Filming period has ended for a four-episode melodrama Choosing Her Way directed by Anna Gres and jointly produced by FILM.UA and Ukraine TV channel. This autumn we’ll find out the twists and turns awaiting the leads; as for the tasks the film crew put for themselves and the challenges they faced when working on the project – all this is described below.
In search of a new image
“The main challenge for me at this project was the creation of a new image for Kirill Zhandarov. Nobody has seen him on the screen like that. I think we have succeeded and I really hope that this film will open up new prospects for Kirill,” notes Anna Gres, project director.
The actor’s wife, Maria Valeshnaya, who played another lead in the film, confirms that the work on Kirill’s new image has been successful. “However, the first filming shifts were hard for us. I looked at Kir and didn’t understand what he wants, what he plays, and what’s happened to him… Maybe he’s in a bad mood? Because normally Kirill is very easy-going, and here I didn’t understand what was happening,” says the actress. “We even had some minor fights, ‘Why are you looking at me like that? Am I doing something wrong?’ But then I realized that he was simply looking for something new. Anya Gres gave him a role like that – something unusual, inconvenient, and she sent him out on a search. And I think that they both have managed.”
For Maria Valeshnaya herself the work on the film also became a new stage in her acting career. “This is my first protagonist role. Normally I play antagonists – killers, prisoners, prostitutes, Roma… Recently I had a big role in Ideal Couple’s Verdict, but there I played an antagonist just the same,” says Maria. “And here my character is a woman a little over thirty, whose problems and worries are close to my hearts. Though I have a husband and a son, it is easy to imagine myself in Natasha’s shoes. The magic ‘what if…’ formula always helps.”
Preparation for the role
No trace has been left of a romantic hero – and this is the way the audience is used to seeing Kirill Zhandarov on screen. “They didn’t just change the hair style, they changed absolutely everything! With external changes, the internal ones kicked in. I lifted lots of weights, gained three kilos in muscle and two clothing sizes,” says the actor. “It’s not that I became fatter; I became bigger. I was a skinny long-haired boy very recently, four or five months ago. And before, I never used to hit an iron pipe so hard! Now my hands are all covered in an anesthetic, and I am wondering whether I’ve broken them.”
Vitaliy Saliy who played Nikolay in the film also had some significant work to do on his character. “The story is interesting because all characters are flip-skins; until the very end the audience will be clueless about those sincere in their wrongdoings and those faking kindness,” says the actor. “Unlike Kirill, I had to lose weight for this role. But the hardest thing was that my character is a leftie. And you have to always keep this nuance in the back of your mind and switch all physical actions to the left side. Sometimes you get confused, of course, but it is an interesting experience – you immediately start thinking differently.”
For Sergey Kolos, his character turned out to be the closest. “Initially I was preparing two characters, but Viktor turned out to be closer to me because his story is somewhat similar to my own, so I understood immediately what was required of me,” says Sergey. “Viktor is a hard-working guy and an achiever. He is sociable and open, he has lots of hobbies… Maybe that’s why he hits a hard spot in a relationship with his wife: Natasha wants family and children, and Viktor’s whole life is movement. It’s not that he’s trying to escape from the cage; it’s that his ambitions cannot be satisfied at home. At least this is how I justify his actions for myself.”
Locations
Project authors were really careful about selecting locations; director Anna Gres together with DOP Maksim Stepanov personally approved each one. “All announced locations in the film are new; nobody used them before us. This was our first-priority task, we wanted to get a fresh, contemporary and high-quality picture,” says the director. “Besides, each location should match the nature of characters. For example, Sasha is a well-to-do man living in a house on a barge; we hardly managed to arrange filming there with its owner. One of our characters ‘lives’ in a loft; another one in a studio apartment belonging to a Ukrainian artist. Each location has a certain reason behind it.”
The hardest shift
It’s not by chance they say that animals and children are the hardest to film. The scene of horseback riding for lead characters was supposed to be filmed in two hours, but things didn’t go the way it was planned.
Photos from Kirill Zhandarov’s archive
Though all actors used to ride horses before and trained before filming, the horses weren’t ready for their moment of fame. “The horses turned out to be unused to filming; they did everything except what we needed from them. In the end we had to spend eight hours for filming instead of two. I am thankful to Olga Atanasova that in spite of her fear she fulfilled all the tasks I put up before her, and I was also impressed to see that Masha was more confident in the saddle than men,” says Anna Gres. “But the scariest thing happened later – Kirill’s horse had a stirrup broken when running, and he fell off at 35 km/h speed! It’s a pure miracle that Kirill wasn’t injured!”
“Then, after this accident, we talked to the stallion, he tried to kick again, but in vain, he was firmly held between the rider’s legs!” Kirill wrote on his Facebook page. “Under the fire of threatening looks from Anna Gres and my wife, the stallion decided to finish doing the things he was originally called for yesterday!”
Stunt scenes
Though Choosing Her Wayis a film about love, it still couldn’t do without stunt scenes. One of them – leads falling from a bridge – was filmed in Rusanovka neighborhood. And though the main stunt was performed by professionals, Maria Valeshnaya and Vitaliy Saliy also had it hard. “It was really hard on the day of bridge stunt filming. For the whole shift we’ve been wearing wet clothes, under a downpour, and then we dived into the water – and several takes for each frame like that! After this day I caught a cold,” says Maria.
“This was a really hard day – cold, strong and gusty wind plus a downpour… For seven hours we’ve been under the rain, and after that I had to jump into ice-cold water, swim in my clothes and save the lead character. Plus my character is injured according to the plot, so this has to be acted out convincingly.” says Vitaliy Saliy. “But thanks to the cool team everything was really fun, we laughed a lot. Even though we were sneezing and had sore throats the following day, it was great, I love extreme scenes.”
Our congratulations to the team on the end of filming! We are looking forward to the premiere of Choosing Her Way melodrama this autumn on Ukraine TV channel.
What the film is about: Natasha and Viktor dream about a baby, but they haven’t managed to become parents in 10 years of their marriage. Mother-in-law blames Natalia for everything, and Viktor gradually distances himself from his wife. Suddenly, a school friend Alexander comes back into Natasha’s life. It is hard to believe that this successful and self-confident handsome man is the same shy Sashka who used to suffer from unrequited love for her. The husband’s betrayal and dismissal from a job she loved bring Natasha on the verge of despair, but her old friend’s support and a chance acquaintance with Nikolay change her life in a radical way. It looks like the destiny decided to give Natasha a second chance… But another blow immediately follows. Only dedicated Sashka is always there in tough times. But who is he really: a faithful friend or a reason behind all her misfortunes?
Director: Anna Gres
Producers: Viktor Mirsky, Natalya Stribuk, Irina Chernyak, Elena Malkova, Elena Lisnyak
DOP: Maksim Stepanov
Screenwriters: Maria Mozhar, Marina Slavina, Igor Turgenev
Cast: Maria Valeshnaya, Sergey Kolos, Kirill Zhandarov, Vitaliy Saliy, Olga Atanasova, Olga Morozova, Tatyana Sheliga, Aleksey Cherevatenko, Aleksandr Yarema, Irina Melnik
Genre: melodrama
Type: series
Year: 2017
Status: post-production
Produced by: FILM.UA
Timing: 4 х 45 mins
