How was filmed
What the star is burning about?
Crisis panic levels during the making of this project has risen to exorbitant heights. But even when the water level is even with the deck level, I'm the kind of captain who won't stand proudly and look into the sky, but will patch holes in the ship by whatever means at hand I have myself.
– Victoria Klipova
Backstage from the shooting:
St. Petersburg,
we need a bed and an artist!
For now, I want to tell you about the people in St Petersburg who took out, endured, helped, got in touch and grabbed us as we were rolling downhill.
We were ditched by a production designer who had called us to live and film in his flat. Eventually he stopped answering me, that's how I left Moscow with 3 actors in my car to the city, where we had nowhere to stay and film.
I called Anna Smigelskaya, she provided us with a flat, and Evgeny Glukhovsky and, then completely unknown to us, Dmitry Zubarev brought a bed for us to sleep in.
There is no designer, and he is still needed. I write to the director Vyacheslav, who paints pictures, with whom I once played an actress in productions, and whose wife Charlotte was the art director in my previous film work, She and She. He agrees, he even liked the script. Phew!
The ready set takes one hour!
We're shooting a morning walkthrough and we still don't have a spot to shoot the next flat at 15:00. Vyacheslav and Zhenya storm the internet space in passages from location to location in search of any suitable flat. And they eventually find, at some quarantine discount (thanks to the quarantine!), an awesome apartment on Nevsky Prospect, the center of the city.
We tell everyone the new address.
Minutes are counting: the rented flat is uninhabited, and we need to find the decor and interior. We go to the designer's flat and take out half of the artist's house for the shoot, and in an hour Ness's household is assembled.
The flat turned out to be much cooler than we had planned.
Non-sleeping mode
The shoot ended at 7:00, leaving for the next location at 8:00. I remember the day I laid down to sleep for an hour: I got 3 calls, one person accidentally woke me up, another came in to ask for something. I realised that my limits had expanded, that there was an extra battery somewhere that kept me from stalling. I guess it's called a work's enjoy.
Because my eyes, despite the bruises, are on fire.
Thanks to these guys!
Thanks to the wonderful cameraman Ekaterina Saenko, who was with us on the longest shift of the project, our record of 22 hours. By the morning of the second day, because of the change in location, we were looking for a new solution to scenes with our sleep-deprived meanderings. But in the end, whatever we do, we get it right.
Thanks to the actors: the hardworking Daria Repina, the most charming Evgeny Ibragimov, the positive Egor Drozdov, the reliable Evgeny Glukhovsky, the refined Valentin Vorobiev, and his daughter Ekaterina Ivina - for their patience, improvisation, the ability to find solutions rather than create problems, the ability to experiment and simply accept the circumstances around them.
Thanks to our make-up Margarita Kryuchkova, Dmitry Zubarev for help with sound and for backstages, Sergey Efremov for sound, Dmitry Sazonenko for his willingness to come from Moscow for the shooting. Vyacheslav Komarnitsky for the artwork, Anna Smigelskaya for the beloved clapboard, Eugene Glukhovsky for assistance at all stages.
It's a hardworking fairy tale on Nevsky, which brought our creative ideas to life, gave us a kick in the ass, and we're getting back on our feet, now we' coming more confident, we're picking up the pace!
Vrrrum-vrrrum!