Writing & Research

Below, you will find a selection of written work. Please click on the categories to reveal individual texts.


Experience of practice based research and using primary source material in several archives and libraries including:

The British Library, Colindale Newspaper Library, London Metropolitan Archives, British Film Institute, Theatre Museum Covent Garden, Victoria and Albert Museum, Senate House Library collections, University of London, SSEES and SOAS collections, University of London, The British Museum.

Stock image and film archive experience for film and documentary purposes. Experience of interviewing for research e.g. camera facility staff and production companies for production terminology not yet existent in Finnish during the translation of the book 'Filming on a Microbudget.'

Please see the Office page for details of tutoring and other work within the educational sector.







Past academic studies and practical research projects include:


Plasticine: a screenplay development tool that became a book project comparing and analysing the systems of so-called 'screenwriting gurus'.

This AVEK (the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture) funded project is currently in development. Please click here for samples, and here for video, including images and the following chapters: Introduction, Aristotle, Syd Field.


M.A. in Directing at Rose Bruford College Final project and viva voce defence: a stage adaptation and UK premiere of Ingmar Bergman's Persona. For the adaptation text and more details, please 'Stage & Screen,' below. Other practical projects completed during the M.A. can be found throughout this website.


B.A. Drama with Russian at Queen Mary College, London University Final year Drama Research Presentation: Nikita Khrushchev as political performer in his 'Secret Midnight Address' - politicians as performers


Other B.A. essays in Philosophy, Film and Drama:

Anton Chekhov’s Ariadna and The Bride
Maria Irene Fornes’s The Conduct of Life
Akira Kurosawa’s Shakespeare (Kumonosu-Jo)
Foreign and Postcolonial Shakespeare (with Reem Ben Giaber) presentation
Caridad Svich’s Phantom Patria
Iconoclasm of identity in Hispanic Drama
Men and feminism
Sankai Juku (Paris/Tokyo) and Hibiki
The philosophies of Vladimir Solovyov and Mikhail Bakhtin
Sally Potter and theTrans-historical Self
Sarah Bernhardt’s arrival in London


Various essays on Art History, Music Criticism and Philosophical Aesthetics

Bach's partita no 2
Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra
Clement Greenberg on Modernist painting
Voltaire's Candide
Akseli Gallen-Kallela's painting 'Lemminkäinen's Mother'


Edexcel, the examination board, London - Subject Co-ordinator/Leader (acting)

Hired in this full-time position after temping for a month. An incredible introduction to education, and the business behind education.

Responsible for 39 coursework units (ELC, GCSE and GCE), and the work of both Subject Co-ordinator and the managerial position of Subject Leader in the absence of one; for organising and running, with a team to delegate work to, of 20-30 training events for 200-300 Examiners; for liaising with senior management, public relations and senior examiners about results and dealing with a variety of operational issues.

Rose Bruford College, London - Marketing Assistant

'Working directly with the Marketing Manager' Experience and responsibilities in small, busy Marketing Dept. include bookings, taking committee minutes, liaison with theatres and agents, database maintenance and mail-outs.

Rose Bruford College, London - Library Assistant

Learning about the intricacies and developing an appreciation for the hard graft of library work.

The Open Cabin Workshops, Rose Bruford College, London - Team Member

Series of physical theatre workshops at Rose Bruford College run by post-graduates.

Turku Vocational School for the Deaf, Finland

Civil national service at a secondary school for the deaf and hearing impaired as counsellor, night-watchman and general mr. fix-it while studying art history at Turku University. A real eye- opener to the world of sign language, the deaf and the hearing.

Private English Lessons

Summer job teaching English in Porvoo, Finland

Circus Media / Theatre Venture, London - 25th Anniversary Videos

Editor for Arts Organisation on their 25th anniversary videos, compiling past productions. Also some personal tutoring , teaching Final Cut Pro editing.

Please see the Creative page for commercial treatments, storyboarding and other related writing. For screenplay translations, see below.


