Writer-director Jiří Vejdělek has several films to his credit, but above all Tour Participants, a legendary film about a trip to Croatia that almost all Czechs know. On the Traveling Experts show, he revealed some secrets about the film that have been kept until now. He also described how filming takes place overseas.
In 2006, the film Tour Participants was the most watched in Czech cinemas with over 800,000 admissions. At the same time, it was Jiří Vejdělek’s directorial debut. “According to Michal Viewegh’s book, it takes place in Croatia. But it was very far away, so we played most of that Croatia in northern Italy, where we found the main hotel and the beach,” Vejdělek pointed out.
Though sometimes they would go to Croatia to film something, but it was only for a few crew members. “We took a special bus to Croatia for some shooting. Only me, the bus driver, the cameraman and about two people from the crew didn’t let anyone else in. Otherwise, we mostly shot in the north of Croatia. Italy, I guess it’s called Sistiana there,” recalls the director.
The hardest part was finding the hotel itself and a suitable beach. “We started from Croatia, went through Slovenia and it didn’t seem like anything. We wanted to quit, so we thought we’d look at northern Italy. It wasn’t good here either, we didn’t find anything we liked there either.” emphasizes Vejdělek.
“It already looked like we were going home empty-handed and sad. But then we had to jump off, so we stopped somewhere and looked for a place to jump. Well, then we surfaced and the hotel and a beautiful pebble beach stuck out from the bush as from Croatia”, describes the director the coincidence that almost saved the film.
Most of the crew were Czech but of course the locals have to help when filming abroad. “It was in Tour Participants that the extras were Italian and dealing with them was much more complicated. The assistant director had to give bilingual instructions, while the morale of the Czech staff was definitely higher than the Italian one,” he recalled the arrangement complicated.
Making a film about a vacation can feel like a vacation itself to many. At the same time, the actors had to pretend to be warm by the sea in September temperatures, when the sea was not even 15 degrees. “Anička Polívková is lying on the beach on a sunbed and enjoying her summer holidays, we had to do it before the goosebumps showed. And I remember one shot when in the middle of the shot umbrellas were flying around her because of the cold wind came out”, concludes Vejdělek.
TN.cz
