The making of short film “The Taste”

14 min readMar 19, 2017

At winter 2015, In the middle of my BFA directing course at VGIK (Russian State University of Cinematography), I made a short film “The Taste”. Shortly Right after I wrote an article to analyze my experience and first-time-filmmaker mistakes to keeping going.

The film:

In the very beginning of my education, our main professor at VGIK, famous Russian director and producer Dzhanik Fayziev told us a story about his first film.

At each stage of production he realized, “this is the most important stage”. And after finishing the film he realized that you should attitude to each decision, as if that was the main thing in the whole project. This, in fact, is a retelling of the same story, only using the example of another film.

Pre-Production

1. Choice of the literary base

Our task wasn’t specifically to make an adaptation, but our professors advised that working with a literary source would save us tons of time in building a story with a sound dramatic structure.

In the makeweight work with literary material often eliminates task of formulating the author’s position. At this stage we were learning to understand the writer’s message, and trying to develop that message.

I liked The Roald Dahl’s story “Taste” immediately for many reasons:

1.It’s a production convenient story: one location (although in the very first versions of the script I tried to incorporate a couple more).

2.It was a simple story with a clear plot. This is the right choice for educational short film.

3. Already at the stage of reading the story I found opportunities for detailed work with actors and possibilities for interesting dram solutions for the script.

Actually, it was a risky idea, because it was necessary to work closely with actors (which is especially frightening as a second year student).

The was our VGIK workshop works is this: everything we do we discuss with the Master (Dzhanik Fayziev) and our classmates.
Everyone can input ideas, say that something is not working for them, or highlight what they think are strengths and weaknesses. This practice, according to our Master’s vision, multiplies our experience by 10 (this is how much we have a person in the university group).

That is, for example, if there is an obvious mistake in the film, each of us asks themselves: why did I miss this during the discussion? And everyone can make their own conclusions.

2. Script

Work on the script in our Workshop follows the same principle: we work at home, by ourselves, or with the Scriptwriter (all students have different ways), then we bring and read the versions in class, with everyone from the group present.

As you know, literature and film drama are two completely different things with different evaluation criteria. In cinema there must be rigid structure, stated in many books for scriptwriters. And after alignment it you should adapt motivations and cause and effect relations. It’s not simple, because in literature some difficult things can be expressed by a couple of words whereas in the cinema you need to find the most accurate and concise equivalent.

The main task to be solved in this story adaptation was the final twist. We tried to stage the finding of glasses as not random.

Already after filming, an English friend showed me a 1979 English series “Unexpected stories” (9 seasons, as many as 110 episodes), where almost every episode is a screen version of some Roald Dahl’s tales. There, in the film adaptation of “Taste”, this problem was solved as follows: in the added exposition (they sat on the table only at the 9th minute) they show the Nurse-servant (which brings glasses in the end of original story) and her friendly relations with the girl.

We went the other way: in the very first version of the script appeared a lyrical hero (Misha). A young man and a competitor of the “sommelier” for the attention and a girl’s heart.

We observe the story from his point of view.

The main dramatic task for whole script was to bring the main character to the state when in the end he went and brought those damn glasses to the dinner table.

3. Actors

We are looking for actors in all possible ways: we describe a portrait to classmates, friends, friends filmmakers, non-filmmakers friends who just watch Russian cinema and TV a lot. We go to students-actors’s shows, we dig through the actors’ bases.

At some point, friends-actors begin to actively help with casting and sometimes this helps a lot. They always know more actors than you.

Skipping a little forward I will say that on this film I began to accustom myself to write down the comments on the debriefing of the role during the take, and not during re-watching the playback. The skill to write without looking at a sheet of paper requires practice, but incredibly saves time. After several busy days of shooting, it becomes more difficult to concentrate and by the time you reach the actor and opened your mouth to tell them your notes, all thoughts evaporate from memory and only the record on paper helps.

4. Storyboard

The problem was that cinematographer Klim Gammerschmidt and I have no drawing skills : we draw worse than people, who paint fences and draw strips on the road.

We got 348 frames on our storyboard.
Klim and I photographed our friends, who heroically moved glasses on the table all night long.

Then we decided that it was somewhat inhumane to our friends, so we bought wooden dolls on hinges.

Good try, ha-ha, very emotional storyboard.
The last 100 shots was drawn by an artist Grisha Krasny.

Through trial and errors, we realized that the best way to organize a shooting storyboard plan is a simple table in “Word”. Basically an exposure sheet that they use in Animation. It is convenient to change the shot’s order and to write comments for each departments.

Having checked with the calendar and staging plan, this table was printed, cut in horizontal strips and placed into the notebook according to sequence (the main thing at this stage is not to lose paper — frames).
It can be done on a computer, but to whom it is more convenient.