Divine Consultants 54x1" animation series created and produced by Juha Fiilin of Fiilin Good Films and the Finnish national broadcaster YLE. Working as a screenwriter on the series storylines and episodes. See here for sample for an early and very different season outline , the produced early season outline and a script sample for a produced, earlier version of the series with Jan Andersson's great artwork.

Children of the Sun A five page synopsis for magic realist animation short.

Erased A feature screenplay synopsis and treatment. Click here for a sample.

Zero A short screenplay, outline and statement of intent. Zero deals with similar themes as the later Erased and is an attempt to write with as little dialogue as possible. Click here for samples.

Dendrokronologia A study for the opening scenes of an intercultural screenplay with contrasting characters from C17th and C20th. Click here for samples.

English National Opera Interactive (Screenwriting/Theatre) A video treatment/ proposal for the ‘Lost Highway Behind the Scenes’ project based on the David Lynch film. Written with the documentarist Pentti Turunen. Click here for the treatment.

Tracing paper/Fragments (Theatre/video) An experimental, game-like participatory performance text for live performance and four screens. Click here for concept and proposal.

Four Characters (Stage Adaptation) The theatrical premiere of Steven Soderbergh's ‘sex, lies and videotape’ together with Luigi Pirandello's ‘Six Characters in search of an Author’ in a new piece exploring suburban ennui and role-play. “A relationship begins with its pathology. Identity begins with its histories.” Click here for the programme and notes and here for the adaptation text.

Persona (Stage Adaptation) The British Premiere of Ingmar Bergman's classic film, reworking the piece into a modern context of cultural hybridity and rejection of past personal choices - a mixed-race child. This play further explores the theme of identity, which began with adapting ‘sex, lies and videotape’. Here, instead of working on the creation of identity, exactly the opposite - the erosion of it - is explored. Click here for notes/sketches and here for the images and proposal text

The Mating Dance Written for the Performance Night Platform in London, this is a one-act absurdist melodrama written for a Japanese messiah, Freud, death-row convict and three photographs.

Very compact and dense in form, it is an exploration of audience interaction and collaboration - and the opposite, dividing and deliberately misleading the audience - and using local information the writer/performer knows the audience has, to play with insider jokes and references.

It also explores hybrid characters, absurdist narrative techniques and 'narrative curve balls' - making references that wander off, or switch the content, to subvert the audience's assumed or conventional expectations. This continues an interest in split scenes/staging e.g. in Maria Irene Fornes's work, the simultaneous scenes and overlapping character identities in the Four Characters and Persona productions and the Tracing Paper/Fragments experiment (above), which employ almost film-like narrative and editing techniques.

See here for play text.


AVEK magazine

Article on the state of screenwriting, immigrant voices and Finnish cinema abroad for AVEK magazine (2005). Click here for the article (referenced in Maria Sainio's Master's degree dissertation here).


Lehtiset magazine

Article for Lehtiset magazine’s ‘Tämän haluaisin tehdä’ series on the film Delicatessen. Click here for the text.


It's All Lies (2005-6)

Articles for an early example of a satirical fake news blog It’s All Lies (2005-6) on topics as varied as the new MTV dating series ‘Unlikely Match’, George. W. Bush on grammar and his ‘New Compassionism’, frozen concentrated orange juice panic on the stock market and Margaret Thatcher’s flirty side.

CUB magazine (written at Queen Mary College, London)


Other reviews:




Courses


Below you will find Finnish and English translation work for film, TV and the theatre, for marketing and very specialised fields, such as legal and technical translation. Some jobs included related services, such as subtitling, audio transcription, graphic and layout work, writing or video editing, all carried out by a seasoned media professional.

Translation profile on Proz.com

Voiceover samples (submitted as samples for an agency job in Los Angeles)

  • Finnish: from 'The Life of Raymond Chandler' by Frank MacShane, translated into Finnish by Leena Tamminen
  • English: from 'Smoke' by Ivan Turgenev, translated into English by Constance Garnett





Technical translation

Finnwind – contract, website, operational manual translations for wind and solar energy company.

