I started with researching the history of Radio Sweden and discovered that the first ever broadcast was held in Saint James’ Church in central Stockholm in 1925. It featured a classical Wagner concert (à la mode at the time). So the idea to start the film with a concert in that very church sprung from that. But the song that the orchestra plays in our film is in fact a new rendition of a pop song called ‘Musik Non Stop’ (originally recorded by the band ‘Kent’, arguably Sweden’s biggest rock band). It’s a song everyone in Sweden knows and the title and lyrics sits very well with our film. The prominent composer Peter Nordahl has freely interpreted, arranged and conducted a classical version of the song and it became the films backbone.

It starts a journey that takes us from 1925 to 2015 (and the artists we meet on the way are all well-known Swedish artists) until we finally end up in the ‘Berwald Hall’, home of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra who performs the films score. The Berwald Hall was also where the film was first launched on the night of Radio Sweden’s anniversary gala.

Other than obvious and constant challenges like money, I would say the scheduling. It was a pain to try to set a time plan for the project since the film was based around well-known and busy artists. Each scenario in the film is written specifically for that artist, so if someone declined due to scheduling problems, I had to quickly write a new scene for another musician that we were in discussions with. On set we only had a couple of hours with some of the guys.

Another challenge was, oddly enough, to shoot and control the light on a moving subway car. We pestered the company that runs the subway traffic in Stockholm for weeks before we finally convinced them the day before the shoot.

Representation:

White Lodge
Indio