Pretty Prague

Holy Tamale. It's almost been a month since my last post?! Where'd the time go? ...I'm not even gonna make excuses. I've obviously been busy. In between prepping a shoot, I bought a flat. It felt like when I was spinning plates in the air - once I put the work plate down, the house plate had to keep spinning. Since something had to give, I suppose it was keeping up with this blog. Sorry!

A couple weeks ago, I was in Prague on a shoot. Daaaaaaaaaaaaamn. Prague is pretty. No wonder people rate it highly. You definitely get the sense that this place was once a filthy RICH boom-town. There's gilded EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE. As in... there are fancy accoutrements on the oldschool buildings, inside the buildings, and as a workmate pointed out, there are statues EVERYWHERE. In any nook and cranny they could find, a bust of a person would pop up or be built into it.

We had a wee bit of downtime on this trip (we actually had like 4 hours on a Sunday free to roam around! Wheee! Sounds sad that that was the only time we had for leisure, but that's quite a luxury when you're on a shoot!) And fortunately we were shooting in some pretty spectacular locations so we got to do some "sightseeing" while on the job. HAHAHA.

Check out the interior of the opera house. This place is bananas.






And the National Museum there's pretty bananas too!





The food was... Well... It was pretty much full of pork. I felt like I was in a Monty Python skit. Y'know, the one about the spam? Just substitute the spam with pork, pork, pork. And pork. Would you like pork with your potato-pork dumplings? Pork in your pork stew? Pork neck? Pork hock? Pork tripe? Pork sausage? Pork, pork, pork. And more pork for you?

***GAG***


(BUT... to the credit of the city of Prague, they actually had pretty decent vegetarian options on the menu so I was safe)

On the Sunday afternoon we had free, we made a tourist-blitz around the city. Well, just to the top of some hill to see the church and castle up there.


(We were cracking up that that looked like a medieval baseball bat. We are so cultured)


(I got photo-bombed there on the right. But as far as photo-bombings go, that's actually a pretty good shot!)






I thought it was pretty hilarious that all the tourists were stood in the middle of this amazing abbey, ALL with their cameras pointing skywards. People nowadays just can't stand still and take in the awesome wonderment before them without feeling the need to capture it on camera somehow. (and of course I'm the most guilty of the lot)


It was the week before Easter, so there were groups of ladies dressed up in traditional costume (at least that's what I think they are?) and they were singing throughout the church.






Is it odd that I LOVE this door hinge? I don't think I've seen a more beautiful door hinge in my life. And I never thought the day would come when I'd wax lyrical about a door hinge either.


This is their famous clock in the old town square. Unfortunately it was out of order, so we didn't get to watch the whole spectacle that happens at the start of each hour.


See what I mean by there are statues EVERYWHERE? I mean - they've put statues on pedestals in the middle of a wall. It's bananas.


A GORGEOUS art-nouveau building, filled with stained-glass and ornate artwork.


One of the highlights of this trip was shooting in the Barrandov studios. The Chronicles of Narnia was shot on the backlot here, and it's just pretty amazing to see soundstage after soundstage after soundstage in one place. The most famous (and oldest) soundstage here is Studio 4. It's entirely built out of wood and is basically where Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's filmmaker, shot most of his Nazi propaganda films. HOLY SHIT!!!


The caretaker here very kindly unlocked the studio and allowed us to have a peek inside this infamous place. It is still a studio in use till today. I have to say, the inside of this place smells DISGUSTING. Damp, dank, and it just smells really OLD and STALE (must be all that negative joo-joo from years gone by).


The interior is pretty spectacular though. Like a post-apocalyptic warehouse wasteland.


(Hehe)









And then we walked round to the backlot. Yes, that same backlot where Narnia was shot. This same place was once a winter wonderland for that film, but now it's a medieval town. It's hilarious how the inside of the set really feels like you are in an old town, but when you knock on the walls, it's all wooden and hollow.




I love this shot showing you what a facade it is!!



And that's pretty much all I can share with you of the trip! The rest of the pictures can only be revealed after the spot airs. ;p

PS. Have I mentioned I'll get the keys to my new apartment on June 1? Yeah, MY VERY OWN HOME! ...Will have more rivetting updates soon of kitchen tiles and contractors. Haha.

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