Cinema in the regions continues to develop thanks to the ever-increasing availability of filmmaking technologies - and now Berdsk is announcing itself with the first full-length film in the city, “The Village”. I became interested in the trailer for this film and today I will talk with one of the authors of the project, Pavel Mednikov.
Pavel, good afternoon!
Good afternoon, Roman!
First of all, Pavel, reveal the approximate synopsis of the film - what is this film about and what problems will be addressed in it?
The main character is Stanislav, a resident of a provincial city of Berdsk level, having settled down as a children's coach in Greco-Roman wrestling, he recruits under his wing a team of boarding school children aged 12-15 years. After some time, our main character, while training his wrestlers, meets his old acquaintance Marat, who in the recent past “broke” him as an athlete, and learns about Marat’s intention to participate in competitions with his Greco-Roman wrestling team! Stanislav has a goal - to repay his sports debt to his old friend by participating in these competitions. The difficult journey of preparing for the tournament begins. An old acquaintance of Stas’s late father, Vadim, came to the wrestling room where Stas’ team trained. Vadim, having seen the conditions in which the son of his old good friend works, taking advantage of the opportunities and official position, invites Stas to change his place of work and go to Sochi in order to train professionals there in the newest sports school, promising good success and most importantly - that's a good salary! Vadim reinforced all these words with a simple phrase: “There is nothing to catch in this village, here you will fall to the bottom, so you need to go to a better city!” Stas, without attaching any importance to this, confidently continues to prepare his wrestlers for the upcoming competitions. But he soon faces various problems.
The problem is that recently there has been a tendency to leave small towns in search of prospects, without hoping for a bright future. With our film we want to say that even in a small town you can realize your dreams and achieve your goals.
Yes, the problem posed is clear - now people are leaving even cities such as Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk, Vladivostok and even Novosibirsk, not to mention the suburbs... At what point did you come up with the idea to create this film? What inspired you?
Many people probably experience a feeling of love for their Motherland only when they leave their native land. The same thing happened to me and my friend and colleague Alexei Fromiller. In 2014, we entered the Altai State Institute of Culture in the city of Barnaul. And having lived in another city for more than a year, Alexey shared his idea to make a film in our small homeland - in the city of Berdsk. This is how the story of the creation of the feature film “The Village” began.
The theme was obvious: small homeland. Of course, the first script went to the table; there were a lot of adjustments, there were some minor disagreements, but in the end we came up with a sports theme. Why Greco-Roman wrestling? The look at this sport is not accidental. In the Novosibirsk region, wrestling is one of the most popular types of martial arts. Novosibirsk wrestlers proved their superiority not only at all-Russian competitions, but also at world championships and the Olympic Games. I myself played this sport during my school years. This is not surprising, because my father Dmitry Sergeevich is a Greco-Roman wrestling coach. While working on the film script, he advised us on many issues and offered his ideas.
Aspiring directors who read this interview will want to know - what difficulties did you encounter from the moment of idea to the moment of implementation on the screen? What was the most difficult part of the filmmaking process?
After all, this is Berd's first full-length film.
Throughout the creation of the project, we set ourselves tasks and tried to solve them, I don’t want to call them difficulties. As Shakespeare said: "Work that pleases ceases to be work." We were prepared for various turns of events, and therefore drew up a certain series of actions. We often organized general meetings at which we discussed our future plans, writing them down on a piece of paper. This helped us in the final result!
To create a picture of decent quality you need modern equipment and a certain budget. In search of equipment and technical personnel, we turned to Evgeniy Suntsov, the film editor, who is also the second cameraman. And the first operator was Vladimir Shmidt, who also provided some of the technical equipment.
There were also kind people who helped us with finances. One of whom is Andrei Aleksandrovich Bukharov. Throughout the work on the film, Andrey actively helped us. Some funds were collected by ourselves, on our own (scholarship, part-time job). We met a talented composer - Konstantin Zharkov, who writes musical accompaniment for us on a voluntary basis. Many people kindly provided us with locations for filming, for which we are very grateful.
Will there be many action scenes (wrestling, fights) in “The Village”? How difficult was it to film them - after all, the actors are mostly children, and in preparation for filming, actors with little experience in wrestling had to undergo training?
Absolutely right! Before filming, rehearsals were organized, as well as training for the actors, which was conducted by my father Dimitri Sergeevich, whom I mentioned above. I will say that the guys who played the wrestlers quickly got involved in the training process, but unfortunately not all of them coped with it; some still had to be replaced.
The film will show training "in all its glory." We will also show quite a lot of fights and techniques. And of course, the wrestling tournament was the most difficult filming shift for us, in which about two hundred people took part.
If everything works out (which I believe in) and the film is successful, will there be a continuation of this story?
I can assure you 100% that there will be no continuation of this story. We decided this with the film crew back in the summer. But there are other projects in the plans, which I can’t talk about yet.
And lastly - according to tradition, in an interview on our website, name 3-10 things to create a good film.
In my opinion, to make a good film you need:
- Current idea.
- A clear understanding of what you want in the end.
- Team mood and performance.
And the most important thing is to love what you do.
Thank you very much for answering the questions, I wish you and your team success and new films, and “The Village” - successful distribution and recognition by the audience! See you again!
Thank you, good luck with your project!
It’s extremely interesting to see what happens in the end!
Danil Chupakhin,
I can see the quality from the trailer, it seems to me that it will be much better. than Phillip Rhee's The Losers.
uranium,
Well... You somehow went too far on your head. It will be very cool if the film really turns out to be much better.
DIV,
I talked about the quality of shooting. And we will see the quality of the entire film in the cinema.