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10.08.2018 at Rein Maran’s country home — in the picture Rein’s family in front of the door of the country home, Rein himself, me and Peeter Simm.

Today is a difficult day for me — an important era in my life is coming to an end. I, whom the Soviet Union wanted to raise at the end of the 1980s into a guide of the information society, have had to flirt with the world of film a few times in my life. Without Rein’s help I would not have dared even to look in that direction. I spent my day here looking through my archives. It seemed the best way to celebrate Rein’s anniversary.

I am not a film person myself. What brought me together with Rein was nature conservation, which I have in my blood from home. Even later, during a period when, as an IT enthusiast, live broadcasts on the internet excited me, I did not much care what was at the end of the camera cable and what it showed.

Looking through my papers, one thing I am sorry about from the bottom of my heart. I knew Rein through Jaan Riis. From February 2008 we ran together the course Rein Maran’s nature film course at the Cinema House for Tallinn schoolchildren. It was free for the children. I got the Cinema House hall free of charge from the Film Union. My friends Arne Timm and Eleri Inno, who ran the NGO Loodusring, got the children there from the schools. Mai Zernask, who dealt with nature education in the City of Tallinn, found money for Rein’s fee. I paid for the odds and ends and the petrol myself. Each time there were nearly 100 children in the hall.

I looked through the old papers — there were ten sessions on Tuesdays at 18.00:

• 05.02.2008 “What do you need to know about the video camera? How to handle it?” — a quality image, frame rate, sharpness, exposure, aperture, colour temperature, analogue and digital recording;
• 12.02.2008 “How to find your subject? The idea of the film” — the story told, written, in pictures and on film;
• 19.02.2008 “Film language” — long shot, medium shot, close-up and detail, camera angle, the moving image;
• 26.02.2008 “Landscape. The plant kingdom” — the shot, the frame, the episode, conflict and development in a film;
• 04.03.2008 “What must a nature filmmaker know and be able to do more than others?” — every living being has its own world;
• 11.03.2008 “Bird films” — telephoto shooting, the tripod, hiding;
• 18.03.2008 “Wildlife films” — how to enter an animal’s world;
• 25.03.2008 “Insect films” — the level of the grass layer, macro shooting;
• 01.04.2008 “What to do with the footage” — reviewing, assessing, selecting;
• 08.04.2008 “Editing and sound” — arranging on the computer, sound backgrounds, text and music.

In my opinion the course had a good and working logic. Even I tried to think along about what to pass on and how. How much I was able to is another matter.

I wanted to put a camera in the hall to record the course. Rein was against it — it spoils the atmosphere and is of no use; he wanted us to film it separately afterwards for the record. It was never filmed. Even this list of lectures has survived only thanks to Arne Timm from Loodusring and his care.

At the same time I ended up for a while helping an acquaintance run Viru Folk in Käsmu. There I developed a small interest in making live broadcasts on the internet. At that time it was new and very exciting for me as an IT enthusiast. I looked it up — on 24.03.2010 we founded IT Rotid OÜ to do such things. For the broadcasts we needed to film with cameras. The interest in live internet broadcasts brought me closer to cinema for the second time, and closer to Rein too.

At that time I lived in Triin’s flat on Sõle Street in Tallinn. Triin was from the Käsmu Maritime Museum. Rein liked my ideas about broadcasts. The things I filmed with at that time could not really be called cameras. That came from lack of money, of course. At some point Rein brought me his old, taped-up Canon XL1 to use. I still remember — when he visited at Sõle and was teaching me to use the camera, he showed me the peculiarities of holding this camera on a tripod. That was probably his usual comparison — a camera must be held more tenderly than a woman.

Rein’s interest in new things could be felt later too. In 2018, when I had only my first drone, my comrade Peeter Simm and I went to try it out at his place in Läänemaa. Rein’s interest was very practical. He had the idea of filming the life of the upper grass layer with a drone. That day there was a strong, gusty storm. It turned out that his idea does not work, because the propellers make the blades of grass move.

10 August 2018 at Rein’s country home https://youtu.be/A8NgtQSpZZU

Even today, although I knew the situation, my hand dialled Rein’s number on the phone …

The same sadness was in my soul in 2021. Then Jaak Johanson, who helped me, a simple IT enthusiast, to flirt with the world of music, disappeared from my life.

Rein’s comrade Enn Säde pointed out the obituary on the Film Union’s site: https://kinoliit.ee/uudised/rein-maran-95