Just some bits and pieces from my memory. Those bits and pieces that have not disappeared because of lack of sleep.

- Splashing one of our heroes a dozen times with beer. Imagine his smell.

- The old ferris wheel in the fun park, which we chose spontaneously as an additional location (sort of ad libitum). A reasonably dodgy ride to check out the view and angles, and then letting the wheel start and stop quite some times to film the different scenes.

- Shooting one scene in a pool billiard place for more than 40 times (a personal record, at least for me). Something just always went wrong. Respectively, something just didn't move at all - the face of the heroine of this scene.

- A five hour delay in the billiard place, because the owner decided to deny us the shooting permission he had granted earlier. At least, a pool billiard place is not the worst place where to spend five hours waiting...

- Sunrise shooting on the roof of one of the main high-rise buildings in the very center of the city. Looking at the sun rising behind the distant mountains makes it difficult to still concentrate on shooting.

- The little dog in the yard of a house where we shot one scene. It didn't dare coming inside with all the people, so when it started raining, there was just this totally wet dog outside, walking from left to right and back in front of the door...

- The poor girls acting at the poolside in the mountain resort of Chimgan. It gets rather chilly in the mountains in the evenings and nights, so the ladies with the thin summer dresses really showed some strength. Blankets were brought to them whenever the camera was off, and hot tea, on request with vodka, available. Still, they must've been freezing badly... not to mention that some of them had to splash each other with water from the pool...

- Classy ending in the mountains, while the very last scene was recorded, and there was no need for me to be there anymore: Sitting on a two-people swing with one of the actresses, Katya, and her friend Hilola, drinking beer from the bottles, looking at the stars, and singing Russian pop songs.

We've finished a tough five day shooting in and around Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Everything went very well - the local production did a very good job, and the imported team consisting of Magnet Films, DOP Janis Eglitis from Riga, and director Marc Brummund from Hamburg, was excellent as always (even though it was the first time we worked in this combination, we all worked together in some form before).

Nothing more to say, just some images of the shooting and surroundings:

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We're at the office watching fruit rot.

And the best thing: This is true.

It was a spontaneous evening idea when Marius, Gareth and me decided to give a seminar together at this year's regional Golden Hammer advertising festival in Riga, Latvia. My main motivation was to have a reason to go to Riga and wreck all bridges behind me (once I'm signed up for a seminar, I can't cancel the trip anymore); Gareth will anyway be there as he's a member of the jury; and Marius' motivation must be something as well, but it needn't be that big since he lives not very far from there, in Vilnius, neighboring Lithuania (that's the southernmost of the Baltic States, for all the Europeans who usually don't know which one of them is which one. Even though many of the same Europeans can name all Balearic islands - while I'm not even sure if they're called Balearic, Balerean, or Balears, or whatever).

Anyway, the seminar will be about the parallels between football and marketing. That's mainly because we like talking about football, of course. We aren't that sure yet what those parallels are, even though we of course know them: Marius and me once had a long drunk discussion about this in Riga, while Gareth and me must have touched similar topics during our binge drinking nights in Almaty or Tashkent.

It's just that we forgot what we found out in those discussions, but (as usual when you were drunk) remember clearly that it was very, very smart. Not as smart as things seem when you were stoned, but still pretty smart (alco-smart, as opposed to weed-smart, you see). So we'll find out again, of course, even if it might take us the one or other beer. Marius has already come up with a brilliant title and caption for our seminar, so I guess after he's done that it's really up to Gareth and me to figure out something to say. Marius' magic words read: "6 billion people watch advertising and they hate it. 1 billion people watch football and they love it. The difference is in the balls, obviously."

And as it's all about football (eh, well, and marketing, of course), Marius and his folks in Vilnius made a very nice image of all three of us for the festival - this one here. From left to right: Marius (Petrukaitis), me (myself), and Gareth (Brown):

Still working on that TVC for MTV Europe, actually we're working on it since June or July or August or something like that, I don't remember. It's fun and interesting, just that I'm a little annoyed that the studio we commissioned with the animations has some problems listening, and there's a lot of stuff that has to be repeated all the time. I'm not used to this - I prefer saying something once, then it can eventually be discussed if needed, and then it's just being done. But this sort of way here, in which I send comments or requests, and then half of them are executed and half are not, that's ridiculous. Not overly surprising though, I've had a lot of this sort of carelessness in this region, particularly in the Slavic parts of the former Soviet Union it's very widespread. Anyway, the project is progressing, and will eventually be finished some time early next year. And it will look stylish - after all, that's why we're working on it for so long - because it has to look like an MTV commercial. A clear and good goal.

