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The Strange Mind

"The Strange Mind"
A short psychological thriller.

Plot: The action takes place in 19 century in Serbia, in small, unknown village. Doctor that is about to retire gets murdered under suspicious circumstances. The investigation goes in a wrong way.


Cast:
 Stefan Licanin, Mihajlo Basta, Mladen Reljanovic, Jelena Jurisic, Danijela Gacic, Aleksandar Marjanovic and Milanka Buvac.


Producer:  Mladen Reljanovic


Executive Producer:  Jelena Jurisic


Director: Mladen Reljanovic


Writer: Jelena Jurisic


Director of Photography: Mladen Reljanovic


Editor: Mladen Reljanovic


Visual Effects: Mladen Reljanovc


Music by: myuu


Costume Designer:  Jelena Jurisic


Makeup Artist:  Jelena Jurisic



Production Journal

This post is dedicated to the cast and crew of "The Strange Mind" and we hope you'll enjoy reading about creative process of making our first movie.

At first we didn't really know what we want to do. We were inspired by the poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Jelena (Jurišić) and I (Mladen Reljanović) talked about making a short film. The first idea was making one of Poe's poems or stories as a short film but when we started the research we decided to add more elements to the story. So we slowed down a little bit and added another element that inspired us: Franc Kafka's story telling. We immediately knew the film would not be well received if we use Kafka's style, but we did it anyways, and hopefully we made something different.
One of the main inspirations was our mutual respect to a certain director from 20th century - Edward D. Wood Jr., also known as "The Worst Director Ever". Maybe he was a bad director, maybe not. We liked the way he didn't pay attention to little things that "could ruin the film". He had a vision about the large picture and meaning of story and he did things his way. After discussing his work we knew that we want to do things his way. So, while filming we didn't really want to notice things that don't belong to the time period that story takes place in. Of course, we didn't make mistakes on purpose, but if we would notice a possible mistake we would just ask ourselves: "How would Edd do it?" and we would continue shooting. In post-production the fun thing was making the film as dark as possible. We didn't want for audience to see everything, that's how we would increase mystery motives in "The Strange Mind". There are scenes that are almost impossible to watch because of the dark effect. Also, we increased the intensity of blue channel to add some "Burton touch" to the picture.

For some time the idea of making this movie was incubating in our minds and that Jelena came up with few stories that were really great. After few hours of discussing the possible story we agreed on this one and the making of a script began. It's been quit a journey through the process of writing. We made so many additional changes even when we were sure we got it that time. Every night we would think it's the perfect script and in the morning we would be sure that something must be changed. We worked very fast and within a month the script was finished and the pre-production done. We had a lot of fun scouting for locations. We visited some houses, abandoned rooms of a hospital, open fields by the river and we hope we found the right locations for the film. While making scene concepts and concept art we decided to go weird with the film. I mean, weirder! At one point when designing doctor's office, we thought it would be funny to put some dead bugs in glass on the table, but it wasn't enough so we added an old tree branch in a jar with reddish liquid, old papers that we got from even older hospital we were shooting at, a potato in a jar and very interesting, closed little box that we talked about. Also, we decided to make characters look like they were dead, mainly because we wanted to set the story in mirror world of our 18th century. So, we added some scars on actors and made their skin pale. We weren't adding those objects just for the sake of the scene. Every object had some meaning to us and we wanted viewers to add meaning to the objects as they like. So, whatever you think that potato in a jar means - you got it!
The first day of shooting (8. February, 2013) we went to local hospital where we were given the rooms to use and we shot some minor scenes and one major scene. The next day we went to a "Chess Club" to shoot two scenes that take place in Vuk's office and a tavern. On 16. February we went to an old house to shoot 5 scenes (three of them minor) that take place in Aleksandar's house (and a minor scene in front of his house) and Anastasija's house (one minor scene). On 22. February we went back to our hospital to shoot the scenes with two doctors, scenes with Aleksandar and Katarina and a scene in front of tavern. That was probably the longest working day. On 9. March we went to shoot scenes on open field. We found a great river bank east of our town where we shot those scenes. For many hours it was raining and we weren't able to do anything and when we agreed to cancel the shooting for the day the rain stopped! I believed it was destiny, but there could be more discussions about it. We had a great sky that day. It was creepy cloudy and dark. That day one of supporting actor had a minor injury - he cut his hand on glass. We decided to add some frames of his bloody hand in the final cut of the movie even though it doesn't make sense because he didn't hurt his hand in the movie.
Post-production was fast. We didn't need major visual effects so we managed to do everything in time. We found out about a German composer who makes beautiful and creepy scores. After contacting him he sent us some pre-made scores that fit perfectly - in the style of "The Strange Mind". We are very thankful to myuu (or myuuji as credited sometimes).
Subjectively speaking it was a great pleasure to make "The Strange Mind", even though we had terrible conditions some times while shooting. And I'd like to say it was my honor to work with these talented people who helped me so much. Stefan Ličanin did a wonderful performance as Aleksandar Branković, he is a very talented young man who can do wonders with his face expressions. Jelena Jurišić portrayed minor character, Bognad's daughter Anastasija, and she wrote this great story. Mihajlo Basta played the part of Inspector Vuk Begović and did a great job, just as imagined. Danijela Gačić did a great and more than creepy performance as Katarina, although she does not have a major role in the story, she really left her signature on "The Strange Mind". Aleksandar Marjanović and Milanka Buvač were very fun to work with even though their parts were very small. All of them, and I myself, did a hard job and we all hope you enjoyed or will enjoy watching "The Strange Mind".

Note: We will release "The Strange Mind" on our blog as soon as we add English subtitles. You can see the OFFICIAL TRAILER here or find it in our video gallery.

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