Cinematograph

Most directors and cinematographers need detailed storyboards from art directors that they can work with and accurately reproduce scenes from. Improvisation is also possible but it is more common in independent films with smaller audience.

Sometimes art directors work not only with the film’s visual concept but characters as well. First of all, an art director is closely connected with a costume designer and a make-up artist – sometimes their work cannot be distinguished from one another at all. Secondly, actors themselves need to grow accustomed to the film’s atmosphere created by art directors. Moreover, sometimes it is the film artists that help with plot deviations regarding the actor’s role. For instance, Serhiy Yakutovych had the following experience:

“There is a scene in the film where Taras Bulba kills his son. So Bohdan Stupka who was the lead actor refused to be a part of it. He told us to shoot behind the body-double’s back, he said he was not going to kill the son. I started thinking how we could show this episode. I proposed that Bohdan Stupka should knee by Andriy’s body after the sentenced had been executed. However, it was pretty hard to do this trick holding a 10 kg rifle. All the team members, all covered in grass and hay, took turns to groan on the loan trying to knee, when Bohdan Stupka came out of the tent. “What are you doing?”, he asked frowning. We told him about our variant of the scene. “We need to try”, he agreed and then he kneed in such a refined manner at the first attempt – he simply slipped down along the rifle. This scene would later become one of the strongest in the whole movie.”

Serhiy Yakutovych on the shooting of Taras Bulba
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«Illienko was telling me all the time: “What are you doing, this is not art, all of this will be destroyed and burned tomorrow.” I did not agree with many things in the script. But I told myself that I’m not interested in any of it. An art director is usually only mediator, preparation material. But I saw that Illienko needed my energy. I came to my studio at 8 A.M., Illienko was already waiting for me there and told me his ideas he came up with last night. And I told him mine. There were no raw drawings, we made a few sketches with a ball pen, he signed them. And the next day he asked me what to do with it. That happened very often. Only half the things made it into the film, and even less material was included in the final variant of the film which lasted three hours.”

Serhiy Yakutovych on the shooting of Prayer for Hetman Mazepa
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It was a common situation when a big part of work was done with the realization that it might never appear in the final result. However, sometimes art directors were engaged in editing where they had the opportunity to control the process. This, for instance, was the case with Heorhiy Yakutovych in the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors – the archive preserved the editing scripts that were processed by the artist as well.

Before actors and cameramen arrived at the shooting location and started actually working on the film, other team members had done some finicky job. Many tasks were on an art director: visit the chosen locations, examine the best areas for shooting, make sketches and storyboards for a cinematographer and a director. They also often performed some managerial functions: making arrangements with residents or the local government, finding the necessary buildings or other architectural erections where film’s characters would “live.”

There is a list of tasks from the shooting of Taras Bulba that Serhiy Yakutovych received from the director. Here are some of its items:

1. Together with the cinematographer determine the exact location and scheme of Taras’ farmstead in order to show the construction area to the master builder.
3. Find a person to design a ferry – a serious engineering construction. It would better to find one in Zaporizhzhia to control the construction process. Draw a ferry sketch.
4. Measure window openings in the Khotyn Fortress. If it is possible, order windows them in Ukraine.
8. Draw the interior of Taras’ house (sabres, whips, bird nets, fishing nets, guns etc) – as it was hung.

Working with the location was not, of course, limited to technical aspects only. The art director’s working conditions were usually determined by the team and the director’s principles. For instance, with the films Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and Prayer for Hetman Mazepa, the cameramen did not need that many storyboards from set designers, they acted more by their own instincts or director’s instructions. While in Taras Bulba almost all scenes were drawn by the artist before the cameraman even started shooting.

To create visual images, artists must become true explorers of the time and space where a narrative unwinds. Every small detail – that of the interior, architectural ensemble, character’s personal belongings, firearm or costume – was crucial in the general harmony of the historical and cultural atmosphere. Mise en scenes, especially those of combat formations, also required a thorough approach. So, to explain all these things to decorators, cameramen, make-up artists, costume designers and actors, one had to plunge into and study in depth the context in general.

Far from every detail was described in written and graphic documents, especially from the periods of the Middle Ages or somewhat marginalized (for a long time) Cossack formations. That is why an art director was forced to come up with a lot of entourage on their own. So that an idea did not appear an irrational fantasy, it was necessary to feel, analyze and understand the logic of an epoch – which is much harder than dealing with separate facts.

Heorhiy Yakutovych, when working on the film Zakhar Berkut in the 1970s, used the documents dating back to Kyivan Rus that he would later also use when designing books – The Tale of Past Years or The Tale of Igor’s Campaign. His close ones recollected that Heorhiy at that time could cite the chronicles for hours – he was that deep into it.

Sometimes directors themselves identified the problems for art directors to address. For example, here are several questions from Vladimir Bortko’s letter that Serhiy Yakutovych had to study for Taras Bulba:

2. How did inns look like?
3. What was in the Kosh otaman’s house?
6. What heraldic coats of arms were on the war leader’s house?

All artists’ intentions had to be feasible within both a specific country and a budget. That is why money and labour recourses were constant limitations of creative ideas. In some regions, it was impossible to order a certain service (for example, construction of a highly technological mechanism or reconstruction of complicated entourage or fabrics), and techniques that had been common in the West for a long time were often not mastered by local specialists. So an art director had, first of all, answer the questions “Who can do it?” and “How much does it cost?”, and only then other plans could be approved.

An art director, of course, did not work alone all the time: there could be assistants, set decorators, second and third art directors. However, the number of “accessories” majorly depended on the scale of a film – sometimes you had to cope with everything yourself.

“But I had to do a lot on my own: I did not only paint decorations, I also helped with the shooting, created some costumes. Although I wasn’t officially in the staff. At the end, Illienko asked me what was my role. As we conceived this movie together, I told him I was the production designer of the project.”

Serhiy Yakutovych on the shooting of Prayer for Hetman Mazepa
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