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The first thing that amazes you at the Cairo film studio is its size. The American actors who visited it for the first time were shocked. And it is understandable after all according to their own words its scale surpasses any Hollywood analogue. After the check-point we drove through the whole complex as our scenery was in its farther end. As a matter of fact if you want to have a look at different epochs that passed long time ago you don't need to invent the time machine, it is enough to visit only this film studio. You can visit everywhere starting from the ancient Egypt and ending with some modern megapolis. Indisputable advantage of this paradise for movie making companies is in the fact that it is located not in the center of the city like the Mosfilm but in the suburb in the region the Six of October. It is very convenient since one can easily build a couple or three more needed back lots. On one of such lots we had built an Arab village where the characters of our film spent a significant part of time and our shooting crew did a significant part of shooting. By the way I didn't make a slip that village had really been built and not cut out from veneer by a fret-saw. Those houses that you would see in the film are not some flat facades of scenery but real buildings with labyrinths of corridors, stairways and rooms. I think each of us got lost there at least a couple of times. In other words if you could see that shooting took place on the roof of some hut there was no guarantee that you could get there, just try to find required entrance and required stairway first. And now about the sad thing. During my very first visit to the film studio I faced the same thing that I always encounter in our country. When I commissioned the scenery and properties all were running around me and bustling. In other words they worked. As soon as I left it became suspiciously quiet. In other words requests and wishes of a director are respected until he is on the shooting site. You come the following day and see that the scenery is in the same state it was yesterday when you left. So you ask: "Why nothing has been done? We agreed with you …" "Yes-yes, everything will be ready now" all 25 Arab assistants reply simultaneously and start running here and there again, some with a brush, some with a ladder and some with a hammer. One more interesting principle of Arabic approach to work sounds like this: "Look for the endman". Just risk to say something like "bring that floodlight over here" or "take that jeep away from the camera view" and you'll see what is chain reaction. Your assistant starts yelling to his assistant who yells to his assistant who gives orders to some people and so on and so forth. Quite often it was much quicker, more effective and not so noisy when you fulfilled your request yourself. In some issues however we managed to prevail. I always request my assistants to write down my instructions in a notebook and not to rely on one's memory as in the end somebody will certainly forget something. So, on the tenth day of shooting one Arab young man came to the regular meeting with a notebook and a pen. An event like that gave some hopes. And of course everything would have been much more complicated but for our art director Abbas Saber. You can say that this man has worked in film making since childhood therefore his skill to organize a group of local assistants and create some new scenery overnight was just what we needed. Meanwhile the shooting was in full swing. After shooting in the desert all were just happy to move to the studio. Firstly, it took only fifteen minutes to get there and not two hours. Secondly, we were hiding from the heat not under parasols but in air-conditioned premises with not so clean but still good enough toilet rooms and not those small cabins that were in trailers. Thirdly, in the studio we were saved from strange and curious onlookers that could occasionally hinder the process. The American actors had already fully as they say "understood" their characters and I didn't have to explain to them prior to new scenes how this or that character should behave itself. It was absolute pleasure to watch it: you just said who would say which words and should not worry about the line of behavior. As a result, while watching video footage you noticed that one of the actors in the background had resentfully waved his hand. And then you got it, everything was right and it was done as it should be since that character had inconstant and capricious nature! The joke that "America is the only country where they learn Stanislavsky's methods" perhaps is not so far from the truth... There is one more rule in film making according to which you can easily multiply your shooting time by two when you shoot a child or some animal. And now just imagine that sometimes the number of Arab children on the shooting site exceeded thirty. And none of them understood a word in Russian. One more important fact to mention: none of those boys and girls was a professional actor. More detailed description of reasons according to which we had selected particularly those children as well as description of that incredible experience that I had gained with them you would find in the following chapter of the diary. Back |
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