“THE CIRCLE” by Evgenii Bakirov
A short documentary about tattoo artist Herman Devyashin, who is trying to find a way out of a creative crisis. He calls his crisis a "circle" and associates it with burnout in creativity, which increases during the endless repetition of the same thing.
To get out of the circle, he decides to get a tattoo in AR glasses: because no one has ever done it.
History of creation and use:
Why was the first AR tattoo movie shot on film?
We knew that this story would be about a man and a challenge, as well as about the first ever experience of creating a tattoo using augmented reality goggles.
The compatibility of Tattoo and technology is controversial. It’s hard to imagine how the initiation process (which has existed for thousands of years) will collide with augmented reality (which has only just begun to shape).
I wanted to “play along” with this sacred combination and combine old-fashioned film and the material collected by lidar in one project.
Herman’s tattoo scans are a great addition to the movie. They were scanned with a special machine directly from their owner’s skin. But we decided to print and digitalize them too, so that the images would have chroma and luminance noise relevant to the images in the movie.
The outcome is a combination of materials created in the traditional way (16 mm film, scan, print) and digitally (lidar, material from the sketch ur program, 3D graphics).
We believe that this approach helped to align well with the meaning and also create a match that emphasizes the essence of this movie.
FROM THE DIRECTOR
“This project was formed as a full-fledged story only after the shooting. When Herman decided to tattoo in augmented reality glasses, it became clear that it was important not to miss the moment. I was sure that the approach of video art or experiment would not work here. We need a full — fledged short film that would tell not so much about the process as about the person and his path to such a complex performance.
When the process was filmed and the film went to be developed, the main part of the work began. It was important to put together all the facts, causes and consequences that accompanied this project.We spent more than one evening with Herman talking and discussing his states "before" the experiment and feelings "after".
The story finally formulated itself in the late stages of post-production (when the installation was ready). Therefore, the final version of the story (with ready-made formulations and pauses) was superimposed on the story literally "groove into groove".”
-Evgenii Bakirov
Credits
Director// Evgenii Bakirov
Artist// Herman Deviashin
Actress// Iana Andrukhina
Producer// Michael Novitskiy
Cinematography// Andrey Krauzov
Production Designer// Alexey Yandovskiy
Music by Jora Vensky
Set Decorator// Maria Gracheva
Special Effects// Daria Rykova
Style// Vasilisa Gamaleya-Gusarova & Kristina Eliseeva
Production manager// Timur Gariffulin & Sergey Samarin
Props master// Peter Burshin & Anastasia Burshina
Prop man// Nikolay Nekrasov & Vyacheslav Pirozhkov
Location Manager// Vladimir Kravchenko
MUA// Anna Alimova
Casting// Milena Bessonova
Models:
Alina Mikhalchenko
Yana Ank
Daria Romazanova
Anna Yudakova
Inga Khachataryan
Dmitriy Zaitsev
Trofim Ovchinnikov
VHS camera// Maria Gracheva & Alexey Yandovskiy
1st AC// Alex Budarin
Camera Assistant// Stas Popov & Andrey Popov
Gaffer// Pavel Bruh
Lightning technicians:
Alex Adamov
Slava Liskov
Alex Mikhalev
Artem Tulishev
Dolly// Michael Kashin & Alex Kashin
SFX// Evgeniy Sorokin
DIT// Sergey Ivanov
Post production producer// Louise Levitina & Erik Basentsyan
Color// Nikolai Vavilov
Art Director// Dmitry Maseykin
Animation// Pavel Nikiforov
VO Artist// Daniil Shelbanov
VO Artist// Giles Coghlan
Post production studio// LustraFX
Post production supervisior// Valentin Grosu
Houdini artist// Alexnder Tsymbalyk
3D Tracking & Matchmove artist// Maksim Makuha
VFX Composer// Igor Oleksienko
Spiritview
Dmitrii Mitrofanov (Head of studio)
Mikhail Martynenko (CG Producer)
Roman Mitrofanov (Clean up artist)
CG Artist// Gleb Zhvaniya
Sound manager// Sofya Braslavskaya
Sound Engineer// Alexandr Truhan
Translator// Evgenia Puzanova
Sound designer// Jora Vensky / Vladislav Kotov
Digital Intermediate & Scanning// Mosfilm studio
Fonts// Swiss typefaces
nowitsky.studio:
Michael Novitskiy
Hype production// Ilya Stewart, Murad Osman, Ilya Djincharadze
Sketchar// Andrey Drobitko
Yourental:
Maksim Belitskiy / Alexey Kundrat
16 mm KODAK
Moscow / Los Angeles
2024
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