AYE MATIES: PRODUCTION DIARY #02

A Story Needs a Crew

When Dino – or Dean, as Old Salt called him in English – returned home after their meeting in Vienna, he needed time to process everything he had just heard.

There was this extraordinary character: an old seafarer, a captain whose past felt as though it had been lifted straight from a great adventure story. There was the idea for AYE MATIES. There were images of ships, distant shores, riddles, storms and a journey whose true scale was only beginning to reveal itself.

And there was one question Dean could not get out of his mind:

Who was Old Salt, really?

The Mystery of Old Salt

Dean began going through the Captain’s story again and again in his mind.

What Old Salt had told him over coffee was far more than the outline for a new television format. It felt like the foundation of a backstory. The beginning of a legend.

Where had Old Salt come from?What had he experienced at sea?What had he lost?What decisions had turned him into the man who, many years later, was now sitting in Vienna with a vision for a new adventure?

Almost without noticing, Dean began developing a history for the Captain. Scenes, emotions and fragments of a life started taking shape in his mind.

But very quickly, he realised there was a challenge.

Old Salt should have a history.But Old Salt also had to remain a mystery.

If everything about the Captain was explained from the beginning, part of his fascination would disappear. The audience needed to feel that this man carried stories, scars and secrets with him – without being told the full truth all at once.

So what could they do?

How could they reveal his past while still protecting the mystery at the heart of his character?

A Story Told Through Music

Then another idea was born.

Perhaps Old Salt’s past did not need to be explained in the conventional way. Perhaps it did not need long flashbacks or endless dialogue.

Perhaps his story could be heard.

The first piece of music Dean had created for the trailer had already shown what sound could do for the world of AYE MATIES. In just a few minutes, music had given Old Salt’s vision atmosphere, emotion and identity.

So why stop at one track?

The story of Old Salt could unfold through the soundtrack itself. Each song could reveal one fragment of his past: a memory, a lost love, a storm, a betrayal, a battle, an unanswered question or a longing that had followed him across time and sea.

Not everything would need to be explained.Not every clue would lead immediately to an answer.But with every song, the audience could come a little closer to understanding the Captain.

What had begun as the search for music for a first trailer suddenly became something much larger:

AYE MATIES needed an entire album.

Not merely background music, but a soundtrack that would become part of the storytelling itself.

A musical treasure map into the past of Old Salt.

Song by song.Chapter by chapter.Secret by secret.

The First Call to the Crew

While the idea of the album began taking shape, Dean also understood something else very clearly:

A world like AYE MATIES could not be created by two people alone.

It needed a crew.

It needed people who not only understood their craft, but who were willing to step into an adventure whose route had not yet been fully charted. People capable of seeing the potential in an idea, while also being honest enough to question it.

Dean began making calls.

The first went to Silas Pross, his Director of Photography.

This story needed a cinematic eye. It needed someone who could look at a coastline, an old harbour or a narrow street and understand not only whether it was beautiful, but whether it could carry a story.

Silas had exactly that eye.

AYE MATIES could not look like an ordinary production. Old Salt’s world needed atmosphere. Vastness. Wind. Salt in the air. Sunlight on weathered stone. Dark harbours, open horizons and old streets that seemed to hide secrets around every corner.

Dean told Silas about Old Salt. About their meeting. About the music. About the Captain’s vision and the idea of bringing his mysterious world to the screen.

Silas listened calmly.

As always, he was not someone to be immediately swept away by a grand idea. He asked questions. He remained careful. A little sceptical.

And that was exactly what the project needed.

Because a vision needs enthusiasm.

But a real production also needs people who look closely.

Searching for Old Salt’s World

Together with Old Salt, they made their first practical decision:

They had to go out and find the world in which the story could begin.

Not yet with a full production crew. Not yet with cameras rolling on the final scenes. First, they needed to search for locations. They needed to discover whether the images in their minds could exist in the real world.

The neighbouring coastal regions offered a natural starting point:

Italy. Slovenia. Croatia.

