Česky
1) Is this your first shoot related to hospital and healthcare?
Yes. It's not my first public service shoot - I've done a clip for public transport - but it's certainly not my first hospital or healthcare shoot. I was quite scared about it because people associate healthcare with the pharmaceutical industry and massive advertising and hospitals with problems - either their own health problems or the problems of the Czech healthcare system in general, but the hospital management gave me a fairly free hand, they agreed that it would be a bit of fun and we also agreed that it shouldn't sound like "take a pill" but a bit more like "realise that your health is in your hands."
2) Did you have to prepare for the shoot in advance?
Of course. It's like making a music video about space. We encounter it every day, but we don't understand it at all. I wrote the script, so I had to absorb quite a lot. I found that consulting doctors in the living room over coffee wasn't enough, so I went to the hospital for a day and a night and had various tests done. My wife was worried that they were sure to find something, and she wasn't far from the truth. Although a hospital stay is probably never downright pleasant by nature, it was quite nice in the end and helped me a lot.
3) How was the collaboration with the actors and also the doctors and nurses involved in the shoot?
Well the actors were a million! I wrote the roles for them on the spot, so there we assumed they wouldn't have to struggle too much, but we shot something in two days that would normally take a week to film, and we definitely couldn't have done it without these actors. It was also fun because I know the guys (Viktor Limr and Radek Valenta) well and Adéla (Gondíková) is of the same blood type, so we kept our perspective and common sense even in the most difficult moments.
Of course, the hospital staff performed the same feat. So at one point I thought I was going to get "eaten" when I basically asked all the staff to freeze in front of the hospital for a quarter of an hour in January for one shot, but they didn't eat me, and the doctors and nurses who appear in the series were pros not only medically, but they also mastered their role in front of the camera, which was certainly not easy for them. Well, the head nurse from the internal medicine ward (Jiri Pichlik) basically held several film professions - besides acting, he helped with the script and basically acted as a producer during the filming. Thank you all very much.
