From Russia – with love. Premiere of the movie with Olya Smeshliva

On the eve of the premiere of the movie “From Russia With Love” we talked to the main character of the shooting process – three-time Russian snowboarding champion in halfpipe and big-air disciplines Olya Smeshliva and the director-operator of the movie Darina.

– Olya, tell us, what will the movie be about?

– To make it clearer, the filming took place in Sochi. In this video we wanted to show that in Russia there are places where you can do extreme sports – snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing, wakesurfing, as well as beautiful locations and unique nature of our country. This work is not just my skating profile, it’s a real movie with a beautiful picture and story.

– What will Sochi be like in your movie?

– I wanted to show everyone a place with unique climatic conditions. For many people it is very unusual that you can snowboard in the mountains and an hour later you can catch a wave on the sea. Once again, this is a unique place in Russia, and even in the world, there are few of them.

– Who was part of the shooting crew?

– Darina did the main filming and Pete Boura did the drone filming.

– What difficulties did you face as a rider during the shooting?

– First of all, when we were shooting the video project, I had no time to rest and relax, every day I tried to give my best, to do all the necessary tricks. For example, I rarely rode in the backcountry, in powders. I am mostly a park rider, and for me it was the hardest thing to walk in deep snow(smiles). Another challenge was the accumulated fatigue and dependence on the weather. Sometimes the mood was not so good, but you still had to go and shoot. It was the feeling that the result would be something unrealistically cool.

– How long did it take you to shoot one stunt?

– If it was a serious stunt, it could take all day to shoot it. It all depended on how rolled out I was, on the complexity of the stunt, of the ski jump. Most of the material had to be shot from several angles, so I had to repeat the stunts several times.

Darin: A day was considered successful if at least one or two tricks were filmed, but sometimes nothing was filmed. And it’s very hard. When we started filming, we didn’t have the right weather, we waited a week. It was always raining or very wet snowing, so instead of two weeks allotted for the project, we shot for over a month.

– Darin, what difficulties did you face as a videographer?

– For me, the difficulty in shooting a rider is first of all to get along with him and be on the same wavelength. Olya and I have known each other for a long time, and even if we were in a bad mood, we kept our cool. We tried not to fight, because we understood what we were doing all this for. I also made her walk upstairs all the time and tried to motivate her. I realized that if we didn’t do anything and take pictures, it would be my fault.

– Open the veil of secrecy, tell us what unremarkable we will definitely see in the movie.

O.S.: Surprise on the set was an unplanned opening of the season on wakesurf, when the water was still quite cold. And at sunset I was able to ride on the same wave with dolphins.

D.: It was very cold, and we had literally 10 minutes to shoot something, because Olga couldn’t stay in the water anymore. And then she decided to catch the final wave. We were filming all this, and I thought: “Oh gods, what a wonderful picture: sunset, Olya is going”. And then suddenly there are dolphins, they’re swimming through the waves right behind her! It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever shot in my life, it’s just incredible.

– Olya, do you already have plans for further video projects?

– The next shoot is in Australia, there will be a lot of action, local nature and kangaroos. I’m going there for the first time. I will explore everything and I will definitely tell about everything in a new video. I plan to discover more beautiful locations and untouched nature in my future travels.

You can find out how the filming went from Oli Smeshlyva’s video blogs on YouTube.