(Moscow) Bodies that float, cramped places, jargon of cosmonauts: the Russian team which shot the first film in history in space had to adapt to the realities discovered “up there”, told Tuesday its director.
Klim Chipenko and Russian actress Yulia Peressild returned to Earth on Sunday after spending 12 days aboard the International Space Station to shoot the first feature film in orbit and get ahead of a US competing project by Tom Cruise.
“The circumstances we discovered in orbit made us change the scenario,” Chipenko said at the team’s first press conference since returning to the blue planet.
“When you are on Earth, you imagine a scene between two characters facing each other. However, up there, one of them is standing vertically and the other is upside down, and the camera floats in its own dimension, ”he explained.
Not even counting the tiny film set, “it was all a real challenge,” added Chipenko, speaking from a cosmonaut readiness center near Moscow, where the crew are getting used to life on Earth again. .
The scenario of the feature film has also evolved thanks to the advice of Russian cosmonauts of the ISS who participated as extras and who adapted the dialogues “to make them more natural”, according to the director.
“Up there, I understood that it would have been a different movie if I had shot it on Earth. In orbit, it is space that commands, ”noted the director.
“Space films must be shot in space,” he concluded.
This Russian feature film, tentatively titled The challenge and whose release date will be announced in early 2022, features a surgeon going aboard the ISS to save the life of a cosmonaut.
The team recorded almost 30 hours of footage, which will be reduced to around half an hour of film.
Youlia Peressild and Klim Chipenko also said they were impressed by the warm atmosphere aboard the ISS, where Western, Russian and Japanese astronauts are currently working.
In orbit, “there is no country, it’s a big international family”, summarized the actress.