Heeeeeej!

So time seems to have gone by?
I have been neglecting this space lately because it's been the most overwhelming time of my life, and sitting down and writing about it just felt WEIRD because I was in the middle of all of it and had to wait it out a little. You know what I mean? (You can ALWAYS find me on instagram though.)
I think this blog will have to be for more sporadic things. The big news or a random thought. These last couple of years I've felt bad for not blogging but I don't really feel that way anymore. So that feels good. This is my home base, that I will always come back to.

ANYWAYS! Here's what's been going on lately!

Lights Out had a sneak first screening at LA Film Festival in June. We really had no idea what to expect but there was a red carpet and a pre party and it was super glamorous. So it was a great rehearsal for the big premiere that was a month and a half away at that time.

We also had a screening at VidCon and it was AWESOME! More than 2000 teenagers screaming their heads off! It was magical, you guys!
I was overdressed, as always.

I went to my first ever Hollywood round table reading for a movie. Because I have a small part in Annabelle 2 that David is directing!
I actually didn't expect to get any part in it because there are not a lot of characters in the movie that would fit me, but there is one- and I got it! SO HAPPY!!!

We also took our usual evening strolls. Here's David up at the reservoir next to a huge Agave.

We kept furnishing and decorating our apartment. We bought a beautiful Jung Koch Quentell Pull down school chart that I've been drooling after for years.

We were invited to a super fancy party in Malibu. It was us and a a whole bunch of fancy people and celebrities. We are not really party animals, but there was AMAZING sushi (for free!), a beautiful ocean view and it was lots of fun people watching.

David started shooting Annabelle 2 on the Warner Bros studio lot and I got to roam around taking photos of cool set buildings.

And then I broke my rib. A week before the premiere. I just have the best luck.

People were so sweet and helpful, and I even got flowers from the Annabelle 2 crew and that made me so happy!

The weekend after was the Lights Out Press Junket. That was a crazy weekend. We did so many interviews, answering the same questions a million times over, and got to sign Lights Out posters (don't know what happened with them after).

Photo of a monitor with David taking a photo of us. So meta.

And then it was the 19th and the premiere for Lights Out.
I got my hair and makeup done by the amazing guiniushair and agostinamakeup. These two are just lovely!
You can see my mother in the background and the photo is taken by my dad. Because, yes! They came all the way from Sweden to share this experience with us!

Look! So glamorous! I thought "my first ever movie premiere- let's go full Old Hollywood Glam!"
The earrings are made by me, because OF COURSE!

LOVE this photo from the red (well, black) carpet!! My dad took it with his phone and I think it's the absolute best photo from the premiere. We're so cute! And look at all the photographers!
I think this was the peak of all the Craziness we've experienced during this entire adventure.

Here's another angle taken by our manager Jeremy (YES! I have representation now too! More on that later).

The dress is vintage and I bought it in Sweden two years ago. I have waited for the perfect occasion to wear it and when it became clear that Lights Out was about to become a movie I decided if there's a premiere I'm going to wear my red dress! It's just the most lovely dress.
The purse is from Cherry Pick Vintage and I actually gasped a little when I found it. It's pretty, weird and fun- all in one! That's what I call a PERFECT purse.

My parents were staying in LA for ten days so after the premiere I took it on myself to show them all the places I love in this strange and amazing city.
We went to Venice Canals.

And we saw the ocean (and I bought hat).

We went to the Bradbury building.

And the Getty museum.

There was a HUGE brush fire going on in the mountains outside LA wisping up sand into the air creating this mystical effect. The sun turned bright red and the entire sky was orange and post apocalyptic.

On my parent's last evening in LA I took them on a long walk up to the reservoir and over the hills.

After checking out the filmset one last time it was time for my parents to go back to Sweden. But first a photo!
It was so lovely having them here during this overwhelming and exciting experience. I am so happy they came here. Now they have seen all the places that mean a lot to me and they know how our place and neighborhood looks and they have shared a little bit of this adventure with us.

And last week our Swedish car got sent to its death. And you might wonder why that is important, but it just felt kind of significant. Bye Soggy, you were loved and we had so many adventures with you. Thank you!

We found a HUGE Lights Out poster to pose infront.

So, now we are on the other side of Lights Out. The movie is going FANTASTIC in theaters everywhere,and it just blows our minds that this even happened. Two years ago we were still in Sweden.

