The poster of mankind's first real-life space movie " challenges ".
An astronaut had an accident on the space station and was seriously injured and unable to return to Earth for treatment. A female surgeon stepped into space to perform a space surgery. This is the synopsis of the story of the Russian movie "Challenge" which was released in mainland China on March 15. According to convention, this is a science fiction film, and the space scenes can be completed with visual effects. However, this movie actually sent the director and heroine into space, becoming the world's first movie shot in space.
It is reported that the famous Hollywood actor Tom Cruise had planned to cooperate with NASA and SpaceX to shoot a movie on the International Space Station. Therefore, some netizens commented: "The Russians shot ahead of Tom Cruise and made mankind's first feature film in space."
On October 5, 2021, director Klim Shipenko, actor Yulia Perhild who played the heroine surgeon, and a real cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov took a " The Soyuz MS-19" spacecraft arrived in space and during its 12-day stay, it completed the filming of the space scenes, which lasted approximately 35 minutes in the movie.
Actor Yulia Perhild, launch team leader Anton Shkaplelov and director Klim Shipenko.
This space shooting has been highly recognized and supported by the Russian state. Russian President Vladimir Putin personally met the crew of "The Challenge" and highly praised their contribution to promoting the development of human aerospace culture. The crew members were awarded the Russian National Medal of Honor Commendation.
The heroine of this film, Yulia, previously won the "Tiantan Award" for Best Actress at the 5th Beijing International Film Festival in 2015 for her wonderful performance in the movie " female sniper ". Before the release of "Challenge", Yulia came to Beijing to promote the new film. She took the time to climb the Great Wall, visit Shichahai and Nanluogu Lane, play shuttlecock, eat candied haws, ride a rickshaw, and was also attracted by many Russian tourists. Recognize them and take a group photo. In Russia she is considered a heroic film actress. The Beijing News conducted an exclusive interview with Yulia, the heroine of "The Challenge", and asked her to tell the precious behind-the-scenes details of filming in space. When
tested the load resistance, her score had exceeded that of the fighter pilot
Yulia was the lucky one to stand out from 3,000 competitors. Before going into space, she underwent three and a half months of training after undergoing various physical examinations.
For example, there is a training program for rotating chairs. People sit on a chair and rotate the chair in the same direction to train the person's vestibular organ to maintain balance. Yulia can sit on the rotating chair for 22 minutes. There is also a centrifuge load resistance test. Generally, fighter pilots are considered qualified if they can withstand 6g without fainting. Yulia completed two 8g centrifugal force challenges.
Someone told Yulia before that there is no need for the crew to go to space to shoot, as the feeling of weightlessness can also be simulated on an airplane. But Yulia said that the cost of shooting on a plane is too expensive, and may be more expensive than going to space. The simulation of weightlessness by an airplane is like this: the airplane rises to a certain height, then turns off the engine and lets the airplane fall freely. It has a limit descent time of 23 seconds. These 23 seconds are the weightlessness time.
However, these 23 seconds are too short for movie shooting. Moreover, the aircraft can only simulate weightlessness 10 times once it takes off, making it unrealistic to complete the filming of the movie. In the film, there is a scene of aircraft weightlessness training. Yulia and the team first rehearsed on the ground for a week, and then had the plane take off four times to complete this scene. It was a particularly difficult process.
Yulia plays a surgeon in the film who needs to go to outer space to perform surgery on injured astronauts. Before going to space, she read a lot about thoracic surgery, and a surgeon gave her a silicone-like object to train her stitches on. Yulia practiced sewing in restaurants and in taxis. At that time, Yulia's home was a bit surreal. On one wall of the house were pictures of the space station, and on the other wall were pictures of surgical organs such as lungs and bronchial tubes.The surgical scenes in the
movie are basically exactly the same as real surgeries. Behind the scenes, the best thoracic surgeons in Russia were invited to serve as consultants. They not only designed the surgery for the movie, but also really considered what would happen if it really happened. When encountering such a situation in space, what should they do and how to complete the operation?
Yulia plays an excellent surgeon in "The Challenge".
The idea of shooting movies in space was first proposed by the Russian Space Agency. Afterwards, the Russian Space Agency contacted the Russian Channel 1 TV station to cooperate, and director Klim Shipenko also joined the team and began to write the script. However, this does not guarantee that the director will definitely go to space. He also has to undergo various trainings together and has options just like the heroine. It wasn't until the two of them got on the rocket and prepared to go into space that the two candidates withdrew.
Yulia said that astronauts have a tradition that when they leave the place where they train and arrive at the launch site, there must be a farewell ceremony, where they wear spacesuits and say goodbye to their families through glass. As an actor, she reacts as soon as she hears the word "farewell". This farewell is the most difficult for her.
was actually shot in space, "there must be no mistakes."
On the evening of October 5, 2021, Yulia, director Klim Shipenko, and a real astronaut arrived at the space station. This was the first time in history that this happened Of the three people who went into space at the same time, only one was a professional astronaut.