5. Looking for Location

We realized that this would be one space, so we could afford to find a location after creating storyboards (although in fact everything happened simultaneously).

We were deciding for a long time whether to build a pavilion, or to look for a location. The pavilion is always more convenient in the production plan: you can place lights wherever you want, place a crew, remove a wall and generally make any decor. At first glance, the pavilion is incomparably better, but it is trivial to be able to build it. Constructed in time and in the quality we need.

We calculated that it would be more expensive and more laborious to build a pavilion suitable for our requirements then to find a location.

We were looking for a room from a rich private house: presentable and beautiful.

We talked with expensive restaurants that told us the price twice as much as our total budget, museums whose employees clutched at the hearts after the words “student film shootings,” apartments whose owners suddenly refused suspiciously, not convinced by oaths about the integrity of the plot of our film.

And fortunately, our producers made a miracle.
They made arrangements with one of the most expensive restaurants in Moscow.

Theoretically, this location is very complicated, it was far not only from VGIK university (the place where the equipment and lighting are brought from), but from Moscow in general, on a very traffic-heavy highway. We spent almost a third of the film’s cash budget on taxi and food (there are only expensive stores around).

But despite all this, for the story this location was incredibly accurate, and certainly the best of everything that we looked at before.

6. Costumes

An interesting task at the script stage was to invent how glasses linked to Stas Eventov’s character appearance. Well, of course, everyone will understand that these are his glasses, they have mentioned it three times, but this will be a little “believe on one’s bare word.”

Even before the storyboards, I figured out that if the glasses were green (yes, Slytherin’s color :)), and he had a green butterfly or a neck scarf around his neck — then we visualized this idea. So green became one of the main colors.

We chose red as our second color — the movie is about wine after all. Therefore the red machine. And thanks to wonderful Masha Reshetnikova, who made the models of food, put a red watermelon on the table, which balanced the composition.

Having decided with the colors, we went to the costume departments in VGIK, Mosfilm studio and others. We found nothing suitable, and eventually bought several suits in stores, some of which we returned after the shoot was done. Some of the clothes were from actor’s personal wardrobes, like Stanislav’s red jeans.

I still don’t know at what point the error crept in, but we confused the size of Stanislav Eventov’s shirt. We did not have time to try it on before shooting and it was already found that it is too small. Shooting was starting and we had to find a new shirt.

We were saved by administrator Nikolina Smyslova, who agreed with the restaurant’s staff, and the waiters lent us a suitable shirt.

And as mush as it’s good that we saved the shooting day, the costume was not on point. A semi-transparent shirt with plastic buttons does not look like clothes from an expensive store and did not work for the character.

7. Makeup

On makeup, we also built “drama”.

Very rarely viewers notice, but Sonya Razuvaeva’s (Lena) makeup changes from frame to frame. We tried to emphasize the change in her character in the eyes of Sasha Michkov’s (Misha) hero and express it visually.

Sonya Razuvaeva (now Evstigneeva) as Lena

Make-up artist Anya Golubeva changed her make-up for a couple of minutes when she was filmed in some chaotic orders dictated by permutations of light (for example, one long scene was filmed in sequence, but in reverse).

Production Stage

8. Shooting

There was an exciting task: especially not to grab the biggest piece of the pie to us because this story’s accent should still be on the characters to make beautiful image. During the filming it was necessary to make quick reshuffles. We often had to shoot not in the order dictated by dry production logic, but in order that is more convenient for the actors and their schedule.
Klim Gammershmidt, Cinematographer

During the filming, I made several mistakes.
Both of them are connected with the attempt to introduce suspense to places, where it should not be.

At first we tried shaking the camera.

I grouped the entire script to different pieces according to the level of tension. And instructed Klim, depending on the piece, shake the camera with various intensity.

Initially, the idea was good — a live camera with such a chamber plot can save you from the boredom felt on a physical level.

Actually, a shanking camera in this story looks a bit foreign and sometimes intrusive. This became a thing that I could only understand by bad experience.

Fortunately, at some point we forgot about this idea and managed to frankly spoil only one shot.

Secondary we strongly retreated from the optical axis.

The viewer always wants to look into the character’s eyes. Especially when something important is happening.
But it seemed to me that it was not necessary to always be near the optical axis, because then there would be less emphasis on the “shot’s main” things.
The error is not fatal, and it was dictated by production features. The dialogue-battle between Stas Eventov and Mikhail Bogdasarov we shot in long takes, with individual close-ups.

But if you watch a good movie, you will notice that almost always the authors satisfy your desire to look the heroes in the eye.

Well, a few bloopers, you cannot always be serious.

