On the first day of fall, we celebrate The Day of Knowledge and reminisce about our summer at the studios, realizing that not only kids love movies: the movies love them right back!
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The shooting of Ukraine’s first fantasy film, The Outpost, resumed in late May at a specially created location that had been patiently waiting in the wings. Numerous authentic wooden huts and a lake at the FILM.UA Group movie set have won it an unofficial, but quite accurate nickname: the Movie Village. The centerpiece of the location is a fortress, whose creators based their design on Kyivan Rus fortresses of the 12th and 13th centuries. In addition to the citadel, a number of outbuildings were erected on the location: a few sheds, a smithy, barns, and haylofts. It was here that the movie’s key scenes were shot, starring young actors Yeva Koshova and Danyla Kamensky and the fierce bohatyr epic heroes.
The Movie Village has become a favorite place not only for the movie heroes but for the Movie Vacation Cinema Kids campers, as well as our visitors. In course of the four 2-week-long camp shifts the kids were learning how to shoot video, write scripts, create posters, and act in the movies. The curriculum envisaged many outdoor activities, such as lectures by guest speakers and the special Movie Quest.
A visit to the Movie Village is an integral part of every guided tour. This location is not just a movie set but also a home for two newbies at the studio: Zorka the Goat and her kid. The tour gives the visitors an opportunity to immerse in the cinema world: the wardrobe workshop, props workshop, studio stages, dubbing studios, Ukraine’s only Milo crane which was used in creating the Coldplay’s Up&Up video; the animation studio, and much more. Over 40 tours have been organized during the summer with over 800 people visiting the studio, most of them being kids.
The participants of the School of Success educational camp not only enjoyed with the studio but acquired some cooking skills. Under the supervision of Chef Valery Sozanovsky the girls learned how to bake macaroons, a popular Frencg dessert, and the boys tried their hand at cooking hamburgers.
Three young talents have spent the whole summer at the studio: the shoots of Daddy Dan TV series started in June. Its female lead Tina meets a guy named Dan at a bar. They both think of their meeting as just another fleeting episode, but in the midst of their flirt it is revealed that Tina has three kids. Dan’s first impulse is to run away, but soon he realizes that it’s not that simple and falls in love with Tina. Tina’s kids are her first priority, and the young actors, Yaroslava Humeniuk, Veronika Lukyanenko, and Yevhen Lebedyn, spend a lot of time on the sets, because it’s important for the series’ creators that the audience could see that.
Kids are our first priority as well. This is why we try to do everything possible to help them in finding their vocation, creating conditions for their personal development in the movie field. Often students of the Cinema Kids and Ukrainian Film Schools become starts in our projects. For example, Polina Pechenenko, 11, graduate of the Movie Vacations Cinema Kids camp at FILM.UA, plays the lead in French/Belgian director Olias Barco’s Polina. It is her first role on the big screen, as well as for another Movie Vacations graduate – Yeva Koshova, starring in The Outpost.
FIlM.UA Studio is a whole new world, fascinating and comfortable not just for kids but for adults as well.
The fall will bring us more interesting projects, one of them conducted in cooperation with UNICEF.
