RWS Launches Movie and TV Production at New Studio

“When I started making movies, attending film festivals and visiting European film studios I thought that we wouldn’t have anything like that. But now we do! This stage, as the other five, is outfitted with the state-of-the-art equipment”.

Unique elephant doors, walls and ceilings are soundproof and enable online sound recording. Polymeric covered floating floors sustain any vibrations and enable smooth camera motion. Lighting equipment mounting is done with the help of wireless remote control hoists which makes lives of gaffers and designers easier. Powerful air conditioners are perfectly silent.

 “Usually after 14 hours of working the stage becomes stuffy, - Dmitry Meskhiev said, - and here the air is fresh. It makes the actors really happy!” “The conditions are really good, - Vladimir Putin agreed, - the work is harmful whereas the conditions are great!”

The Prime Minister and Meskhiev stopped near the “Future of «RWS – Saint-Petersburg»” model. This is how the studio complex is going to look like in a couple of years when the II and III construction stages are completed. “It is going to be the biggest and the most state-of-the-art studio in Europe,” – Meskhiev repeated.

A video showing how the studio was built and its growth prospects appeared on the screen of the plasma display panel. “This is an unprecedented case for our country when investments were made not in a shopping mall or a business center construction but in culture, in cinematography development. Although it is not what one would call a super-profitable business”, - Valentina Matvienko, the governor of St. Petersburg, pointed out. Dmitry Meskhiev promised to do anything it takes to make it profitable.

If everything depended on the facilities only the problem would have been already solved. The new studio has everything: high-end film and digital cameras, the latest camera cranes and dollies, the best lighting equipment. It all could be seen in the Stage #3 at a special exhibition. “As a person who devoted all his life to the cinema I can say that everything you see is the very best,” – said Dmitry Meskhiev.

A part of the exhibition was devoted to the new field of the “Russian World Studios” activity, which is animation. Under the photo camera’s eye there was a small ginger colored Humpbacked Horse figure with the fairytale castle in the background. The head of the “RWS – Saint-Petersburg” studio reminded that stop-motion animation used to be frame-by-frame while for the cel animation all characters had to be hand-drawn. This required a lot of time. “The Humpbacked Horse” the first RWS animation project will be done using the latest computer technologies, one of which called “Motion Capture” was presented to the guests. An actor with the special sensors attached to his clothes was moving on the stage surrounded by 12 cameras. His movements were captured by the “Motions Capture” cameras and superimposed with the image of the animated dog. The results were transmitted to the screen: the dog moved around, jumped and did somersaults, precisely imitating not only the actor’s movements but his flexibility as well.

“We are trying to create a studio where everything from widescreen movies to TV programs could be filmed”, - Dmitry Meskhiev continued while accompanying the guests to the next stage where the “Catchy Place” show recording was done for “Hunting and Fishing” channel. There is a water tank in the stage designed for shooting on the water. This time the water tank was decorated as a pond. Ivan Zatevakhin, the show host, and a popular actor Yuri Stoyanov, the guest of the show, were sitting on the pond’s bank. 

“We are dispelling myths about hunting and fishing”, Stoyanov and Zatevakhin explained.
“I actually watch your shows, Vladimir Putin said to the host; - You put heart into them so they are understandable and interesting”.

“The studio has turned out great, - Yuri Stoyanov came back to the main topic, - But there’s one problem. There’s a railway crossing near the studio so it takes not less than an hour and a half to get here.” The fact that the Saint Petersburg governor had already considered the traffic situation in the district calmed the actor. After this conversation Stoyanov looked satisfied as he would have to come to the studio many times since he is a leading actor in a new film “Man by the Window” (aka “Chelovek u Okna”) by Dmitry Meskhiev. “Will there be any action scenes?”- Valentina Matvienko asked. “No action scenes, - Meskhiev told the governor, - it is going to be a sweet romantic story”.

This was the final part of the tour around the studio after which the Prime Minister went to the Stage #5 to lead the Confab on the Russian cinematography development with the Plenipotentiary Presidential Envoy to the Northwestern Federal District of Russia Ilya Klebanov, the Saint Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko, the Minister of Communications and Mass Media, the Chairman of the Board of JSFC Sistema Vladimir Evtushenkov, renowned people of art, filmmakers and media executives including Nikita Mikhalkov, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Karen Shakhnazarov, Konstantin Ernst, Oleg Dobrodeev and others attending.

In his opening speech Vladimir Putin recollected famous saying about “the most important of all the arts” and noted that cinematography is among the most popular ones today. Since 2010 it is planned to allocate 4.3 billion rubles annually from the federal budget to support Russian cinematography. Also there is an idea of assigning so-called grants to support the film production companies. But it refers only to the top-quality films that have a set of artistic values and gain popularity. The grant will amount to 10% of the box office. According to Putin, the share of Russian features in film distribution will be up to at least 30% by 2012. The Russian Government has decided to make significant investments to support cinematography. ”We can support the film production but we cannot make the audience watch it if it’s not talently done”, - the Prime Minister said.   
  

Afterwards, the Confab on the Russian Cinematography Development continued as a closed-door meeting. After it was closed the participants, the new Culture Minister Alexander Avdeev, the Minister of Communications and Mass Media Igor Shchegolev and the “RWS – Saint Petersburg” head Dmitry Meskhiev, gave comments on its results.
    

 Russian cinematography still has many issues to discuss though it has been experiencing a rebirth during the past 10 years. Some of the meeting participants criticized the Federal Law 94 which sets out that the Tender Committee decides for any director or producer in terms of the film production process final cost only.
     

“The final decision must be transparent and people making it should be well-known and possess social courage to choose and explain their decision”, Avdeev pointed out.

 According to Avdeev’s speech, it is planned to establish the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Special Council to settle the Russian cinematography issues. 
  

Film industry representatives, distributors, producers as well as government executives will enter the Council that will deal with Russian film and TV production issues. The Council will be headed by one of the government executives. Igor Shchegolev agreed with his colleague and pointed out that the Government should have an opportunity to support the concept which is important and interesting for it and find an appropriate film director to carry out this work.  The meeting participants have concluded that the private-public partnership setting-up shall become an effective way of solving film industry problems.
 

To the journalist’s question if the government investment is going to lead to dependency Avdeev answered that “today the filmmakers are sufferers but not dependents”.

Nevertheless, the meeting participants have agreed that the Government should be involved in the projects financially attractive to it only to a certain extent. Otherwise, there’s a risk that the project produced will not be success-oriented in the market.  

Electronic movie tickets will be available since January 1, 2009. Therefore, the new ticketing system is intended for returning one-third of movie theatre revenues which are in the underground part of economy now. The electronic movie ticketing system will enable gathering the information which concerns domestic distribution and will contribute to the increase of competitive capacity of Russian cinematography both in domestic and international market in the long term.