With people upgrading less frequently, how do you convince tech-savvy Russians that the latest truly is the greatest?
By filming the longest ever one-take film, shot in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.
Cinephiles will recognise the similarity with Sokurov's Russian Ark, a one-take film shot in the same location; a film that every Russian is familiar with. While technology in 2002 "limited" his single take to 1 hr 39 min, the iPhone 11 Pro Max enabled us to film for 5 hr 19 min 28 sec (with 19% battery remaining).
Film
588 Masterpieces, 81 pieces of music, 45 Galleries and 40 minutes of live musical performance in 1 take.
Highlights
00:01:25 Jordan Staircase
00:49:00 The 1812 Gallery and the young cadet
02:06:02 See Rembrandt like never before
02:55:56 Hermitage Theatre contemporary ballet duet
03:03:50 Study the ceilings of the Raphael Loggias
03:56:25 Close-up on Caravaggio’s The Lute Player
04:50:32 Live performance by composer Kirill Richter
Trailer
The challenge for the trailer was to capture the scale and one-take nature of the 5-hour film without sacrificing the craft and beauty. A very fine balance was struck between hyperlapse and the real-time speed of the one-take film.
Outdoor
The longest one-take film requires the longest film poster. We took over an entire 200m subway in St Petersburg and created a walk-through version of the film. On one side, a chronological flow of keyframes from each gallery and their time codes. On the other, the most beautiful and impactful frames.
For @apple we created a series of Stories that blended BTS and actual footage. A flowing line (based on the route through the museum) and a ticking timer helped communicate the non-stop flow and scale of the shoot.
Type Design
On one of our several research trips to the museum, we noticed and loved the room names and numbers that are chiselled above each gallery doorway and gilded in gold leaf. We took these and built our font, and colour-matched the gold for our key colour.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack creates a unique, evocative atmosphere, full of vibrant electronica and spirited neoclassical music by modern composers such as Kirill Richter, Anton Schwartz, Roman Litvinov (aka Mujuice) and Gabriel Prokofiev.
Press
In Russia, the film made headlines and dominated the topics of popular talk shows. Elsewhere, outside of the industry press, we’re incredibly proud that the film has been added to Open Culture’s archive. Furthermore, as Covid-19 driven lockdowns have tightened, more outlets are sharing the film as a means of getting a culture fix and escaping reality for a few hours.
