Dobro CCS would like to present you the opening credits for the feature film Major Grom Plague Doctor. The soundtrack for this work was a cover of Viktor Tsoi's cult song "Peremen". The studio received a request in the form of a detailed director's brief. They've deeply analyzed the client's script, and came out with our treatment, in which we described the main idea in detail.
Dobro CCS carefully studied the images suggested by the director, using them as a starting point in our brainstorming. These were images somehow connected with the narrative of the film - the statue of Themis, the dump, callous construction sites against the background of the St. Petersburg architectural heritage, as well as scandalous wealth and luxury. This was not an imposed obligation, but only offered as a starting point. They wanted to avoid just a "contemplative" narrative by showing only beautiful spectacular symbols, so we needed to find an idea and to subordinate everything to a single plan and dramaturgical logic. That was the main goal.
The idea was to take all the images described in the director's brief and combine them into one sculpture, the crown of which will be Themis. The sculpture symbolizes a sick society, as a consequence of suffering injustice, it exudes a black liquid and this liquid generates a mirror image of this world-sculpture, distorted, turned upside down, the crown of which is now the Plague Doctor - the personification of perverted, sick justice. "It seemed to us that this idea wittily and broadly reflected the main plot of the film, and so with minor changes, we stuck to it until the end of the production."
Case Study
Storytelling
The next step was to turn the main idea into a full-fledged scenario with a storyboard, to think over the action, characters, camera angles and the mechanics of camera movement.
Themis
Themis, one of the main images of the opener, is the top of our megalithic sculpture. We decided to create a classic, elegant and simple, recognizable image of the ancient Themis.
City
The city plays a crucial role in our opener. The film is set in an alternative St. Petersburg, and we wanted to metaphorically reflect the confrontation between a living, historical city and soulless construction sites that oust an incredible architectural heritage. To emphasize the drama of what is happening, we came up with the idea of making an abyss instead of the street along which we are moving.
Hedonism
The main character of this scene is also a metaphorical, collective image — a bored fat man tired of life, mired in luxury and debauchery.
In addition, at the very last moment, we came up with the idea to completely depersonalize a man by adding a mask to his face.
Plague Doctor
Plague Doctor is the main antihero, and the moment of his appearance in the opener is in fact his first appearance in a movie. It was important for us to show him not literally, "head-on", but just like everything else in our opener — figuratively and poetically, in the sensitive and emotional sense.
Credits
- Client: Bubble Studios
- Song title: «Peremen!»
- Performed by: Taisiya Ashmarova
- Compositors: Tsoy V.R., Tikhomirov I.R., Guryanov G.K, Kasparyan Y.D.
- Music by: Roman Seliverstov dobro team
- Executive Producer: Timofey Penkov
- Creative Director: Alexey Dimkov
- Chief Technical Officer: Dmitrii Dolgikh
- Art-Director, Concept Art: Danila Rusanov
- Producers: Ira Vorobyova, Natasha Sorokina, Anton Goncharov
- Supervisor: Stanislav Rykhlikov
- Creative Group: Oleg Trofim, Alexey Dimkov, Danila Rusanov, Dmitry Smirnov
- Concept Art: Anton Grechko, Darya Petukhova, Ivan Nikin, Andrey Osadchikh
- Animation: Maxim Mikhailov, Georgiy Mamatov, Eugeniy Shestopalov, Maxim Solovyov, Anna Pozdeeva
- Modeling: Marina Pustovaya, Alexander Likhovsikh, Danya Sativa, Azat Batyrov, Pavel Izotov, Sergey Kudryavtsev, Azamat Sayfullayev, Anastasiya Khromova, Rustam Algayev, Vadim Borzenko
- 3D Generalists: Artur Terletskiy, Alexander Tokar, Kirill Wygranenko, Ruslan Ziganshin
- Visualisation: Dmitrii Dolgikh, Anton Veryovkin, Elena Rassokhina, Alexey Zhuravlyov, Sergey Movchan, Anton Mishenin
- Simulation: Dmitrii Dolgikh, Alexey Konovalov, Artur Gadzhiev, Akmal Sultanov
- Rigging: Pavel Korolyov
- Motion Design: Nikita Shapovalov, Sergey Savvin
- Technical Support: Vadim Dobrazhan
For more information make sure to check out dobroccs.com
