Looking through photos.. wanted to make sure I post this…
This was taken on the road to Dolinovka.. a 300km gravel road that, when drive, creates the largest clouds of dust i’ve ever seen on a road that one would drive 50mph on….
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Finally back..
The last three days were a bit of a “whirlwind” and now we are all safe and sound after travelling for 24 hours.
As we progress with this project, we will continue to update this, post interesting tidbits, some sneaks of the movie, thoughts on the process and art behind what we’ve done and lots of stories.
After going to bed at 11 and waking up at 4:30.. im still adjusting and not sure if I can make a qualified blog post.. but I will post some stats and trivia about the trip below:
32 – total hours of footage captured during this initial trip
1000 – Estimated number of KM traveled throughout Kamchatka
20,000 – Frequently flyer miles earned per person
36 – number of hours stayed up each time we traveled between Petropavolsk and New York
“ochen horosho” – most frequently used Russian word said by all three americans
12 – Average number of hours the mosquito bites lasted after initial bite
5000 – ridiculus estimate of number of mosquitoes per square foot in Dolinovka by Chris while siting on a abandonned balcony
50+ – estimated number of horses that we have filmed in kamchatka
2/3 – fraction of horses that were “wild” or “not broken”
100+ – amount of times chris and gus tried to say “quiet on the set” and “cut” in russian while filming and got it wrong
5 – amount of abandonned buildings we filmed in
20+ – Estimated number of seperate locations filmed at during the trip
30+ – Estimate of total number of people [read cast and crew] involved in helping the production happen while in Russia
3 – Number of times Steve almost got trampled by a running horse while shooting
0 – number of live bears seen
3 - number of volcanoes skirting the city of petropavlovsk
2 – number of volcanoes seen acitvely smoking the last view days in Kamchatka
1 – number of people involved in the production who doesnt actively smoke
4 - number of puppies we came across on the trip
1/4 - fraction of total days puppies were on “set” with us
3000 – amount of photos taken on the trip
“Maslo Slevichnoy” – favorite russian word of crew [means CREAMY BUTTER]
Today we took a long drive to the other side of the bay.
It took about 20 minutes to drive 50km or so.. then another hour and a half to drive 10.
The road to the volcano was of course not paved, full of holes, and sometimes, close to a 40 degree incline. The road to the top of the adjoining volcano is actually a service road for a thermal power plant that heats and gives electricity to the entire city of Petropavlovsk. The road stretchs through the entirety of the mountains and gives access to all sorts of “nature things”; geysers, waterfalls, hot springs, tops of volcanoes, etc etc.
Anfisa told us a story of a large landslide. When they were originally building the plant, they would drive truckloads of workers to the plant location. On the road, there is a small lake near the base of the volcano. One morning, a truckload of men was driving up the volcano. The driver stopped the truck on the side of the road near the lake to fill up some water. At that exact moment, an extremely large side of the volcano collapsed, sending a HUGE landslide tumbling down and swallowing some of the lake and the entire truckload of men. The driver, still standing by the lake, was untouched. The truck was never found.
crazy.
We spent the majority of the day on the volcano, eating sandwiches, shooting some timelapse, catching some inserts, and realizing the vastness of Kamchatka.
This was another one of those “horse stories”.
Irina had come up with a part of the film that should be shot in an abandonned meat plant. The location was a little dodgy; a meat plant that had been shut down about 10 years ago, undergoing some SERIOUS deconstruction and repurposing. There was a large “lion” dog guarding the entrance to the place and the owners looked from afar as if they were not to happy with us rolling up unexpected.
Of course, these first impressions were a bit off. The people working at the ex-plant were VERY nice and helpful (at one point even bringing us extra extension cords and hot coffee!). The plant itself was a little dilapidated, but really, nothing THAT bad.
The dog was mean though. He did, at one point, fend off a pack of wild dogs running through the plant backroads.. but I wasnt about to show my thanks in a typical dog/pet sort of way.
GALLERY AFTER THE JUMP
Shooting on the street, we have the camera setting up to the side of the road. A man from the bottom of the hill comes walking past.
“don’t worry,” Irina shouts “we aren’t shooting you!”
“don’t worry,” the man replies, “I’m not shooting you either.”
I hope it was a joke.
We’ve been in petropavlovsk since Sunday early morning. We took a brief rest to recover from our dolinovka work and travel. However we have been back too shooting everyday since. We have, at this point, over 30 hours of footage and interviews. We traveled to a small farm o. The outskirts of city to shoot some beautiful scenes and were lucky enough to get some clear mountains with a small rainbow climbing over them. Today, we are going in quite the opposite direction, an abandonned meat plant in the center of the city. Crazy old machines, dramatic lighting and caved in roofs. You couldn’t build a set like this. More pictures to come
So we finally wrapped up shooting in Dolinovka. 8 days and 22 hours of footage later, we were satisfied and ready to settle down to a good meal and glass of vodka. Everyone had been so great in the village, so we wanted to have a big party with them, eat, drink, and just talk like normal people – not like a film crew. There was a rumor that it was going to be just a couple families, but once the village got wind we may have a party, it was clear we had to hold it in the “club”. – the club, by the way, is a midsized building that reminded me of my elementary school multi-purpose room. On the weekends, they have music, karaoke, and dancing for all the young kids in the village. 
But on this Friday night, we took over and had food, drinks, a cut of what we shot, and of course, dancing and singing.
Irina gave a great speech about the movie, about the people – “we were shooting places that, to them, might seem like garbage, but its for a reason. What they have been through as people, as a community, they had been through 3 regimes (soviet, perastroyka, and free market). In order to see what they had accomplished in those times, we needed to see the old (abandoned buildings, broken cars, and weathered faces) and the new (children, families and community).”
GALLERY AFTER THE JUMP
So, obviously, after driving on dusty roads and gravel for a week, the car gets dirty.
Anfisa really wanted to clean her car, so after a fairly long day of shooting, Gus offered to help her clean the car. He came up with a great idea – go to the “well” of the town, that has a hose coming from it and wash off the car. So him, Irina, and Anfisa drove there and started washing the car.
They apparently were used to hoses in the US, as the water from this well was a couple degrees ABOVE freezing..
You can see the pictures below..
**UPDATE** we found out that this was not the most legal thing to be doing.. we apologized profusely and all is well.. mistakes happen.
