In Kiev

I see a tree of flowers, white on grey. It’s not real, it’s a skeleton tree with fake blossom carefully attached by the art department so that it won’t drop until a giant wind machine blows it off. There are huge Soviet-era lamps behind the fountain blasting the tree with socialist sunshine.

To my shame I don’t know how the political system here works. Everything looks Soviet to me, but then I don’t even know what that means, not now I’m in a place that once lived the dream. When I was young I collected postage stamps, and the ones that fascinated me the most were the ones that said “CCCP” on them, with pictures of threshing machines and heroic cosmonauts and muscular agricultural workers. Everything here reminds me of those tiny stamps in my album. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: it all seemed so futuristic in a nostalgic sort of way. Here the buildings, the subway, the statues… everything reminds me of those perforated little squares, except everything’s drained of colour. In my album everyone was looking skyward. Here everyone seems to be looking down.

I’m making a commercial for Russia. The company I’m working for is called Beeline. They’re a telecom company with a new dongle thingy that allows you to plug into the internet while you’re on the move. The Russians like to make their adverts in Ukraine. I suspect crew and kit and locations are more accessible here. I wonder if this makes them capitalist? I don’t ask.

My client is a fierce woman who wouldn’t look out of place holding a sickle on a stamp, if only she’d smile. She’s accompanied by a slick-haired man of short stature from the Moscow advertising agency. I suspect he bases his attitude on Leonardo diCaprio’s character in The Wolf of Wall Street. But then, is that film even available in Russia? So much I don’t know.

I’ve had difficulty understanding the script. You’d think it would be a simple matter of translation, but meaning here is easily lost. In a direct Russian/English word-for-word rendering it makes no sense whatsoever. You might ask: how much nuance can there be in a 30 second voiceover flogging the internet? But this is advertising, and in advertising they fret about everything. I have already gleaned that the lead creative - Sonya, who just happens to be the daughter of the Creative Director of the Moscow agency - regards the script as ‘poetic’. It is my job to articulate her vision.

Let me quickly explain how this works. A Russian company has a new product they want to sell to Russians. They go to a Moscow creative agency who comes up with an advertising campaign, one aspect of which (alongside magazine ads and bus shelter posters, etc) is a telly advert. The Moscow agency appoints a Ukrainian production company to make the ad. The Moscow agency wants a UK director to film the thing, so they get the production company to hire a London directors’ agency to find a UK director. The London agency finds someone willing to do the gig, buys them an airline ticket and a week in a serviced apartment, and Vanya’s your uncle.

So here we are in Kiev. Today we shoot all the exteriors and tomorrow we’ll do the interiors in a studio. Our hero is a cheeky likeable everyman in a bomber jacket, currently freezing his arse off on a park bench pretending to enjoy the spring ‘sunshine’. It’s May but the day is clouded over, freezing and grim. There’s a thirty-foot film crane arcing over our hero’s head - up and down, up and down - but I can’t seem to get the background artists to synchronise with the ascent of the camera.

And up. And down. Take thirteen. The Russians are doing their collective nuts. Time is money. We should be down by the river by now. I’m hauled into a windowless portakabin where the client has stationed herself - it’s like a mini throne-room - and I’m subjected to a bollocking by Greasy Wolf and his agency pups. I understand nothing, but I understand, if you get my drift, the international language of stress. Comes with the territory. I go back to the set and waste some more time shooting close ups of fake blossom.

I regard him as the hero but in fact our Cheeky Chappy is not the protagonist in this little story. The main character is The Internet. Creative Sonya has recorded a version of the script in English for me, which approximates the Russian but without the alleged poetry. The script opens with the line-

“I remember the first time I went out...“

-and I understand that the tale is to be told from the perspective of Cheeky Chappy’s computer. So this is a Point-Of-View concept (the internet looking out from ‘inside’ his laptop) which is kind of cool in principle, but proves to be limiting because of course a laptop doesn’t do very much except sit on your lap. Plus I can’t help thinking that if I was the internet on my first trip out into the big wide world I’d probably choose Bali or Chessington World of Adventures or something.

The role of a director on this kind of gig is performative. The main event is the shoot, but there are three stages of performance prior to that. The first is the conference call where you get presented to the agency and you have to wave your arms and tell them how you love their script and how you will interpret it for them in your own clever way. The second is the real-life physical meet-up between client, agency, and production company. This particular one was a horrendous affair in a seedy bar where everyone had to introduce themselves, tell a joke, then toast the production with a double shot of vodka. It went on for ever. By the time it was my turn I was shitfaced and could hardly stand. I have no recollection of what I said but suspect I may have told my hilarious story about the psychopath and the kettle. I’m certain no actual work was discussed. That is the purpose of the PPM.

The PPM is the formal pre-production meeting where the director goes frame-by-frame through the storyboard and explains to the agency and the client exactly what each shot will entail, who’ll be in it, what the action will be, what they’ll wear, etc, etc. I hate PPMs, they’re really intense and boring. If you want to kill all spontaneity and creativity, have a PPM. I’ve spent over an hour in a PPM arguing for the colour of someone’s socks, I kid you not. In this case it was the layout of Cheeky Chappy’s apartment that exercised the agency, in particular the white bookshelves in back of shot, and the aspirational ornaments that would be displayed thereon. The bloody thing is going to be OUT OF FOCUS.