Post-productuion

9. Editing

The most difficult scene was the wine tasting scene: vital adjustments regarding our plans and storyboards affected this scene on a great level.
We did not have time to shoot the whole block and we had to look for a new ideas at the editing stage.
At such times you need a help of a good specialist who does not know the storyboard and sees only the finished material and feels the plasticity of history and images. In other words, you need a fresh perspective.
The situation was saved by a wonderful editing director Katya Vorokhova (KatrinDepp), who came to me and coolly build the backbone of the scene while I was sitting next to her plucking my hair.

10. Music

The search for references was difficult: there are not so many films in our genre, but we managed to find something.
Sergey Konstantinov wrote music with references and without, and sometimes he brought references himself.
According to legend, Sergey heard this waltz in a dream. He woke up, jumped out of bed, wrote it down and sent it to me with a comment “it seems like this is the music from our movie”. But he did not know where it should be placed. I didn’t not know either but we liked this music very much. And, finally, we found a place, I suppose, the right one.

At the first showing we had the music in samples — music was played on a synthesizer and processed in “Logic”.
For the second screening the guys found amazing musicians, and pianist Danya Borzenko (left on the video) mixed live music to the film:

To record music for the “wine guessing” scene, Sergey called Lena Pshenichnaya, the violinist, and Ivan Velikanov, who played on Zinc.

11. Sound

Sound director Julia Shirokova on a sound mixing in VGIK sound studio

Before working with sound, the most important thing is to determine the frame rate and follow this magnitude.
It’s like everyone knows, but unforeseen still happens.

Always listen to your sound director. How to withstand the balance: when you can fix the sound from the set or it needs to be re-record — it will be the main issue in post-production.

Often the question is radical: to “clean up” the replicate the noise will take as long as to process the overwritten (to put ambient noise and acoustics to clear studio sound). As a rule you must make a decision, as a director. The key for this question is: can this replica become better (according to the actor’s task), is worth the time?

From the point of working with an actors, it is very difficult to rewrite a replica to sounds as good as it was played on the set. It is necessary to bring the actor to a closer state they were on the set.

No matter how inhumane it sounds: the actor should not be comfortable. When it suits them, they are calm. Therefore, you must ask them to stand up, maybe run, and as thoroughly as possible to disassemble their role. Again, just like on the set. Or vice versa, do not disassemble, if it’s some kind of simple paint.

12. Color grading

Color correction is one of the most shamanistic stages: many believe that this is the moment when you can fix everything. Hahaha.

Our master advises two things that we used to guide the film’s color:

1. “What genre is this film?” — ask yourself, looking at each frame. When you are looking at each separate shot it should be definitely clear from which movie this frame is.

2. “Skin should be skin color” — always watch out for that one, even with the most daring color solutions.

Colors must be alive. There should be energy coming from the image.

13. Titles

During my first year in college, our second master, Arman Yakhin, the CEO of one of the largest Russian motion graphics studios “Main Road Post”, gave us a big lecture on “What the director needs to know when working with graphics”. It was a lot of words about control and checking.

My personal experience shows that the most important thing you should know is how much sugar to put in the coffee of the person who does graphics for you.

We were lucky to work with a Dima Moiseev who did not really need a lot of explanation from us. He himself invented, painted and animated the whole title sequence, and the second version became final.

Conclusion:

Making movies is a lot of compromises.

Next to you will be “specially trained people” who understand more than you in the Image, Sound, Artistic component and so on.
Listen to those people attentively, because correct choice of co-authors already makes half of the project.
But the final decision is almost always made by the director.
If something goes wrong, if you make the wrong decision, then you will be blamed. At any stage. And not only by the audience, but also by other members of the group, who invested their energy, time and emotions in this film.
But when you are responsible for every step within the project at the most expensive and labor-intensive of the arts, you must make decisions based on the final result.
But do not quarrel with the group. And do not run out of money. From the quality … and from here these trade-offs is the work of the director.
As I was again convinced, there are no “the most important” stages in the film production. If one stage is lost — the movie does not work out.

Now I’m at the pre-production stage (as I already wrote, all the stages occur simultaneously) of the next film. While writing this text, several tasks that set me back I was able to resolve after analyzing “how I did it before”. As you know, all the generals are preparing for the last war, but nevertheless, I hope that this text will help me to systematize trial and error experience.

In fact, this is all a bit of motivation post for me personally.

I’ll be insanely glad and happy if some filmmaker students find some useful things for themselves here.

This text was written during the creation of our other movie — “The Changeling” and very helped to cope with some dead-end tasks, helped to refresh past experience.

Now, being in the post-production of the last VGIK film and the most difficult work in my life — “Magic First”, this text refreshes in my memory all the ways we passed and also helps to move forward.