Ukrainian post-production studios are playing a big role in wowing international cinema audiences with computer-generated imagery and sound mixing. Post-production is a term for all stages of work that take place after filming. Such processes are typically managed by several studios and Ukraine is developing a reputation as a low-cost, yet high-quality location.
“I won’t tell you our prices. But in Ukraine it is way much cheaper for post-production than in Hollywood itself. And you get good quality of the final picture,” said Mykola Kaschenko, production manager of Wizard, a post-production studio.
Visual effects, created by Ukrainian specialists, cost 2-3 times less than in the U.S. or Western Europe, industry practitioners told the Kyiv Post. However, Ukrainian studios usually keep silent because of nondisclosure agreements signed with studios. In addition, many countries in the European Union provide incentives to studios that make movies domestically if post-production is carried out at home as well.
Located in Kyiv, post-production studio Wizard has cooperated with California studio Identity FX on two big projects.
“We completed post-production of Reni Harlins’ movie ‘The Legend of Hercules’ in 3D format last year,” said Kaschenko. “The material we got was of rather low quality. One scene…was actually filmed on a huge Blue Screen, which was badly illuminated. So the keying process (cutting characters from the background) was very difficult.”
Another project of which Kaschenko is proud is work on “Killing Season,” starring John Travolta and Robert De Niro. “That time (in 2013) we did classic special effects, adding fire and removing mashed ropes and fittings that held De Niro hanging upside down. In the film he is supposed to be hanging from a hook that stuck to his leg” Kaschenko said.
The film tells a story of two veterans of the Bosnian War who continue to fight each other even after the war ends. Kaschenko remembers how disgusting it was to make graphics for a scene showing a wagon full of corpses.
“According to the script, there were corpses of Serbians beginning to decompose. And of course the original crew just filmed actors, lying on the floor without even any special makeup on their bodies. We conducted painstaking research to find out how corpses decompose in order to authentically recreate this process. It was disgusting at the time, but now is fun to remember” said Kaschenko.
Roman Bazyuchenko, executive producer of Terminal Fx production studio, also located in Kyiv, said that his studio has been cooperating mostly with Universal Studios and Warner Brothers.
“In 2014 we made a computer-generated imaged dragon for Universal Studios’ ‘Dragonheart 3 The Sorcerer’s Curse.’ Creating a realistic dragon was rather hard work. But this is our art,” said Bazyuchenko.
Terminal Fx also did CGI and color fixing on such movies as Rob Zombie’s “The Lords of Salem,” MTV Show Punk’d with Ashton Kutcher and the film “Dead in Tombstone,” starring Danny Trejo and Mickey Rourke.
For now orders from the U.S. and Europe are very rare for Ukrainian post-production companies.
“Most of the time we make commercial videos. And when you work on a film with Robert De Niro you feel like a real artist,” Kaschenko said.
According to Ukrainian CGI experts, the war in Ukraine is having a negative affect on the post-production industry with international partners afraid to provide expensive materials due to what they see as a war-torn country.
Kyiv Post writer Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at [email protected].