But the thing is, it’s mainly show. People look to the director to be The Director, and I expect they’re disappointed when she or he doesn’t have a mental breakdown or wear a silly hat or snort drugs or do something tremendously whacky. Fact is (don’t tell), a job like this mainly depends on the crew, and your job is mainly one of steering the bloody thing away from the rocks and getting it safely to harbour. It’s always stormy out there, it seems.

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We’ve moved to the embankment of the Dnieper River where the water is smashing onto the granite steps like an angry ocean. It was sunny when we did the recce, people were sunbathing. Now they’re not. I worry that Cheeky Chops might get hypothermia. While we shelter from the vile wind, Creative Sonya lends me her headphones and plays me some music. It sounds like Debussy or Eric Satie, which feels surreal in this context but I can’t exactly put my finger on why. She says she’s thinking of this as the Beeline advert music. I guess I was thinking more- Chemical Brothers? She says-

-here we will have rainbow.

A rainbow?

Da, she says- is in script. I change it.

Oh, OK. I look over at the DoP and he does not look like he’s expecting the sun to come out anytime soon. Ever, in fact.

If there’s one person a director relies on more than any other it’s the Director of Photography. I tried to get my friend Andy on board as DoP, but no dice. Andy has valuable experience working with Russians and shooting in this neck of the world, and I could definitely use his experience and companionship.

But the agency has chosen Mikhail, a Moscow DoP, and that is that. He looks like Vinnie Jones in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and I suspect he’s been briefed to keep an eye on me. He speaks English (when he speaks) which is handy. Virtually no-one else does.

With daylight rapidly fading, Mikhail gets down to shooting slow-motion close-ups of the bog-coloured river water splish-sploshing on the embankment steps because there’s bugger all else to do, while I pace around and panic about post-produced rainbows.

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To the interiors. I’m having Cheeky Chappy’s apartment constructed in an amazing ‘60s concrete film studio on the outskirts of Kiev. Again, I get nostalgia for a past I never knew. Mikhail is nonplussed by my attraction to this dilapidated old pile of shit.

The carpenters are hammering and sawing and drilling in order to erect my idea of an aspirational bachelor pad (a tricky thing to pull off without inferring bourgeois decadence) so I wander off to have a root around the old studio’s corridors and rundown outhouses. In a deserted toilet I discover a vintage poster peeling off the wall - red and black typography in the Socialist Constructivist graphic style - and run excitedly back to ask Mikhail if he wouldn’t mind asking the studio manager if I might buy it. He looks at me like I’m a lunatic and then says something in Ukrainian to the crew, who fall about in hysterics. It’s the first time I’ve seen anyone here laugh.

The set is built in double-quick time and I’m congratulating myself on stealing back a precious hour when the Russians gather around the director’s monitor and kick up a fuss about that bloody bookcase. It gets lifted and moved hither and thither, dressed and redressed by the art department until the agency are finally satisfied. I hate to tell them this but it’s going to be OUT OF FOCUS. Personally I’d be more concerned about Cheeky’s limited range of facial expressions, which - no matter what I say or do - invariably make him looked like he’s away with the fairies on heavy weed.

Disappointingly for the crew I don’t have a hissy-fit during filming (nor do I wear a backwards baseball cap or demand sushi) yet they remain in surprisingly good mood for what is - in truth - quite a boring exercise for them. When we finally wrap the production they collectively present me with a stash of random notices they’ve ripped off the studio walls: fire exit signs, no entry symbols, direction arrows, a toilet icon, even a gravy-stained menu. I suspect they’re taking the piss.

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The odd thing about this Kiev gig is that they don’t want me to do the post. I’ve heard this is often the case in commercials (the deal is - get the shoot done and go home) but most of the films I make I sit in the edit and grade the pictures and do the sound mix and all that palaver. I like it, it’s the fun part; it’s like colouring in once you’ve drawn the outlines. It feels weird to just bugger off. And I’m worried about what Our Sonya will do with the music.

The Russians have gone home, which I think is probably a good thing. They bring a heavy vibe, and I’ve noticed the Ukrainians seem to avoid them. I’ve also been quietly dreading the wrap party, assuming it will once again involve indecipherable stories and industrial amounts of vodka.

The Kiev bar is cool and the night is surprisingly warm. It is May after all. Springtime! And - I don’t know how - but Andy has turned up. Greetings! Everyone seems to know him. Looks like he’s a bit of a celeb in these parts. No wonder he’s always shooting over here. The mood of the wrap is great, there’s a buzz and everyone’s upbeat (at last) and we drink good local wine into the small hours.

I get talking to someone I’ve never met before and he nods over at the crew and says to me- they think you’re funny. That thing you did. In the park. To the Russians. With the blossom. Very good, ha ha ha.

I smile, but, to my shame, I literally have no idea how the sense of humour round here works.

This happened before Russia waged war on Ukraine.
I don’t know where the people I worked with are now.
The production company is no more.