Most exterior scenes in Finland were shot in Halikko in a span of ten weeks, usually starting from 2:00 a.m. or late at night. Twenty more days were shot in a studio in Stockholm, Sweden. Actor Martti Suosalo said that he got paid FIM 3,000 a day, and actor Merja Larivaara received a FIM 160,000 salary for the whole production (she later sued Pekka Lehto's production company "Kino Finlandia" over a holiday pay disagreement).
Marja-Leena Mikkola originally wrote the story in a form of libretto. A 16-minute promo film based on the script was shot in 1990 in Kaapelitehdas, Finland. One of the early concepts was also to use rear projection in the style of old Hollywood movies, which would have been filmed in a studio in Denmark.