Nowadays, it has become a reality to spend money to go to space as tourists, but these space tourists do not need to operate anything, they are all operated by a few professional astronauts. But Yulia and the director need to be able to do practical operations, such as how to open valves, extract moisture, control oxygen, etc. "When you open the valve, think about the fact that there are 800 tons of fuel under your butt. You must not make any mistakes." Yulia told the Beijing News reporter seriously.
was able to shoot successfully in space. Yulia was very grateful to the training center for the training she received. Because the environment in the training center is worse than the conditions on the real space station, the training is particularly rigorous and painful. The staff also often told Yulia some horror stories that she might encounter on the space station. For example, if you go to the toilet in space incorrectly, it may cause the entire space to be scrapped. This allows Yulia and the director to maintain a very serious attitude during training and not make any mistakes.
Yulia and the director embarked on a 12-day stay in space. For filming, 12 days is too short and not enough at all, but they can only stay for 12 days, because for ordinary people, if they do not exercise or exercise very little on the space station for 10 days, their muscles will begin to atrophy.
Stills from "The Challenge". The surgeon played by Yulia stares at the Earth through the porthole of the space capsule.
Yulia slept in a small sleeping cabin. On October 6, she woke up and opened her eyes, opened the window shading, and saw the structure outside the space station, the solar panels, and the earth. In her eyes, the earth is like a particularly innocent child. From that day on, she sang an old Soviet-era song "Echoes of Love" (the interlude of the film "Destiny") while flying with the space station. . Later, when the director was editing, he placed that song in the scene where Yulia lands on Earth. Before
went to space to shoot, the director asked the best people in the industry to draw three versions of the scenes for the scenes in the space station, but in the end, none of the versions were used during the actual shooting in space.
The first scene Yulia shot when she went to the space station was to check the lungs of an injured astronaut. During the actual shooting, Yulia discovered that she could float and rotate comfortably in the space station, but it was never imagined that she could be designed like this on Earth, so she completely scrapped the previous plan. The space of the
space station is very small, and the entire filming crew was compressed to the extreme. There are only two people, Yulia and the director, but it is also inconvenient for shooting. Because of the filming of this movie, Russia sent a space capsule two months in advance and added it to the space station.According to Yulia, this space capsule has not been launched for 20 years and has been perfected. It was launched because of this movie and was named "Science Capsule". This "science module" also has a purpose, to achieve a long shot - Yulia passes from one space capsule to another, and the camera passes through the entire space station.
Stills from "The Challenge". Yulia is filming surgery footage on the space station.
This long shot was rehearsed many times, and was completed with the help of the director and several other astronauts relaying cameras. Because the hatch was very narrow, their arms and knees would hit the hatch whether in rehearsal or in actual filming. During filming, they could only grit their teeth and endure it. After the filming was over, there was a lot of curses from the space station.
When "The Challenge" held its premiere in Beijing, an audience member asked Yulia a question: If there is a second film, will you go into space for the second time? Yulia replied: "I am the mother of two daughters. Before I went into space, I was worried that I might not come back, so I wrote a farewell letter to my two daughters. I recorded the recording of the book I published ten days ago. At that time, my two daughters saw this letter for the first time, and they cried very painfully. I felt that if I had another chance, of course I would go, but because of the love these two girls had for me, I decided to stay. The ground. But to be honest, I really miss the space station and the feeling of weightlessness. I would be happy to go there again."
[Conversation]
It was so cool to film in weightlessness
Beijing News: When you finished reading the script for the first time , how does it feel?
Yulia: I only saw the script after going through the physical examination and training and being selected. When I was reading the script, I started crying when I read the part where the surgery was successful. The second thing that touched me was that the heroine threw the earrings given by her husband into outer space. The heroine lost her lover (died in a car accident) and has been living with sadness. This is why she hopes to save the injured astronauts so much, and why she understands the astronauts' relatives so much. Because she has lost relatives herself, she wants to save the astronauts. After completing the space rescue, she also found new love and a new life.
Beijing News: There is a scene in the film where the heroine walks out of the space station and floats into outer space. What was it like when filming this scene?
Yulia: We did not leave the space capsule because we considered safety issues, not only the safety of the actors, but also the safety of other astronauts, so this part was completed with special effects. Some of the space scenes are real and were shot by astronauts before, but when the heroine's face is photographed, it is a composite shot.
Stills from "The Challenge". Yulia's space exit shot was completed with the help of special effects.
Beijing News: Compared with shooting on the ground, is shooting in weightless space more physically demanding or less labor-intensive?
Yulia: is particularly cool when filming in weightlessness, because you don’t need all kinds of equipment. You can loosen the machine and it will keep floating. When the filming was almost finished, the director joked that if the space agency sent another space capsule as a studio, he could keep filming in space.
Beijing News: When the director is in space, does he shout "stuck" a lot?
Yulia: many times, but it’s useless if you shout, because it’s so noisy up there, it doesn’t matter if you shout, you can’t hear it anyway. However, I still want to thank the director because he can work 24 hours a day. He was able to keep filming without eating or drinking. Even when we were about to land, he still used a machine to shoot and add shots, because 12 days (space shooting time) is really too short.
Yulia said that she misses the space station very much. “I miss the feeling of weightlessness very much and would be happy to go there again.”
Beijing News: What feedback did your two daughters have after watching the movie?
Yulia: Before the movie was released, I had not watched the movie in advance. It was the first time I watched it in the cinema with my daughter. The children loved it so much that they started crying when they saw the rocket taking off.
Beijing News reporter Teng Chao
editor Huang Jialing
proofreader Liu Yue