And then last Friday it premiered in Sweden. Getting messages and comments from friends, family and acquaintances has been the most overwhelming part of all of this. And it surprised me so much! I was not prepared for it! I think I thought some of my friends would go see it over the first week and some would not go see it at all because they don't like horror. But you know what? All of them went the first few days! My two best friends who HATE horror movies went the very first night! I was so emotional! And my highschool friends went yesterday and sent me a video of them chanting my name during the credits, waiting for my name to pop up in the list of actors. And when my name appeared they were just screaming! I have been watching that video at least forty times now, crying happy tears. You can see the clip here.

Oh, and about the representation I mentioned earlier! I now have managers and agents! I'm represented by Paradigm and Gotham Group so now this feels even more real for me. This actually led to so much more than just a one time crazy Hollywood experience. I'm believing in myself and I have people behind me, believing in me. This acting dream that I've had my entire life might actually take off!
Omg, I'm gonna start crying again soon if I don't stop.
It's emotional, you guys!

/Lotta

Hi!
We just had one of the craziest weekends so far in this fantastic Lights Out adventure we're on. Let's have a look, shall we? If any of you said no, I'm not listening to you; I'm gonna show you anyway!

We were invited to Youtube space in New York to hold a master class there about our journey from youtube to Hollywood. Since David is super busy prepping for Annabelle 2 we couldn't even stay the night, so it was the quickest New York trip ever. We had 8 hours there before we had to go back, but it was the most amazing 8 hours so it was definitely worth it.

We took the plane from LA late Friday evening and arrived in New York on Saturday morning. They had booked us a hotel room so we had somewhere to relax when we got there, but all we had time for was to take a shower and change clothes. Then we walked across the street to Chelsea Market where Youtube has their studios. Popped into a Starbucks first- my coffee headache was getting crazy!

It took awhile to find Youtube Space because the elevator door was hidden in the deepest hallways of Chelsea Market. It felt a little bit like trying to find Platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter.

They had built a set there inspired by the film set in the Lights Out feature. And then they had invited a few up-and-coming Youtubers to take part in making their own shorts in the Lights Out set. The youtubers will take inspiration from our short and the feature and make something that fit their channel.
Let's just stop here for a second and think about how crazy it is that the short that David and I made in our apartment in Gothenburg has led to this.
Okay. Let's move on.
Before the master class they wanted to show us the set, filming us at the same time to get our reactions.

Our reactions were like this. Happy and amazed.

Very very giggly.

If you've seen the trailer for Lights Out you'll notice how well they've captured the feel of each set. It was so weird to walk around there, because even though the things and the scale aren't the same it really did feel like we were on the Lights Out set. They did an amazing job recreating these rooms!

Fun with black light!

Here we are with Bettina and Bryan from Warner Bros Marketing.

Lurking around the mannequins.

After that it was time to get dolled up. As always we weren't prepared for this so I had already done my makeup, but since we were going to be on camera I could do with a little touching up.

Love this photo. I think it's funny that you can see David looking at the photo he took of me above here. So meta.

And then it was time! Here we are waiting in a little VIP area next to the stage while Bettina from Warner marketing presented us.

So Spooky!

It was so much fun! I love to do these things with David. It feels so good to be able to talk with people who are in the youtube business too because they get it. They understand what it takes and maybe we can give them something that helps them. We started on youtube and that's were our hearts are. This strange and amazing journey wouldn't have been possible without youtube and it's so important for us to be able to keep that part going. Just because we ended up in Hollywood doesn't mean we'll abandon youtube. The shorts we make are just as important to us as the feature films we will be making. The dream (and plan) is to combine the two, because it's not "either or" for us.

And here it seems like someone in the audience said something nice to us.

After that we went back to the Lights Out inspired set again to show it to the youtubers who are going to make their own shorts in there this week. I'll link to all of them when their videos are up, so stay tuned!

I think this is such a nice photo of me. Hair on fire!

David telling a story about when he filmed a scene in the room that looked like this in the feature.

Typical David gesture while being interviewed.

When we were done with everything at youtube space we all went to a restaurant for drinks and food. We had to take a few photos of us in New York as proof, since we were there such a short amount of time.

Here's everybody!

David wore his Lights Out t shirt. I was going to do that too, but it just didn't feel right. And sometimes you have to just go with that feeling!

Proof of kissing in New York!

I also had to take a photo of Chelsea Market. It's quite the crappy tourist photo but I'm including it anyways because: PROOF!

Our driver was already waiting for us when we got back.

