Two years of work, 360 filming days, 121 episodes – and three seasons of Doctor on Call, the first medical drama in Ukrainian language, are done. The premiere of new episodes is to take place on air of Ukraine TV channel. As for interesting stories to be dealt with by doctors on duty and the way filming went, you can read this right now. Warning: spoilers follow!
Source of inspiration
“Life is the best source of inspiration; it is impossible to imagine stories more interesting than those happening in real life. That is why, when a group of authors is at work, each one tries to fish out of their memory something that happened to them, their friends or neighbors, because only in this case they stories are interesting and credible,” says Yulia Mishchenko, project showrunner. “Most ideas and characters are taken from life; the same is true for situations the lead characters find themselves in. The third season illustrates this principle really well. Irina Tkalenko, our actress, was hospitalized, we came to visit her and she told us a great story about sales agents wandering around the hospital. ‘I am coming around after surgery, some guy comes in, gets several graters out and starts grating carrots – very quickly and skillfully… Just imagine, I bought this grater, I didn’t even notice how I did it,’ the actress told us. And we included this story in an episode, of course.”
More drive, more detective lines, more humor
The new season became more dynamic; there are external stories, flashbacks from the past, mass scenes and even explosions. By the way, the scene of explosion in the photo studio where Zoya the nurse comes turned out to be the hardest for shooting. “There is more stress on detective plot lines associated with the crimes and people who arrived at the hospital,” says Pavel Mashchenko, one of project directors. “The doctors will become investigators; they will combine investigation of an illness as a medical “crime” with the investigation of accident that happened to the patient. The doctors will help to dig out the real criminals.”
In one of the episodes, a dream of all men will come true; one of the characters will daydream about girls in bikinis. Unfortunately for him, it will be just an illusion. “Initially we introduced humor as an important cultural component because humor is in our mentality. Even our politics is humor, you can’t go anywhere without it,” says Yulia Mishchenko. “It will surely be present in the new season. Like in real life, jokes help to overcome difficult situations.”
The magic of cinema
When you watch the series, it is hard to believe that not all objects in the frame are real. For example, an X-ray unit was created by set designer Petro Zlatoverkhy directly on the set from some odds and ends. Same with special compressors, forceps, laparoscopic pistols and many other things. “However, the hardest was to find specific animals – for example, a spider. As the spiders cannot be trained and there was a plan to film it with children, we had to look for a realistic toy,” says Pavel. “I spent tons of time to make it look like a real one, pasting each little hair onto its body.”
The work of makeup artists is no less impressive. “In one of the episodes a child gets terrible burns. Our girls worked on the actress for a long time, and when the special makeup was finally ready and the little girl saw herself in the mirror, she started crying, because the burn looked so real,” says the film crew. But the most complicated special makeup they had to do was consequences of a grave car accident. “We had a story about a man who had it really tough in a car accident – two open leg fractures, numerous grazes and cuts from the glass on his face and body… Preliminarily we prepared details made from gelatin and silicon. For gluing them on, the actor had to recline. Thankfully, the artists, they gave us a couch,” says Olga Demeshchenko. “After the details were glued on and their edges were evened out (so that the boundaries between the detail and the actor’s body were as discreet as possible), we painted over them, and in the end, directly before the filming, we poured blood all over. I believe there sult was successful.”
It turns out that not all actors are ready for such metamorphoses. “Sometimes it happens that the actors don’t know how to work in such conditions and start fussing too much,” says the makeup artist. “This is a hindrance; we get distracted from the complicated process of applying fragile special makeup. And some actors are totally not ready for this; most simply want to look beautiful in the frame.”
Spoileralert!
In the end of the third season, an antagonist appears in the hospital – a well-coiffed and beautiful young woman appointed by deputy minister. Due to a conflict, doctor Mazur will fall in a coma and the head doctor will be appointed a deputy for medical issues, a woman who’ll start gunning for him. Won’t Mazur come around? For now, this is a secret!
“In this season, we stressed on personal stories of Semenivna the nurse, the character played by brilliant Lilia Mayboroda, who was the right hand to doctor Mazur. This time she has lots of funny and lyrical stories about her suitors,” says Yulia Mishchenko. “This is very pleasant and touching for me as I believe that life and romance aren’t over after you’re 20 or 30. And for Semenivna we concocted several such stories where she is attractive, men fall in love with her, flirt and give her romantic presents. I hope the audience will enjoy this as well.”
A couple of numbers to conclude
Over 720 actors were involved during the filming of season three, not counting permanent characters. Over 50 doctor robes were worn by the actors and three more clothing kits by main characters. Over 400 liters of artificial blood were shed on the set, and it’s impossible to count the amount of bandages, nonwoven fabric, syringes, needles, etc. The artists spent over three hours creating complicated special makeup, injuries after a serious accident. Twelve is the biggest number of takes for one frame during the filming of season three.
Are you intrigued? The premiere of Doctor on Call third season is scheduled on Ukraine TV channel in the nearest future. Our congratulations on the end of filming go to the project team. We hope to see you again soon.
Directors: Alexander Onufriyev, Andrey Kolesnik, Pavel Mashchenko, Viktor Poltoratsky, Natalya Pasenitskaya
Producers: Iryna Kostyuk, Anna Eliseeva, Yulia Mishchenko, Ella Boblenyuk, Elena Kanishevskaya
DOP: Dmitry Oksamytny
Cast: Mikhail Zhonin, Ruslan Sokolnik, Irina Tkalenko, Nadezhda Levchenko
