In our previous articles, we talked about how Ukraine is a great location for shooting films and videos that are set in the Soviet era. Today we would like to share with you an interesting experience we had shooting such a movie for a French company, called TANGIBLE FILMS.
A Little Background About the Film
The film is about an astronaut, whose childhood was spent in the Soviet Union and influenced his further perception of the world. The client asked us to help them film the childhood of the protagonist, which took place in the suburbs of Moscow, in the 1960s. It was supposed to be an expressive wooden house of a middle-class family.
This was quite a difficult task for us since, in Ukraine, most of these houses were destroyed during the Second World War or simply did not survive to the present day. In Kyiv, rare specimens of historical importance are surrounded by modern houses and therefore are not suitable either. Therefore, we needed to expand our search to find exactly what the client was looking for.
The Quest Begins
We began to look for a needed wooden house in the Kyiv region. The house needed to be rather expressive wooden, with the appropriate environment. After 4 days of searching spanning 2000 km, we eventually stopped at a house in the town of Kozelets, 70 km from Kyiv. And what a beauty it was! But don’t take our word for it. See for yourself:
This house had everything: the necessary second floor, the proper surroundings, and carved facades, and the roof, historical windows. All of the beauty.
We conducted a second, also in Ukraine, for another house that had the right interior, and that part of the film was shot at a different location.
Fortunately, there is an excellent location for shooting films set in the 1960s and ‘70s, a museum of Soviet life built in the late ‘60s. These are 17 rural houses with a real interior and exterior. The director tried out each house that was presented and as a result, “exactly the one” was found, in which scenes from the life of a Soviet child were filmed for three days.
Shooting in Ukraine Turned Out to Be a Win-Win for the Client
After shooting the historical cinema for 5 days, TANGIBLE FILMS managed to achieve significant cost savings. The scenes with the exterior do not require retouching and they were filmed with minimal use of rental props. In general, the budget was practically the same as if they decided to shoot without a historical component.
This is just one amazing success story. Ukraine is great for filming scenes from the Soviet period. Contact us to learn more.