The photographer loved my shoes and said he wanted to take a photo of them and naming it "Portrait of actress Lotta Losten" so the last thing we did before stepping into the car and saying bye bye to everybody was snapping this photo. I made my best to pose with my feet, haha.

And then we took the plane back to LA. We got home almost exactly 24 hours after we left.
And that was that crazy New York day!

Hej!
Sometimes time just goes and I realize I've been doing things and my blog hasn't felt it. I'm not even talking about you guys reading this because I know you won't care. But I don't want to hurt my blog's feelings, you know? Okay, maybe you don't know, but anywhoooo.
I was looking through my photos and thought 67 pics are probably like... 37... pics too many? So I tried to find a theme and when I couldn't do that I decided to make up a completely dumb theme and just roll with it.
So here it is: three things or places or stuff that happened maybe a month ago. I know, I know: I'm SO up to date here. But humor me, okay?

You remember when David and I were in San Francisco, right? The long drive there featured a bunch of truck stops in the middle of nowhere, and on one of them I decided to look around a little and maybe snap some photos.

I struck gold with this car cemetery in the desert!

AND it was also the home of a whole bunch of feral kittens!

I mean. That is Truck Stop Gold right there.

I also convinced David that we needed to take some jumping photos, so you could say I was happy already- not even close to San Francisco!
I actually really like driving places with David. Well, I don't drive because I don't have a driver's license (I KNOW!) but so often when we're going somewhere by car and we're in the middle of nowhere and there's music and just roads and we are in frickin' USA and life is so wonderful and I'm just STRUCK by this magical feeling of happiness and I don't even KNOW because it's not like it was any different the morning before but it's like the open road gives me perspective or something and yeah, this was one long ass sentence so I'll put a period on this now.

And our hotel in SF was old and decorated in a wonderfully freaky way. I mean, this photo is proof enough, right?

We had a wonderful couple of days in SF and it felt awesome to be able to stroll around in a city where it's more people than just me and the homeless out walking. (Seriously LA! The sidewalks are meant to walk on! Try it for once!)

Pretty view and loveydovey us.

Around easter my sister, her kids and their friend Rebecka came to visit us. I was so excited! Here I'm sitting and waiting and listening for sounds of a jet lagged bunch of Swedish people tumbling up the stairs.

It was so great to have them all here! I took them to all the great spots.

My niece Hilda- Already a star in Hollywood.

We went to LA Zoo of course!

And I took a selfie with a giraffe.

And we went to Santa Monica pier where it was windy as all hell.

Alfred running on the beach!

I took my sister, Sara, to UCB for a musical improv show that I love- and she of course loved it too!

When they had went back to Sweden again I felt a little like this. So tired. And the apartment was so quiet. And strange. And happy that it went so well- now we know they can come back many times!

The last thing/place/whatever is a Sunday hike to where they shot the tv series M*A*S*H. It was quite the long walk there and when we reached the spot it turned out to be the least exciting part of the entire hike.
But that doesn't mean it was boring because OMG this was a beautiful place!
I found an abundance of spooky trees, for one thing!

I climbed a few of them. And balanced high up and hoped that I wouldn't fall before the self timer had gone off so I at least would get a nice photo before I'd break all the bones in my body.
I didn't fall though. Surprising everybody (well, David), but mostly myself.

The mountains and green fuzzy hills give me so many creative ideas, you have NO idea.

Just like road trips with this guy makes me indescribably happy, seeing wondrous nature like this together makes me smile from ear to ear. It just smacks me in the head: the beautiful surroundings, the adventure, the love. And that's how you know it's kissing selfie time!

That was all from me today.
And, can we just pretend the theme was solid and perfect and you bought it completely? Okay? Thanks.

/Lotta

Hej!
High time for a new blog post, right?

These past couple of weeks have been a constant stream of reminders of how crazy our lives have become. Since Lights Out went viral we haven't been able to stop and think and I believe that it'll be years before we know for sure what all this meant for us.
When I was a kid I used to hope and dream for something like this. I wanted to be an actor, I wanted to be recognized for my work. And sometimes I dreamed of being famous. You know in that childish way of thinking; that being a celebrity must be the best thing ever. Being adored by fans, going on talkshows and having you're name in all the big magazines. I don't want to be famous in that way anymore, not really. It scares me to think of the lives huge celebrities have. Never being free to just go outside without paparazzi chasing you, always having to be a perfect version of yourself- a version that probably isn't even real, always being judged on your appearance, and so on.
I just want to act and make movies.
But I can't lie and say that these two couple of weeks haven't been awesome. Because they have made that child in me scream "DREAM COME TRUE!!!". It's been lovely, no scary side effects- just crazy fun!
So let me tell you about it, okay?