We're finished with our beer pitch proposal, and it's so damn exciting, if I was the client (and had enough budget, ehem), I'd jump around the room and bark of joy. It's a thorough activation concept covering Latvia, involving people into the campaign in various roles, and in such way that they'd be excited to join in. It's a big huge fun thing that would leave the beer brand clear sympathy leader, and that would boost consumption with simple tricks and ways, giving particular focus on region where they are a bit weaker right now. It's all so beautifully thought through, and so simple below all the seeming complexity, it just makes perfect sense.

What can I say - I've always enjoyed working with Janis. Lock the two of us into a room for a couple of hours, and we'll make you a nice campaign. Lock us up for a few days, and we'll lead your brand to heaven (sometimes exceeding your budget though). Lock us up for a week, and we'll have a plan how to take over the world.

I joined my ex agency from Latvia these days to work with their creative director on a beer pitch. It's a client we know well and a brand we know well. And that's not the only reason why this project will be fun:

We'll actually work in Cannes during the festival, together with Janis who is not only the creative director of that agency but also a very good friend and one of the best ad brains I've met between Warsaw and Kamchatka. The work space was chosen because Janis is joining the Young Creative competition in Cannes, and I have no other gaps in my calendar - the days before the festival I had to be in Kyiv, and on the Monday after the festival I have to show up in Baku, Azerbaijan. So my ex agency thought for a while and finally decided that the only way to get Janis and me work together on this would be to fly me over to Cannes.

So I will. It'll be travel stress with a Kyiv-Milano-Nice trip, followed on Sunday by a crazy Nice-Paris-Frankfurt-Istanbul-Baku trip, but hell: It's summer, it's sun (not like in Kyiv, where it's been raining since May), and it's an exciting project with an old friend. Can't get any better!

There was this pitch for some social awareness TV commercials by MTV Europe that we participated in as a team with Lena. Submitted some 6 or 7 stories, learnt that some 4 of them had made it to the shortlist, and now we actually ended up winning 50% of the pitch, meaning: We will do one of the two planned TVC's.

The other, funnily, will be done by a guy called Luc with whom I'm frequently hanging out in Kyiv, and whom I helped out with some contacts recently. A very nice guy with a very strong mind. We had actually talked about this pitch a number of times when having a beer in our favorite Garage bar in downtown Kyiv, and we knew the competition was tough, as there were some 40 or 50 agencies and individuals from all over Eastern Europe in the pitch as far as we heard.

So there are two winners, and it's us. Nice stuff. Now the hard work starts.

So after leaving the agency in Kyiv where I had been working for a very short time, I switched to freelancing. Didn't want to do too much, thought I'd just be doing some one or two projects during the summer. And then the surprise happened: I hadn't even told many people that I'm available for freelance work, I think I had just mentioned it in an e-mail that went to some two dozen old friends. And then the proposals came... well, I'm glad it's working so well.

We had a short holiday in Moldova (nice place!), I'm spending much time on our Datcha in Kyiv, and Arnold from the fabulous PSB Films offered me to use his office as if it was mine, so I'm sitting in their office much of the time for Internet and phone connections, which are not available out there on our Datcha.

Currently I'm working on a project for a Baltic beer brand that I hadn't previously worked with; there's a good chance to get a multi-national project by the magnificent brand Skype, but it right now doesn't depend on me but on their activity plan and budget; I participate in a multi-national pitch for a TVC project for MTV Europe's social awareness activities; I'm doing some copywriting in German language for the first time in years for the agency of an old friend in Switzerland; and I have a lot of meetings with interesting people here in Kyiv, just talking and finding out if we could later do something together. Can't say I'm being bored...

I moved to Kyiv to join that independent creative agency, a rather nice place in fact, and a few really nice and very talented people, as it turned out when we last had some shared project (we did a workshop with them in November last year). So everything was organized and well, and I was really not prepared for what happened then.

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