IN JAPAN, YOU DO THE YERK!

Our small crew in Shinjuku, Japan! At the moment we`re already in Los Angeles, coming right from Sydney. Gonna Post some more about Tokyo and Sydney asap. Right now it is 3 o`clock in the morning and I am awake, jetlagged like hell. 

Cheers, Manu 

LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS, Part1

Tokyo and Yokohama. Of course this was quite an experience. Overwhelming. Once again we were enormously lucky that we only met the best of the best, superfriendly and interesting people. A big hello to Karl with his unbelieveable laugh, the most extrodinary German living in Tokyo, his crew and the Temple University Film Department. A shout out to Toshio, our great guide and Production Assistant without whom we would have never seen with our own eyes that Tarantino just copied a restaurant in Tokyo for Kill Bill. And greatest of respect to Ms. Takeoka, Mr. Tsukimura and the new Mini club, Mr. Suygiyama and especially Mr. Kawana and his wife who were so friendly to let us enter their home and take a close look on their life. 

It was great to cruise the Tokyo city speedways at night.
More to follow.

Yokohama.

The new Mini club. People from all over Japan came to meet us.

Sunrise over Shinjuku.
Shinjukus blasting lights at night.
One of the coolest locations I´ve seen in a while.
Night Vision.
Video killed the radio star, but not film so far, that`s a good thing to know.
Wicked. The unbelievable selfmade Swarovski Mini. 

Take a close look, yes Hollywood actors still do ads in Japan. 

For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.......
Daniel&Niv are the dons of Yokohama, well at last Niv is, almost. A little bit.

AIR FARE

For all you people who are fascinated by frequent airplane travelling. 

With all stopovers, changing planes and transits we`ve been 25 times on airports so far. In not even a month. Sick.

LATE PROPS TO UKRAINE!

Totally forgot to send a big THANK YOU to Kiev, Ukraine, our production crew and all people involved out there. Thanks for a pitch perfect production service to Katya, Artiom and the people at Belka&Strelka who were so kind to let us use their office spaces. You are great!

RED; HOT AND VERY SPICY STUFF.

Reports from Bangkok.

The only thing I can say is: Bangkok was a really great experience for all of us. Not only that our service production was brilliant and from greatest support, Big Blue Productions and all of your crew, YOU ROCK (!), but also that the New Mini Society are the most hospitable people ever. Thank you for giving us so much of your precious time and letting us take a close look into your lives and Mini craziness.
A big fat shout out goes to Johnson, Pat and Pam and all you other Mini fanatics!
Keep the spirit alive!

Here`s some pics. Always remember, click on them and they will get bigger!

After the last day of shooting late at night in Chinatown. Our beautiful crew with some members of the new Mini Society.

Here`s a tip: to rise a camera you can also use metal boxes. Noone needs a dolly or rostrums. Oh yes, we`re proud we had this unbelievably clever idea. Actually we stole it from Werner Herzog.

Faster Pussycar Kill Kill! Believe me that was really fast. I mean, fast fast fast. 
The coolest cam vehicle we had in a long time. Low tech is the new high tech.
Daniel has no idea what this thing in his hand does. But someone told him to better use it.
Too much chilli makes some people a bit wacky. Especially Niv.

I`m not sure if Niv knows what he`s doing there. But it looks kinda ambitious.

I want a bike like this, just for the fun of it.
Daniel just fell asleep sitting there. Pure Zen.
Crashing through China Town at night with a few Minis.

Honouring the king in front of a city palace.
The new Mini Society at its`best. 

Lunch somewhere outside Bangkok after a wild ride on the freeway. Unexpectedly, we survived.

A Mini John Cooper Works GP Kit. One hell of a car.

ROLL OVER GB!