A couple of weeks ago we went to CinemaCon in Las Vegas to promote Lights Out. We flew in a private plane filled with celebrities. Samuel L Jackson, Alexander Skarsgård (yay, fellow swede!), Christoph Waltz, Vera Farmiga, Eddie Redmayne and like twenty other famous actors were on the same flight as us. My mouth was turned into a huge smile the entire trip. And then we arrived in Vegas and realized almost all of Hollywood was there, and we were the only people invited that no one recognized. It was a crazy day.
I was introduced to Jared Leto and I can't remember a single thing we talked about. We did a press line- that's when journalists stand in a line and the actors and directors walk from interview to interview and answer the same question a million times over. David and I sometimes had to wait a little after we had done one interview before going on to the next, because we're not nearly as interesting as Amy Adams or Will Smith...

And then we took press photos on a red carpet thing. Almost like the press line when we talked to journalists, but here it was the photographers that stood in line taking our picture. We look so calm and collected here, but let me tell you- it was nerve wracking!

It was so cool to see the Lights Out teaser poster at Caesar's Palace!

This picture is here to demonstrate how tired we were after that day in Vegas.

Last saturday we were tagged in a photo on instagram from the event Monsterpalooza in Pasadena just outside of Los Angeles. It was a photo of one of the displays there, one that was a tribute to our short Lights Out. We found out it was going to be there the next day too so on sunday we drove to Pasadena. Happy and excited, as you can tell.

Look at this thing! It's a sculpture made by The Scary Closet and it's so incredibly detailed it's crazy! The guy who made this, Mark, was super nice and we were so happy to be able to see him and his work in person.

You do know that I am both the woman and the monster in the short Lights Out, right? Yep, it's true! That's me!
If you don't believe me you can see this little clip on how David altered my face to look like the monster.

We got to sign the doll in the back of the head, and then some fans came up and wanted to take pictures with us, which felt really cool.

Then on tuesday David and I were guests on the podcast Modern Horror. It's actually been a real dream come true for me to be on a podcast. As the daughter of a radio journalist I think it's now in my genes to love being on the radio. Every time I've had the opportunity to be on Swedish radio (three or four times, because of Lights Out when it went viral) I've loved it so much and podcast has a more relaxed and casual tone to it that I really like.
Anyways, the guys over at Modern Horror were awesome, and if you want to listen to the podcast you can do that here. We're on at 32 minutes into the program if you want to go right to our part of the show. We talk about the entire journey of turning a short into a feature and the crazy adventure we're on right now.

On Wednesday David and I were invited to our first Hollywood Movie Premiere. It was for the Key and Peele movie Keanu. We really looked forward to seeing what happens at an event like this, since we have our own to attend in July when Lights Out premieres. We saw it as studying for the finals, sort of. So obviously I wanted to look like I fit in.

I love how David sneaks into my super glam selfie!

And then last Thursday David and I went to California State University Fullerton. The film students there (CSUF FMAA) had organized a screening of all of our shortfilms and behind the scenes videos and then we did a Q and A. It was absolutely wonderful!
We felt so welcome and like our story could actually inspire them in their future work. That is the best feeling for us. After the Q and A we took pictures and selfies with almost everyone and we even signed a few autographs. I've never felt more like a celebrity!
When we drove home afterwards it was with warm cheeks and hearts, and I can definitely say that THAT night was the best Dream Come True moment of them all. It was real and honest and just perfect.

Every day we are struck by this feeling of WOW! But every day we are also just living our lives. And I think that the thing that has hit me the most in this adventure is how we experience all of it the same way we would everything else in our lives. We are (obviously) the same people we were before we made a short that went viral, and every day that goes by I realize that I'm never going to turn into someone else. So if I someday end up on a talkshow I will probably, most certainly, be a total wreck before and during the interview, and I will have red cheeks and I'll talk a little too fast, and snort when I laugh, and I will for sure tell a story that is a little bit embarrassing for myself, but you know what? That's how I want it to go, because that cool and collected person from my childhood dreams just isn't me. And the Dream Come True moments wouldn't feel as huge if I wasn't acting like myself. Horse giggle and all.