About Aleksandr Kuznetsov

 

Award-winning director of photography Aleksandr Kuznetsov is a graduate of Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow and is best known for the action film "White Tiger". He has been a frequent visitor to Armenia, where he shot "Farewell", his Geramisov Institute graduation project. Read more>> 

For two weeks in January, a group of Tumo students jumped in head first into filmmaking, and became completely immersed in the real world challenges and responsibilities of the movie set.

The Art of Cinematography workshop was led by rising star director of photography Aleksandr Kusnetsov. The fifteen ambitious participants developed a minimal storyline together, then split into three groups to start production. Each groups produced a short film in one of three different genres – melodrama, horror and parody – using the same storyline. The aim of the exercies was to discover the relationship between genres and different aspects of production, such as lighting, camera angles, pacing, musical score and set design.

All three groups experienced a series of setbacks and complications during production. The melodrama group was indeed full of drama, with the group members at odds about important details until a few minutes before shooting started.

The horror group's shooting was like a horror movie itself, including a narrowly avoided fire followed by flooding on the set.

And the parody group lost a whole day's footage and had to go to post-production with only two days of material.

But the young filmmakers were quite happy with the end result and ended up learning not just about the art of cinematography but also about the practical realities of making a movie. All three films were screened at the Tumo cinema to an enthusiastic audience of peers, parents and instructors.