A month ago I told you about the project "The fear in your house", developed by FILM.UA Television for TV channel "Inter". This is a docudrama about domestic violence, it’s created using a certain kind of know-how. The format seems pretty interesting, so I decided not to pigeonhole my report and last weekend went out of town to a so-called "house of fear".
The word "house" is used here for a reason: the project is shot in the house - a huge old mansion which has been converted into a universal location base, which allows set transformation.
A two-storey house of 480 square meters was divided into rooms, which are equipped with facilities necessary for the script
We use the partition and lightweight construction, so you can change not only furnishings but also the planning
Apartments are very different, from poor people housing
To artist built rooms. However, I was not able to see at least one apartment: everything in the house is very mobile and, having finished shooting in one sets, they immediately begin to transform them
Or use as a temporary storage of props
Right in front of the house stands joinery workshop, where artists make the missing interior things.
Here’s the doctor's office, but only a few days ago this room served as a prison.
One of the apartments is used as a dressing room
Art directors Shevket Seydametov (on the right) and Yevgeny Anisimov are real wizards capable to make one room into another in a day
The house is out of town: next to it is a forest and a lake, allowing, if necessary, shooting on location. This advantage was used by another project of FILM.UA Television «Mystical Tales", which settled next to the location base...
Well, why not: shooting on a real cemetery is not good, and uncomfortable, especially at night. And here, in the woods, putting a few crosses and tombstones, you can work around the clock. However, there are some funny moments: once vacationers came across the cemetery and called the police. And the TV people had an hour to explain that the churchyard is a fake.
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View of wooden headstones from the back side did not convince the police, so to proof their words TV people had to dig out one of the "grave", showing that there is no corpse in it. Gravestones, you guessed it, made here - in the "house of fear."
But let’s get back to the project. According to its author and director Tatyana Nosenko, "The fear in your house" would not be the same without the main director Dmitry Middle, pierced with the idea at the development stage and made a huge amount of effort for the realization of the project. After I found out that Dmitry successfully structured all the work, offering an unusual directorial concept of the docudrama, I had an interview with him:
- Over the years television existence so many products has been created, that it’s really hard to come up with a totally unique project, - said the director. - Sometimes there are new ideas that are exclusive for a while, but eventually become technological methods that are freely used by different channels, productions, creating formats in a way.
Another thing is that such product with such theme was not created before, at least on Ukrainian and post-Soviet television. That is, we have applied the format technologies, available in the West, to a specific theme and created a new format: on the one hand, there is a real person telling a real story in a studio. On the other hand, we try to reconstruct the events.
- What is the unusual nature of the reconstruction?
- Today productions are very often involved in pseudo-reconstructions, the creation of images, relatively similar to what a person says. We strive to accurately reproduce the event (in this case - the psychological and physical problems related to violence within the family). And most importantly, to reproduce as artistically as possible, that what distinguishes our project from others. That is, we do not provide the raw materials, do not use the techniques that are well-established in the genre of reality.
Another distinguishing feature is a respect for the themes, stories which we are telling. We do not show trash, do not exploit human problems to get the audience. The main task is to make, on the one hand, a high-quality television product, but on the other - a useful social project. This form gives the viewer a better chance to connect to what is happening not because of surface irritant, but due to the fact that one feels what happens with the hero, what leads him to one situation or another. Working through stories with a maximum of psychological and artistic accuracy, we hope that the viewer is immersed in what is happening, in some way will compare oneself with the characters, and may be able to make any conclusions. Because for a person, who has been exposed to violence, it is very difficult to change anything.
- Do I understand correctly that it will be more like a movie?
- At least, we aspire to it. It is the most important task for both directors and actors involved in reconstruction, everyone knows what format they work on.
- The project involves six directors. How is the work divided between them?
- We have three technical lines. And the creative teams, those are directors with assistants who prepare the stories. Thus, within one technical group works two directors every two weeks.
- Are there creative differences? Still, six directors, and everyone has his own vision...
- Certainly. Therefore, in preparation for the project, we have carefully selected people. As for the differences ... All directors periodically ask me for any current issue. But, of course, preliminary study of the subject and its understanding are important.
- Each director in front of the project passed some sort of training, - adds Tatiana Nosenko.
- Did you have stories that were technically difficult to reconstruct?
- When dealing with fiction, there is always something you can fit in, but the embodiment of true stories is at times more difficult than expected. But that’s why there is a toolkit, founded by the format of the project, which allows you to do any discounts. It is clear that domestic violence often looks like trash in a physical form. But it is not our goal to savor these details. Not because actors or directors are afraid. We do not want to distract the viewer's attention on different, even very attractive points as well as distracting from content, informative part of the project. Of course, some scenes of violence are present. But without savoring...Again, it is important that the directors themselves, having worked in various television projects, were happy about it.
Cameraman Konstantin Loboda
and the second director Alice Tihoplav, another couple of people obsessed with the project. Alice, by the way, recently performed the role of an oriental woman, and the team really liked her acting debut
Tatiana Nosenko told me some heartbreaking stories about how husbands terrorized their wives and children because of jealousy, unrealized ambitions, alcohol abuse, and sometimes misunderstanding.
- Taking on this project, I saw a picture very clearly: this is the evil, this is the victim, that's their story. Then we have advices of experts (psychologists, lawyers, social workers), what to do in this particular situation. And then the conclusion that the evil is punished, justice is restored, the victim can breathe again.
But when we began to delve into the essence of each case, we realized that there is no absolute good and absolute evil - continues Tatiana. - Yes, he is a bastard, but she also acted a bit strange. So in the end we changed the concept and offer the viewer outside point of view, saying that people have created this situation, we show it, but the one has to draw a conclusion. Do you want to live on in this nightmare, or you want to change the situation.
