As someone for who indecision is a major character trait, short film Verdict 30001: The Cookies from Silent Paprika directing duo Samuel Häkkinen and Henna Välkky (the latter of whom previously took us on a trip into the subconscious with animated doc We are in a Dream) hits hard! It’s a comedy about a man heading to the shop to buy some cookies, but he can’t quite manage to decide which ones to get. The frantic decision-making that ensues in this moment causes a paralysis that is manifested as an internal boardroom committee, each member representing a different part of his psyche. Think a live action Inside Out but for sad, very confused adults. It’s a wonderful short that takes an absurdist view on humanity, showing us how silly and daft we really are. DN caught up with Häkkinen and Välkky to talk over their collaborative journey as a filmmaking duo, creating Verdict 30001 as a means of escaping gatekeepers, and the roles they split between themselves on shooting days.
I wanted to start by asking about your relationship as a filmmaking team, what was the start of your creative journey together?
We have been working together ever since we met as teenagers studying filmmaking 20 years ago, and we formed our production company, Silent Paprika Films, soon after graduating. This summer, we celebrated the 15th anniversary of the company. Over the years, we have worked as cinematographers and editors, in the beginning taking on every job we could find. On our own projects we alternated between directing and DPing, but it was always so collaborative that we were always co-directing in a sense. Nowadays, we direct and write together.
So, what was the jumping off point for making Verdict 30001?
This short film was really born out of frustration for many projects that had been stuck in a financing limbo for years. We decided that we’d self-finance a simple short just to get a sense of accomplishment. It was a lot more motivating to be working on something we knew we could make happen regardless of any gatekeepers.
We don’t want to worry about the audience or the market too much, if it’s authentic to the author and well made, we want to believe it will resonate with audiences as well.
We started writing it in 2018. Our style had been developing over the years with some other low budget shorts and music videos, leaning more and more to absurd dark comedy. Our style is not always the easiest sell, especially to financiers, but we think it all comes down to what excites us the most. What would we want to see? We don’t want to worry about the audience or the market too much, if it’s authentic to the author and well made, we want to believe it will resonate with audiences as well. With this script we wanted to do something unexpected with a single insight, but still contained in a single scenario. We also felt that the more questions we can raise in the audience’s mind in the beginning the better they will be hooked to the peculiar story.
Where did the concept of an internal ideas committee come from?
In the first draft the setting was a haunted dinner party, but we weren’t really happy with that. Then in the beginning of 2019 we went to Italy for a one month writing retreat, which we can recommend to anyone who is suffering from writer’s block or just any excuse really. There we took one look at the script and threw it in the trash. It was time to start over. We started to think about mundane situations that would be relatable to anyone and how we could twist them into something interesting. Quickly we got excited about something that had happened to both of us many times. Decision paralysis is something that can hit you in even the tiniest minute decisions of your everyday life. We also read somewhere that people make on average a whopping 35,000 decisions each day and it just sounds like a comical amount of work for sustaining our mostly very basic lives. There started the play on thoughts, “What if there was a committee working around the clock, punching out all those decisions? They would all represent your conflicting needs and desires. They would be so tired of each other and whenever they got into a fight, that would lead to your decision paralysis.
We started to read up a lot on the psychology of decision making as we wanted to base the characters of the committee on real aspects of the mind, but then just take them to hilarious extremes.
Quickly we realised it was all sounding very much like the Pixar animation Inside Out, but we weren’t afraid of that comparison, you could even see it as an homage if you wanted as we loved the film, although our film was definitely not targeted to children. We started to read up a lot on the psychology of decision making as we wanted to base the characters of the committee on real aspects of the mind, but then just take them to hilarious extremes. One is based on the desire for instant gratification, one seeks the approval of others, one is all about spiritual connection, one represents logical thinking and one the fragile ego. You can find the neglected inner child in there as well as the echoes of parenting.
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Once you’d written the script and you were looking to get the short off the ground, where did you head next?
