Producer

Ekaterina Kononenko

Following the high benchmark set by Ilya Naishuller with the previous ones, the latest video&nbsp;for Russian band Leningrad just happens to be another breathtaking tour de force - extravagantly creative, brilliantly realised and, as tradition demands, outrageously, eye-wateringly violent.For Gold - which is produced by Naishuller, and written and directed by another precocious talent, the Moscow-based director&nbsp;Lado Kvataniya &ndash; a beautiful girl is under questioning by two cops, and recounting her exploits - as a shape-shifting vampire who&nbsp;feasts on gold and gems, leaving mindboggling levels of&nbsp;bloody slaughter in her wake.And she not only tells of the incidents at a casino stuffed with rich pickings, and driving around with a Saudi&nbsp;prince&nbsp;in his gold Rolls Royce, she brings them right into the interrogation room - and that includes an out of control Roller crashing through the wall.This brilliant and disorientating device arguably makes this one of the best of the Leningrad vids. And certainly the astonishing VFX work in the&nbsp;video once again makes this looks like it was produced on a budget that wouldn&#39;t shame a Hollywood blockbuster. A really really violent one.&bull; <a href="http://vimeo.com/308870631" target="_blank">BACKSTAGE</a> &nbsp; &bull; <a href="http://directorsnotes.com/2019/01/03/leningrad-gold/">Directors Notes</a>&nbsp;

Russian Federation

Lado Kvataniya

Ilya Naishuller

Ruben Adamyan

Versus Pictures

Egor Solomatin

Alexei Smoliar

Andrey Krauzov

Dmitriy Onishenko

Anna Kudevich

Anastasiya Ramlya

Vlad Yakunin

Jamie O'Bradovich

Alexey Uskov

Snezhana Samokhina

Leningrad 'Gold' by Lado Kvataniya

Leningrad /// GOLD

Ilya Naishuller&#39;s insane video for Leningrad&#39;s&nbsp;Kolshik is a calamity in reverse. Beginning at the climax and working our way backward with reverse footage and clever reveals, we get to see exactly how a day at the circus turned into such a complete disaster.There&#39;s a hell of a lot to unpack here in the video&#39;s four minutes: a lot of storylines running concurrently - including a tiger on the loose, a flaming acrobat in a gorilla suit, and a Mafia deal that goes very wrong &ndash; that&nbsp;all happen to reach a climax simultaneously, creating a blockbuster of farcical&nbsp;carnage and bloodshed.It&#39;s a jawdropping&nbsp;video to watch, with the superb VFX work making the various horrifically violent scenes drawn out in unremitting detail in order&nbsp;to show you how everything went down. Brace yourself for this one.

Fancy Shot

Versus

Great Guns

Dimitry Mouraviev

Genrih Meder

James Demetriou

Vlad Kaptur

CGF, Moscow

OB Management

Folk, Indie

Leningrad 'Kolshik' by Ilya Naishuller

Ленинград — Кольщик

First there was the Insane Office Escape &ndash; the video for Russian punk outfit Biting Elbows&rsquo; The Stampede, released 18 months ago, by director Ilya Naishuller &ndash; also the band&rsquo;s frontman. It&rsquo;s a gripping action-adventure, made in the style of a first-person video game shoot &lsquo;em up, and a very respectable YouTube hit with two and half million views.And now comes Insane Office Escape 2, for Biting Elbows&#39; Bad Motherfucker, Ilya&#39;s sequel, which has overtaken its predecessor&#39;s views on Youtube in less than 48 hours - and that after being banned by Youtube for content violation hours after the official release, and then reinstated after inevitably popping up elsewhere.And here&#39;s why. The Bad Motherfucker video continues the premise of The Stampede, and ramps everything up about fivefold: relentless action and ultra-violence (possibly setting a bodycount record in a music video), a tiny bit of sex (the thumbnail is utterly misleading), and most importantly, absolutely jawdropping stunt work, from the first person perspective - and as one or two reflection shots reveal, achieved by GoPro cameras being strapped to the head of the main stunt performer. Its awesome throughout - although dog-lovers might want to avoid the first thirty seconds - and a couple of the extreme parkour sequences beggar belief...With Ilya Naishuller working closely with cameraman Sergey Valyaev, this was shot on Go Pro cameras over 9 days with a crew of 5 professional stuntmen and 40 friends of the band. The majority of the film was shot in a huge factory city in Moscow, with additional shooting in the French Alps. It also happens to be a very bold piece of branded content for the Russian vodka company Neft. The oil drum shaped product makes an appearance at the very beginning of the film, and its logo also pops up in the unlikeliest of locations later on in the film too.Ilya says: &quot;The idea was very simple. To shoot a very fun, exciting and relentless five minutes of action that can be enjoyed, with tongue firmly in cheek, for all its guilty excess and irreverence. Nothing more. Nothing less. I hope we have succeeded in our mission.&quot;He also adds that no animals were harmed in the making of the video. The dog stunt at the beginning being achieved with &quot;a stuffed toy loaded with 12 kilos of bricks.&quot; Which is more than can be said for the crew. &quot;We got hurt quite a bit, even though we had several professional stuntmen on board. Even my ear got a bit messed up when I forgot to wear earplugs whilst getting shot at by an AK47 loaded with blank rounds from only two meters away.&quot;And here&#39;s a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watchfeature=player_embedded&amp;v=4rYpwlkEMK8" target="_blank">short sequence from the shoot</a>. Outstanding.

Ekaterina Kononenko

Producer

Videos featuring Ekaterina Kononenko

2019 (1)

2017 (1)

2013 (1)

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