Old harbour towns. Mediterranean streets. Rocky shores. Fishing boats. Open sea. Places where the modern world still carried traces of another time.

For Old Salt’s arrival, they needed more than beautiful backgrounds. They needed locations that could become part of the story.

A beach could not simply be a beach. It had to feel like a shore onto which a mysterious Captain might be washed from another world.

A town could not simply be picturesque. It had to become the place where Old Salt would take his first bewildered steps into modern life.

The search had begun.

Familiar Places Through New Eyes

For Dean, the journey was not entirely into unknown territory.

For many years, he had been one of the leading television producers in the field of travel programming, creating material that had been broadcast across Europe. Coastal towns, beaches, promenades, harbours and Mediterranean alleyways had long been part of his professional life.

Many of the places they now visited for AYE MATIES, he had already seen before – some of them countless times.

But this time was different.

He was no longer looking at them through the eyes of a travel producer searching for beautiful destinations. He was looking for the world of Old Salt.

And he wanted to see these places again together with Silas.

Because Silas would see them differently. Through light, framing, atmosphere, texture and movement. He would see where the camera could be placed, how a character might enter a scene, how the sea would look in the background, and whether a location could support the cinematic language they were beginning to imagine.

Together with Old Salt, they travelled from one coastal possibility to the next.

They looked at beaches.They studied harbors.They walked through old town streets.They considered camera angles, sunlight, weather and movement.They imagined Old Salt arriving, disoriented and alone, in a world that no longer resembled the one he knew.

The question followed them everywhere:

Could this become part of AYE MATIES?

The Locations Are Chosen

After two days travelling through three countries, the answer finally became clear.

For the beach scenes, they chose Novigrad in Croatia.

Its coastline offered the atmosphere they had been searching for: a place where the sea itself could deliver Old Salt into the story. A shore on which his arrival could feel mysterious, lonely and cinematic.

This was where the Captain could first appear.

Washed ashore.Out of place.Carrying the weight of a past the audience would not yet understand.

For the town scenes, they chose Izola in Slovenia.

With its Mediterranean character, authentic coastal atmosphere and streets filled with life, Izola felt like the right setting for Old Salt’s first encounter with the modern world.

A man seemingly shaped by another age would suddenly find himself surrounded by things he could not understand: everyday life, modern behaviour, unfamiliar objects and a world moving at a pace entirely different from his own.

Izola had warmth, history and charm. But it also had exactly the timeless quality needed to make the collision between past and present believable.

The search had given them more than two beautiful locations.

It had given AYE MATIES its first real stage.

Old Salt now had a shore on which to arrive.He had streets through which to wander.The story had begun finding its place in the real world.

The Last Evening in Piran

With the locations selected, Old Salt, Dean and Silas decided to spend the final evening of their scouting journey together in Piran.

It was the perfect place to bring those first two days to a close: a historic coastal town stretching out into the Adriatic, surrounded by the sea that had inspired every part of the project.

Over dinner, the location search gradually became something more.

It became their first real creative production meeting by the sea.

They spoke about scenes.About images.About how Old Salt should first appear on screen.About what the audience should feel before they even understood who he was.About the soundtrack, the mystery and the visual language that would shape AYE MATIES.

Some ideas were practical.Some were ambitious.Some probably sounded almost impossible at the time.

But for the first time, they were no longer simply discussing a vision in theory.

They had stood on the beaches.They had walked the streets.They had looked out across the sea and imagined the Captain stepping into those very places.

The idea had begun to anchor itself in reality.

Only a short time earlier, AYE MATIES had been a WhatsApp message, a conversation over coffee and an unexpected MP3 file in a chat.

Now there was a developing story.There was the idea for an entire soundtrack album.There was a cinematographer on board.There were real locations for the first scenes.And there were three men sitting together by the Adriatic, already planning what would come next.

The shore had been found.The town had been found.The first crew had begun to form.

And over dinner in Piran, the next chapter of AYE MATIES was already beginning to take shape.