Hi everybody out there in the real world,

Haven`t been updating for quite a while because I spent most of my time on set, airports, in minivans and hotels prepping the next day, so I literally had no time for updating what you find here. I decided that the best thing will probably be to not bore everybody with a lot of writing anymore but give you some photographic impressions of where we were and what we saw. We did England and Scotland. Stafford, Oxford, London and Glasgow. Except that we slept in a new hotel every night and spent lots of time in our great tourbus travelling from A to B, not mentioning airports which I already hate so much that it became hard for me to find words for my emotions towards those stupid airplane parking lots, we had a marvellous time. A big shout out to Jonas, his absolutely great crew and everybody at Mad Cow films, a big thank you goes out to John Hawkins, Roy Davies & Peter Tothill, Ian Cummings, Wouter de Graf, the great Christy Campbell, Matthew Field, Kirsty Shaw and the Minidrivers and of course our great production crew in Glasgow. I should say thank you to so many more people, but I have to say sorry, I am very bad with remembering names......please forgive me and my poor old brain. Ah, and of course to the nice check in crew at the Glasgow airport.
Here`s some pics.

At the British Mini Days. Stafford. England. Our great crew.

Glasgow. Poor mans car rigs. But at last two of them at once.

Oxford.

Stafford. British Mini Days. Overwhelming, too many great little cars and nice folks.


Sound Engineering also works in yoga poses. Just relax and press record.

Glasgow. Our Service Producer in the back expressing her feelings towards Kasi. 

London. The Mini on the left belongs to the singer of the Arctic Monkeys.

Glasgow at night after a great curry.

Niv found new romance  at the Glasgow Airport. Welcome to the love boat, errr plane.

QUICK UPDATE!

Hi Everybody Out There,

Here`s a short update which will soon be followed by more photos and written impressions from our tour. After Ukraine we were in England and Scotland which was overwhelming. Besides all the exceptional people we`ve met and great stories we`ve heard from them, we joined the British Mini Days in Stafford, had a look at the Mini Factory in Oxford and did a lot of impressive interviews and portraits on people you will hopefully meet here soon. As I said, as soon as I will have some more time and a proper internet connection, which I sometimes lacked in the last days, I will post more concrete details and infos. 

Right now we`re in Bangkok, Thailand which is somekind of a temperature shock after Europe and we`re about to get our first shooting day going with the people from the "New Mini Society". Last night we met them for the first time and they`re all absolutely lovely individuals. Like everybody we met so far. Guess we`re lucky.  Gonna post some pics asap.

Bangkok.

London. Heathrow. 

LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW!

First impressions from Kiev / Ukraine.

Our crew in the east!


Mrs. Crazy Checkmate Ira and her Mini Cooper which is a, right, customized checkmate like herself.



Mitya & Vitya in their Austin Mini Special 1100, 1975 and Eliseys Mini One in lot`s of snow.

Sound and waiting for a drive by.

Camera, Lights, Action for Elisey.

Kasis finally got the timecode right. Yeah, numbers seem to make some people happy. The roof of Mityas&Vityas Mini.

By the way, you can always make the photos bigger by clicking on them!!!!!!!

More on Ukraine to follow soon! Cheers, Manuel

WE SHOT BERLIN! GERMANY!

Berlin was beautiful, at the same time horribly freezing cold and a good test run for our crew and further shoot.

We did nice long rides through great locations all over the city at day and night. We visited the favourite Mini Garage of our Berlin protagonist Kasi. Super Mini Geek Kasi owned more than 20 Minis in his life and also rides the most wicked Austin Seven in Berlin. The East Berlin Garage, he loves so much, is an incredible place full of patina and packed with spare and car body parts. A place like from another time. There we also met his friend Billy who is a real cool oldschool mechanic. Kasi played for us on his Rhodes Piano at his home which is definitely a small Mini Temple and right there we listened again to a lot  of incredibly funny anecdotes about him and his Minis. I guess you all will love his stories as much as we did. In short, we had a great laugh and got loads of supercool material. 

Here`s a photo of our happy Berlin crew.

Lining up a shot in Kreuzberg.

Nighttime at Potsdamer Platz.

Shooting at the West Harbour Berlin.The Classic Mini Garage in East Berlin.

Kasi and his Clubman 1275 GT.