Kaspersky software HMTL user manual file translation and a style guide and glossaries for GameStreamer

Film and photography Translation of two Canon related books: Better Images with Canon Legria Camcorders and Better Images with Canon Lenses and Flashes by Jukka Kolari

Other end clients include: Garmin, Kavika, Konecranes, Saher, Cypress Wind, Synlab Neobona, Abloy locks.



Advertising & Marketing (incl. corporate magazine copy)

Teekauppa Chaya – translations for various tea making products.

Other end clients include: Triumph motorcycles, KONE, Konecranes, Arcada, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, KONE, Visit Finland, T&A Mämmelä, Tikkurila, Comatec, Paloheimo, MEK, Kemira, Petsafe, Dräger medical and safety equipment, Music Television, Hotel Haikko Manor, Villa Kutuluoto, Levi Summit, Tracker GPS hunting accessories.



Legal and financial

Aalto University (Taik and HSE) - 120 page IP/copyright law guide for the creative arts; various press statements and documents. Link to current online version of the guide.

The cities of Helsinki and Turku - contracts and other documents, e.g. tender documents. The European Enterprise Awards.

Other end clients include: Finavia, Laurea, AstraZeneca, Valio, Maritime Transport & Harbor Services, The Finnish National Board of Customs, HSL, Talentum publishing house, The Centre for Occupational Safety occupational safety exams, Helsinki City Transport.



Film and Television

Subtitling Diving into the Unknown documentary Juan Reina and Marc Hoeferlin, Monami Agency

Screenplay translation and subtitling Keys of Heaven (Paratiisin Avaimet) by Hamy Ramezan and Ilmari Aho Translation of synopsis, screenplay drafts and subtitling of completed film, produced by For Real Productions. Click here for a sample.

Television series translation Television series synopses for Love & Order (Myrskyn jälkeen) by Leea Klemola and Kaarina Hazard, produced by Elokuvayhtiö Aamu.

Screenplay translation Citizen B by Hamy Ramezan and The Gold Diggers by Auli Mantila - feature treatment and screenplay translations, produced by Elokuvayhtiö Aamu.

Subtitling Hannu Aukia's short film ‘Helsinki-Turku’ for No-Office

Subtitling Criterion Collection/Subtext Subtitling - subtitling of Where is Musette?, the making of documentary for Aki Kaurismäki’s film La vie Boheme by Veikko Nieminen and Jarkko Vesteri

Subtitling YLF-vertalingen - subtitling the feature documentary The Year 1952’ by Peter von Bagh for his tribute program at the Rotterdam Film Festival.

Subtitling synopses and press kit materials: Kinotar - Six Day Run (Kuuden päivän juoksu) dir. Mika Taanila For Real Productions - Alppikatu 25 dir. Marika Väisänen and Inka Achté

Subtitling Mete Sasioglu/Filmfly and Sons of Lumiere:

Various translation, subtitling and dramaturgy work Salpa (Latch, proofing the dialogue list), Yhden miehen elokuva (One man’s movie, subtitling), Samuli Valkama's Here and Now (utelias iho) Tero Saarinen documentary trailer subtitling, translation of contracts and speaker scripts.

Subtitling European Commission video subtitling for Semantis, Paris.

Subtitling Schnelluebersetzer GmbH - Mondi Lohja health & safety audio transcription/translation



Film book translations (Publication proposals to invigorate and internationalise the Finnish independent film scene - these projects ultimately didn't go through due to funding reasons)

  • Sample chapter translations: Chris Jones’s The Guerilla Film Maker’s Movie Blueprint book (two chapters available)
  • Rough draft translation of 300 page book: Paul Hardy’s Filming on a Microbudget



Stage

Translations for the stage include selections from the work of: (click for samples)

Bernard Marie Koltes: Paluu Aavikolle (Return to the Desert)
Jose Rivera: Marisol
Maria Irene Fornes: Mudassa (Mud)
Henry Adam Naapuritalon väki (The people next door)


Literary translation

Holy Week (Piinaviikko) by Maritta Lintunen Submission for the Finnish Institute’s fiction translation competition, 2009. Click here for sample.