To help produce the film, we called on a new friend of ours, Ville Sivonen, who had produced a few shorts with other directors. We got along great from the very start and it really helped us to focus more on the artistic process having Ville carry the biggest load with producing. Gathering the cast and rest of the crew was next. As we didn’t have much of a budget, everyone worked for credit and we were very fortunate to get all these great actors and talented crew together. This was our first project with Elina Ström, the costume designer and she really made these characters stand out while still staying true to the idea of a dull and gray committee. She has been our go to designer ever since. Arsen Sarkisiants is also a master cinematographer, his commitment to the look of the film, even doing the color grade himself was priceless.
Could you tell us about constructing the boardroom the committee are in? How did you want it to look and feel?
We knew from the start that the biggest challenge would be the set design with our limited budget. We had tried to write the film with the budget in mind, but you always end up falling in love with certain ideas that you then struggle with to make happen. We decided early on that we would do the set design ourselves to cut costs and just have a props person on set to help. We scored a lot of props through the help of Samuel’s dad Ismo Häkkinen who was working at a museum at the time as well as another good friend Henrik Sillart who got us access to this huge underground prop warehouse of the Helsinki City Theater which was a great inspiration in itself to just wander around and marvel at decades worth of props from numerous stage plays. Our production company owns a lot of gear so we didn’t have to worry about that, but we wanted to achieve a timeless cinematic look inside the boardroom so we rented an Alexa Mini with some anamorphic glass for that. We got a great deal on the kit from our friends at Kinos Rentals, so big thanks for that.
We try to plan everything ahead as much as possible so a good day at the shoot means you’re just there to watch the plan unfold.
How long did you spend shooting and how did you split responsibilities on those days?
The shoot itself was only two days in May 2019. The first day we did the committee scenes in an old hotel boardroom. When we are directing together, we usually divide the duties so that Henna is with the actors while Samuel sits behind the monitor. And whenever there’s a disagreement, we try to land a compromise as soon as possible as we always strive to keep a good energy at the shoot. We try to plan everything ahead as much as possible so a good day at the shoot means you’re just there to watch the plan unfold. Of course, sometimes you get inspired by something at the shoot and you follow that inspiration, slightly deviating from the plans. Or if something that you planned doesn’t seem to be working, you might need to come up with something new on the spot, but we try not to stress it too much in the shoot, we made our plans and if there are any problems, there’s always some creative solution you can still find with your crew around you in the shoot, or at the latest in the edit. The first day was hectic as there was a lot to cover in a day, but when it was over we were so relieved as the next shooting day was a couple of weeks away and mostly consisted of one actor in a store aisle for a couple of hours.
How quickly did the final film come together in the edit?
The editing took its time, mostly because we had so many commercial projects lined up after the shoot and we like to edit ourselves. By the end of the year we were looking at a picture lock we were happy with. It did take another few months to finish the film, with the Covid pandemic slowing things down enough for our trusted Composer and Sound Designer Simo Pitkänen to fully immerse himself in working on it. Once the film was finished, we wanted to go all in on the festival submissions as we had poured so much effort and time into making the film.
You had your festival journey across the pandemic, how did that affect the promotional side of showing the film to audiences?
As the first selections started to pour in, our feelings were very mixed as the world was still in lockdown and we didn’t know if we could travel at all. We got selected to Tampere, Leuven, Lübeck, Cinequest… all these quite big festivals but in the end, we only managed to visit one smaller festival in Germany at the end of 2021. It was quite ironic that our first more successful film festival run happened at a time like this as visiting the festivals and networking is the main goal of the festival run, but still, we were glad to finally get some recognition from our peers and the film to have an audience, although it was in their own homes instead of a film theater.
After the festival run the film got picked up by a German sales agent, Kurzfilm Agentur Hamburg and they’ve managed to sell it to some very unexpected places like a Norwegian daily newspaper’s online film platform and as a pre-roll picture in certain German arthouse cinemas. After the experience it’s also been much easier to aim higher with our goals.
And what are your goals now? What else have you been making?
This summer we were in Tribeca with another short film Bright White Light, directed by Henna together with Eesu Lehtola, and we are very excited to be developing our first feature The Cult of Two, a surreal road movie targeted at youth audiences, with an experienced senior producer Mika Ritalahti of Silva Mysterium. He was behind the 2022 Sundance hit horror film The Hatching.