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It was agreed between Tuomas Holopainen and Stobe Harju that there will be no full behind the scenes documentary for Noise, but of course there's footage. Read some of how Noise was made and maybe you will be amazed. Filmmaking is about cutting corners very often.
After Imaginaerum movie Tuomas Holopainen and Stobe Harju, both individually, promised themselves not to ever make another music video again, but to focus on the things that matter. For the former, it was supposed to be all about music. And for the latter, well... movies. It wasn't about the lack of their chemistry. That had always worked. It was about not getting involved with things that don't make great music any better or isn't appreciated among film directors that much.
Nightwish only made a music video for the song Elan after Imaginaerum, if you don't count the numerous lyric videos, which are super popular these days. The whole idea for ever working together would've been only done through movies or video games having Stobe Harju to direct and Tuomas to compose.
They're both equally horrified how much damage can be done with it if the material is treated in a false way. That became the idea of Noise video.
Stobe approached Tuomas about doing some cool stuff together as friends earlier in 2019. They both decided that it would be a cool idea and then out loud decided it wouldn't be a music video, since at that time Tuomas wasn't planning on releasing another album anytime soon. Then became May. Tuomas called and Stobe picked up with mouthful of coffee and probably ruined his phone after he heard what Tuomas had to say. Nightwish needed one more proper music video and they wanted Stobe to direct. The real reasons are still unknown and the guys probably never really talked about them either. They never actually talk about reasons.
They met at Hotel Helka's bar with a glass of wine and started talking about the song called Noise and what was behind the lyrics. Bunch of ideas came through already and it was mostly about video games made to live action, which is what Stobe is familiar of. Tuomas is also a great fan of Skyrim. After the reunion ended they walked on as they both had work to do.
As per usual Stobe retreated into his dungeon, his bottom floor home office, to write. On the following days he sends Tuomas a huge batch of images by different artists, photographers and filmmakers and asks to put them into a "coolness" priority onto three different folders in a web cloud service. It turns out that most of the video gamey shots are left down to folder 3 and most of the shots reminding of the styles of Imaginaerum and The Islander are put into the 1st folder.
After looking at the shots, Stobe writes down the one thing they talked about with Tuomas at Helka bar. Both of them like social media, but they're both equally horrified how much damage can be done with it if the material is treated in a false way. That became the the idea of Noise video. The story became a display of the social media public image versus the reality.
Stobe immediately called Janne "Toxic Angel" Pitkänen who had worked as a concept and storyboard artist on his projects since Imaginaerum and flew him over from Lieksa, eastern Finland.
The pattern is alway the same when Stobe and Janne sit down to work on storyboards. Numerous match stick figures emerge on whiteboard frame by Stobe with only a cross over the face so that you'll get some idea of where the characters are facing. Stobe can draw some albeit he does it very slowly and Janne spends most of his time laughing as the stick figures emerge onto the whiteboard and the errors usually get wiped off by Stobe's sleeve.
Janne and Stobe work on a lot of angles and visual ideas and take turns drawing. The work moves slowly sometimes as when you're doing storyboards, you have to take into account the optics used as well as the motion of the camera with the duration of each individual shot.
The guys spend three days working on the storyboards and doing some awesome bbq while at it. It's a hot summer, so most of the work happens outdoor on the house terrace next to the grill.
After all is done, Janne takes off and goes back home to draw some proper frames while Stobe starts getting in touch with the rest of the crew.
85% of director's job is usually just problem solving. The biggest challenge was to occupy the set with 50 extras wearing the same wardrobe staring at their phones. That problem was already solved when meeting with Hena Blomberg the Director of Photography and having the discussion about Techno Dolly. It's basically a crane which saves every camera track to a computer and repeats the motion identically every time. Instead of having 50 extras on top of 7 actors and band members we needed only five. We would then switch their placement in the shots to get the feeling of a crowded space. 14 performers is enough easily though.
The second biggest challenge was probably getting a Techno Dolly operator and there was only one single person in the country who could do that. Unfortunately he wasn't available so the production turned to Germany for the help. It worked and with a short notice we now had an operator for the crane who knows what he's doing.
The departments, production design and wardrobe had already worked 24/7 for a month to get everything done for the shoots. With production design it's always easy to count on Silver Zombie, Sami & Jonathan, while the wardrobe had their difficulties because of staff shortage and they were working until the last minutes of the shoot. Stobe wanted to also make some last minute changes to the outfits as usual.
The first of three days at Valofirma / Lighthouse studios was spent on building the sets and rehearsing some of the camera motion. The band would arrive on the next day while the other performers were already at the fitting.
That's the making of for now
That's the making of for now
The first project for Khimoo was Imaginaerum with Nightwish.
We are proud to share our history with the band.