Hard to get a crab to sit still…

Spacey hibiscus

Jellyfishes visit every summer. The angel hair threads burn like poison ivy..

Wild strawberry sort of looks like melting sorbet close up… (click to view full size)

And this sure looks like a heap of potatoes ..  a clump of lichen it is..

A future cloudberry

Visit to grandpa in France:

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Liv attacks Ida’s plastic dog:

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Jumping in puddles:

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Liv’s first visit to a pet store:

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Working hard in the kitchen with granny:

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Helping ward off the sluginvasion:

Over time directors also took their productions outside, facilitated by innovations in technology. More flexible equipment with higher reliability allowed productions to move outside the studio while still maintaining a large degree of control of the process. Audiences also became accustomed to believing what they saw on the screen. Clearly if the location was fantastical (say the planet Pandora ) this doesn’t apply, but if the character is walking down the street of a typical US neighborhood you kind of expect they filmed in some typical US neighborhood… or…?

Enter technology again. For years our visits to places like the planet Pandora have been made possible by big budgets and pioneering visual trickery on a large scale: greenscreens, motion tracking, and CG all have played parts. But this technology has now trickled down to a level where it’s being used to replace the mundane. Enter Ugly Betty, a sitcom about a New York network assistant. I’ve never actually watched the show but apparently they prefer to film it in California because it’s cheaper. Watch the clip below:

The producers of this video market their services as a “Virtual Backlot”. This is an interesting name because the backlot was (and still is) the halfway-house for productions, a controlled outside environment in the backyard of the studio. But the backlot is a physical structure and it cannot be reconstructed for every production, and it is limited in size/scale/scope. The “Virtual Backlot” however opens up the world, the production can travel to any location immediately, and multiple productions can share the same studio because a new backlot can be “loaded up” at any time. The cost savings are substantial, and the technology will only get better, more carefully matching the athmosphere of the original location with the “set”.

So it appears everything we see on television or film anymore, no matter how normal or mundane, is potentially shot in a big green studio somewhere. The production industry is coming full circle, on-location realism is now available in the controlled environment of the studio.

Taking a stroll around the village only takes a few minutes and another 20 minutes takes you around the main island. The village signpost conveniently points to all the main attractions: the store, the cableferry that crosses the harbor, the old lobsterfarm (a big hangar where they raised lobsters), and the famous UFO ring. This mysterious print in the ground appeared one stormy night in the 70′s and is still visible on the field where a UFO may have landed, no other explanation has been found (yet).

This was not my first visit here, I had also been in here some 20 years ago with my family on a boat trip, but this time I went with a group from my neigborhood association. We stayed in an old cafe, recently converted to a large apartment. A  boat was also provided and it was a real no-frills workhorse. So off we went to catch some fish. The catch was mostly lyr (pollock), but also a few makrell and a weird thin fish. The weather was not the best and it alternated rapidly between rain and sun all weekend, thanks to strong winds. Same winds contributed to rough seas and we were limited to  fish in the shelter of the smaller islands. We had a local in the group so navigating the treacherous waters was not a problem. But I  have never fished under such conditions before and  got a taste of the real risk and hardship fishermen face in the North Sea. I am not sure the picture really conveys how rough the sea was, unfortunately I was using the iPhone and it doesn’t do movies. But I had to keep my arm around a pole to avoid falling over while taking this shot!

All in all an exciting trip.