With the onset of winter, the shooting of the new historical series “Chronicles of the Russian Revolution” by Andrei Konchalovsky began.
Photo: Artem KOSTENKO
… With the onset of winter, the shooting of the new historical series “Chronicles of the Russian Revolution” by Andrei Konchalovsky began. In it, the director tries to impartially investigate the cause of the historical events that led to the collapse of the autocracy in Russia. The film is planned to be in black and white. The shooting was preceded by a popular casting. Konchalovsky announced national tests on the networks of him, invited people who looked like historical figures to send photos of him. However, in the end, the role of young Lenin went not to a man in the street, but to a professional actor who had previously played Mishka Yaponchik, Yevgeny Tkachuk. Konchalovsky’s wife always gets the best roles in the master’s films. She this time she got the role of Ilyich’s lover Inessa Armand.
… The meeting of extras was scheduled for 7 o’clock in the morning near the Polezhaevskaya metro station. An attempt was made to divide 600 people into groups by gender and line up in pairs by foremen in orange vests. In the extras, people complained, saying that at first they were engaged with another organization that paid each participant 2,000 rubles for a day of shooting and another 1,000 rubles for trying on a suit. “Now the rate has been reduced to 1,500 rubles and the surcharges have been removed, and the money saved goes somewhere,” a regular told us in the crowd. “In the depths of my soul, I was glad that I signed up as a soldier: they are paid up to (!) 300 rubles more.”
Artem Kostenko on the set of Konchalovsky played a nobleman who surrendered to make a revolution.
Photo: Artem KOSTENKO
“We were sitting in buses, taken out of the city. On the way, contracts were handed out for signing, according to which Konchalovsky received full ownership of any photos, videos and audio with our participation, but we, on the contrary, were He prohibited being on the site without surveillance, smoking outside the assigned place, taking photos, communicating with the press… Well, at least they didn’t prohibit breathing, and that’s good!” Said the extras’ participant.
“I sat in the bus for a long time, periodically dressed people returned from the locker room, they were taken away, others got on,” said Artyom Kostenko, a participant of the extras. – After three hours of waiting, I already thought that Konchalovsky would not need my services this time. But then a foreman came running up, panting and reproachful: “Why are they still on the bus, not on the site?”
At the entrance to the large hangar, where the dressing tables were located, a guy with a broken arm encouraged everyone with jokes and divided them into three lines: protesters, women and soldiers. “Having endured the last shift, I came across the dresser look. When assessing me, the girl said that she would not have the size of a soldier, she had to go to the protesters. After 10 minutes, a young man grabbed my hand and led me to the costume designer, where I was given a coat, scarf, hat, and pants, and allowed to leave my shoes. I asked for gloves, but the dressers said the extras stole them a week ago. The pants were 4 sizes too big so I pulled them right over my jeans. As a result, they turned me into a former nobleman who, according to legend, was imbued with communist ideals and supported the Revolution.
Photo: Artem KOSTENKO
In the dressing room, our correspondent was glued on a mustache and beard, and just above his own, then blush was applied to his cheeks and neck, and at the end his hands were covered with a layer of makeup. “At the exit, they offered to give me sweet tea with cookies in the nearest store and wait for further instructions. In practice, there was no sugar or biscuits, and for tea I would have to wait until the local samovar boiled, so I immediately went to the mound under construction. I told Konchalovsky Kostenko about his movie everyday life. – In the training, they once again tried to convey to us as clearly as possible that any kind of shooting and the use of mobile phones on the site are prohibited, reinforcing this with the fact that last time two were fined and expelled For this . Allegedly, Konchalovsky himself forbids it. Well, we take our word for it… We were led to a huge wooden box built on a hill. Its entire interior surface was covered with green cloth (chromokey) to facilitate the later combination of the fragments. There was no roof: rain was mercilessly pouring down on us, and from below – melting snow, puddles and slush. They divided us into teams of 15-20 people and spread out around the site. They put us right in a puddle, but when the foreman turned around, together we took a couple of steps forward, coming out onto a hill. In front were steps with the bases of the columns, also covered in green. They filmed us from various angles… The assistant director came out and announced that, according to the plot, Lenin himself was performing in the building, and we all really wanted to see him. First there was a rehearsal, then a double, after which the assistant director ran up and started pulling and pulling: some actors did not take off their hats or modern glasses. He said that if he repeats himself, he will poison him home without paying, and if someone puts a phone in the frame, he will be shot on the spot… The next scene is recruiting volunteers to arrest the provisional government. The actor who said the lines was constantly lost, filming for an hour… The shooting of the next scene brought us a year earlier: the founding meeting was taking place. Part of the extras became passing deputies, presenting mandates, the second – without mandates, who are trying to break through the guards. After the tenth take, the game trailer turned into a real one: the made-up soldiers began to slam with rifle butts, and their opponents began to throw them to the ground. A couple more shots and a real revolution would start on the site. Apparently, anticipating this, Konchalovsky, who was watching what was happening from the monitors, gave the command “Halt!”.
“After a short break, in which we were offered to drink boiled water (the tea had also run out by that time), we were sent to the rally,” recalls Kostenko. – At first, the assistant directors tried to separate us for a long time, dragging each other. When the director was satisfied after the rehearsal, they handed us banners and slogans. The next shot: we shout revolutionary songs and shout slogans, walking next to Nevsky. During the shoot, we were so confused that everyone forgot their seats. After the fifteenth take, the torment was over. Now we were stationed on both sides of Nevsky Prospekt, and we began to pretend that we were supposedly looking at the protesters (who had just been played by ourselves). In the editing stage, these two scenes will be merged into one.
By nightfall, the extras were taken off the site and even eaten for lunch. Everyone was already ready to go remove their makeup and change their clothes, when they suddenly lined up, selected two dozen soldiers and sent them back into the firefight. “Good! Let them work out your extra 300 rubles! ”- the others were malicious. But it was not her fate to quickly remove her makeup and change clothes: a huge queue formed and crowded, the brigade members tried to separate the women, the protesters and the soldiers, but without much success. “Someone of the extras got sick and they took him to the ambulance,” Kostenko recalls, calling the shooting Konchalovsky “hell. ” – As a result, changing clothes took about three hours, and then another hour we sat in the buses, waiting for the fare due to us. Fortunately, there were no problems with the latter – 1,500 rubles were available. I myself promised to shoot in such conditions. My legs got wet, I got wet my back ached, I wanted to eat, I felt like I had been unloading boxes all day. And for all this about 1500 rubles! No, let it! Well, the future series now has one more viewer: now I will look for myself on the screen.
