On May 6, 2011, the shooting period of the disaster film «Metro», based on the novel of the same name by Dmitry Safonov, began. A ProfiCinema.ru correspondent visited the set of the picture literally a week after filming began.
Visitors to Pavilion 4 of the Gorky Film Studio may well feel like prisoners of a dungeon: illumination is practically zero, but there is a sense of dampness and at the same time stuffiness. Almost the entire crew is wearing tall rubber boots, the splashing of water can be heard, and in the center of the pavilion stand massive sets imitating a metro bunker — this is where the final scenes of the film are now being filmed.
According to the plot, in one of the metro tunnels between stations a crack forms, which leads to water from the Moscow River bursting into the metro, threatening death to the hundred passengers of a train. To realize the project, 9 million dollars will be spent (this includes funds from the film company «PROFIT», its partners and the Cinema Fund), which today is an impressive sum for Russian cinema. At the same time, the film's executive producer Igor Tolstunov is confident about the feasibility of investing such funds in a single picture: «I believe that this project has significant commercial potential, because it is a genre picture – a disaster film, and at the same time everything is based on a human story. Locked together, these two elements make the picture interesting».
The shooting period will last until autumn, and it was decided to begin with the shooting of the elements most complex from a staging point of view. Thus, for several days in a row they have been filming a scene in which the heroine of Ekaterina Shpitsa, who is according to the plot an asthmatic, drops her inhaler into the water right during an attack of the disease. The other heroes who survived the catastrophe try to help her and retrieve it, but the water level rises, and doing so becomes more and more problematic… «Who is who usually becomes clear not in good times but in bad ones: war, fire, earthquake. One turns from a good person into a bad one, and a bad one – into a good one, or conversely, a bad person confirms that he is bad,— cinematographer Sergey Astakhov speaks about the dramatic component, for whom not only the moments related to the visuals but also the film's meaningful content are important. – We are shooting in a very strong and complex genre. We need to reveal the depth of human relationships against the backdrop of the catastrophe.
The director of the picture Anton Megerdichev is not working with large-scale material for the first time («Shadow Boxing 2: Revenge», «The Dark Side of the Moon»). «In this project I was attracted both by the spectacle and by a sufficiently deep development of a psychological story. For me it's a combination of two parallel stories: a technogenic catastrophe and a catastrophe of human relations. Moreover, this catastrophe is in everything: in a single city, and in a single family. When you combine this, there is volume in it; it is interesting to show one thing through another, the general through the particular. It's a serious chance to make intelligent and spectacular cinema», the director said.
In between takes, actors and their doubles walk around the pavilion, and because of the dim lighting it is not always possible to tell who is who, which gives rise to a feeling of surrealism in what is happening. It seems generally amazing how they manage to shoot a film practically in complete darkness. Cinematographer Sergey Astakhov reveals some secrets of creating the image: «We have a very good German camera called Alexa, it is quite advanced technologically. It is close in type to RED but in some ways surpasses it (for example, in color rendering), and that is important, since we are shooting a film, about 70 percent of whose action takes place in complete darkness, in conditions of low illumination. For this it is necessary to control the material on set, so I deliberately decided not to shoot on film stock». As for the overall aesthetic solution of the film, no formal techniques will be used; the main thing is authenticity: «My main goal is to achieve conviction in the image. Therefore any formal approach related to the picture would only destroy this trust of the viewer. In this case we have chosen the most authentic image possible, which allows us to achieve recognizability of the story (for example, in the everyday scenes when the characters ride in a metro car). The greatest praise for the picture in terms of image would be if viewers could believe in the plausibility of what is happening».
Production designer Pavel Novikov, who is also responsible for the visual solution of the film, speaks about the most complex area of his work: «This project is, in its own way, unique, because filming with water on such a scale is being done for the first time in our cinema. We are building large and complex sets, they are rather heavy and powerful constructions able to withstand the pressure of water. Also, we will build a 117-meter tunnel, it will be flooded by one third, a rather complex construction, not yet accomplished by anyone». Another feature of the «Metro» project is that scale models are necessary to realize what has been planned, because using computer graphics in this case is very problematic: water is very difficult to draw and scale. «On many pictures of a similar genre, for example, on «The Inhabited Island», I always wanted to work with models, and on this project that will be possible. – says Pavel Novikov. – In particular, we will have a model of the tunnel with a metro car at a scale of 1:3. This is needed for scenes where we use a lot of water, which we cannot do in natural size, because tons of water is an uncontrollable mass». With models, however, this is permissible and possible, and the convincingness of the image does not suffer.
The release of the picture is scheduled for the end of 2012, however the first presentation will take place very soon – at the upcoming Film Market, which will take place from June 4 to 11 in Sochi as part of the «Kinotavr» festival. According to Igor Tolstunov, this is due to the fact that «the market should know about such large projects in advance». At the same time, as Igor Alexandrovich notes, speaking about the features of promotion: «We will emphasize a certain combination of attractive elements for the viewer. First, it is indeed a very tense, entertaining, intriguing story: people go into the metro and find themselves in an absolutely extreme situation, and the question of their physical survival arises. Secondly, there is another, no less important theme – it is about the survival of the heroes' love». And indeed, judging from the atmosphere on the set of the picture, it is not surprising that the viewer will be intrigued by the story shown on screen. Provided, of course, that in 2012 no real cataclysms await us…
Author: Faina Fardo