi — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:16:12 +0000

I present you with a new song called Stars, which turned out pretty nice. It ponders the distant future of human race. If humans travel to the stars someday, will the colonists separated by huge distances and living in differing environments evolve into distinct species, unable to reproduce with others colonies? Or will they mingle enough to remain a single human species. Provided there will be no faster-than-light travel, distant colonies might be extremely isolated. Sending messages back to Earth would take decades. After a few generations, Earth might lose all meaning to the colonists.

Also spent a weekend in Germany at Melt! festival.

Vacation Time

Sauli Hirvi — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:15:44 +0000

I started off my summer vacation by going to my girlfriend’s summer cottage. Not a cloud in the sky with temperatures near 30° C. The water in the lake was at best 23° C. Scenery was excellent, but you must pay a price to the mosquitos. Below, a photo of my feet after being drained gallons of blood.

Also got some nice national romantic shots.

A nossa última conversa (Our Last Talk)

Sauli Hirvi — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:27:30 +0000

Portugese director Miguel Peres asked to use two of my songs for his short film A nossa última conversa (Our Last Talk) and I was more than happy to oblige. The film was featured at Festroia film festival in Portugal. Check it out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKWTNhXRv4k

Below, for your enjoyment, are the complete tracks.

Polaroidin’

Sauli Hirvi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:45:12 +0000

I purchased a Polaroid SX-70 from eBay and some PX 100 film from The Impossible Project. Unfortunately the exposure meter on the camera is malfunctioning. First it was giving inaccurate timings and now it’s stuck to a single shutter speed. Luckily it wasn’t too expensive so taking it to a repair shop will bring it to about the same price as other SX’s were on eBay.

What’s annoying is that a lot of film was wasted. PX 100 costs 18 € per film (8 photos) so these kinds of technical problems are understandably unwelcome. A year ago you could find Polaroid 600 film from eBay for as little as 10 € per pack, but now the prices have risen to well over 20 €. A sad state of affairs.

The PX 100 is a black and white film and has really nice sepia tones, and if you keep it warm while it develops the tones drift towards red. It gives everything a nice Fallout 3 like post-apocalyptic quality.

Speaking of Polaroid, Lady Gaga was appointed the creative director for a special line of Polaroid products and, more interestingly, Polaroid is planning to release a new film camera thanks to the availability of new 600 film.

Good Taste Comes From Sweden

Sauli Hirvi — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:04:27 +0000

Our campaign for Läkerol will be starting at full force soon. For now, you can entertain yourself with a bunch of films we made about our Swedish star Håkan, a man who will bring the message of good taste into Finland. Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1AydzLSjOk

Check out the Youtube channel with more films

My Teenage Years

Sauli Hirvi — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 08:53:56 +0000

A friend found an archive containing some of my old MOD and XM songs. I spent a good part of my teenage years in front of Scream Tracker and Fast Tracker. Also, before MP3’s, a lot of the music we listened to was tracker music. We had large libraries of songs by other people like ourselves. Then MP3’s came and made it easy to download professional music.

Below, some screenshots of the various software in question.

Scream Tracker 2.2

Scream Tracker 3.21

Fast Tracker 2

Songs after the break.

First, some four channel chip MODs. The original MOD-files are in the range of 4-20KB:

[See post to watch QuickTime movie] [See post to watch QuickTime movie] [See post to watch QuickTime movie] [See post to watch QuickTime movie] [See post to watch QuickTime movie] [See post to watch QuickTime movie] [See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Then some Fast Tracker 2 XM tracks:

[See post to watch QuickTime movie] [See post to watch QuickTime movie] [See post to watch QuickTime movie] [See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Shooting Around

Sauli Hirvi — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:17:48 +0000

Last Sunday we flew to Sweden, only to take a cab straight from Arlanda to the Silja Line terminal and grab a ferry back to Finland. Shortest trip to Sweden ever. We were shooting some films for a soon-to-come campaign, first on the ferry and later around the towns near Helsinki. The first offline material was finished today and looked quite tantalizing.

It’s great to go out on productions, away from the dark depths of the office.

Our director Filip Nilsson with a video-rigged Canon 5D mark II

Nice shoes

My cabin on the ferry. First time I’ve been on a good cabin. And first time in 7–8 years on the Swedish ferry altogether.

View from the deck at 7:30 a.m. The iPhone camera doesn’t quite capture it, but it was a pretty sight; Cracked ice sheets that disappeared completely into the fog not too far away: