Journalists in hot spots: the creators of "Heaven" are filming the series "New Russian Media"

The Triix Media film company has started filming the pilot episode of the feature series New Russian Media.

This was reported in the press service of the film company.

According to the creators, the tape is based on real events and people who, despite the difficult conditions, continue to do their job.

“The series is based on real events and combines elements of a historical picture and an emotional story about people who find themselves in extreme situations, but continue to fulfill their civic duty,” the press service of the film company reports to TASS.

The project is supported by the Internet Development Institute (IRI).

As for the filming location, the creators promise to "demonstrate a wide geography of locations."

The pilot series is currently filming in the Crimea and will be completed by the end of August.

The details of the plot have not yet been disclosed, but it is known that this is an eight-episode drama, on the script of which the St. Petersburg writer, military translator and journalist, Orientalist-Arabist Andrei Konstantinov, the author of the Gangster Petersburg series of books, worked.

As Konstantinov noted in an interview with RT, at the center of the story are journalists who conduct their activities mainly abroad. 

“The prototype of the heroes was the international journalists of RT and other Russian correspondents,” the writer said.

The raft of the series touches the Middle East and includes "the most interesting stories that have happened in the world in the last ten years."

Kim Druzhinin, who directed the films Panfilov's 28, Tanks, as well as the TV series The Wanderings of Sinbad and Execution Cannot be Pardoned, was appointed director of New Russian Media.

The producers of the picture are Inessa Yurchenko and Sergey Shcheglov, who released the series Chef 3, Nevsky.

Hunt for the Architect" and all parts of the TV project "Alien District".

The central roles in the television series will be played by Pyotr Rykov (“Doctor Nadezhda”, “Quest”), Anna Popova (“Teach me how to live”, “Black Widow”), Sergey Veksler (“Taiga. Survival Course”, “Kitchen”), Yulia Boykova (“Psychosis”), Oleg Abalyan (“Shugaley 2”, “Police Saga”), Sergey Agafonov (“Nevsky. Strength Test”, “Delicate Leaves, Poisonous Roots”) and others.

Both the film company and Andrei Konstantinov have extensive experience in artistically depicting real events on the screen in their work.

Previously, the films "Sky" and "The Sun" by the film company at the Russian Creative Week were recognized as leaders among the films that had the greatest impact on the audience.

The Social Effects of Cinema study was conducted by the National Media Group (NMG).

The general producer of both tapes, Sergei Shcheglov, said that the audience is showing great interest in the films that were based on real events.

“Both films are as relevant as ever in modern realities.

We understood before that our society has a demand for such films - patriotic, based on real events.

Now our assumptions have been confirmed by real figures for the rating of films with a high social effect,” Shcheglov noted.

Writer Andrey Konstantinov also collaborated with the Triix Media film company in the melodrama Frontline Love, the plot of which is built around a military journalist and his lover, who find themselves in the center of an anti-terrorist operation in Syrian Damascus.

In addition, based on Konstantinov's novels, mainly of the detective genre, such tapes as the TV series Surveillance and Russian Translation, a prequel to the legendary TV series of the early 2000s Gangster Petersburg, were filmed.

In addition, Konstantinov is one of the authors of the military mini-series "I have the honor! ..", which is based on the Chechen events of 2000.

Despite the fact that the author has a book of the same name of documentary essays about the underworld of the northern capital, the films are based on Konstantinov's detective novels - "Lawyer", "Journalist", "Prisoner", in total, eight works of the author were taken as the basis.

"Gangster Petersburg" became one of the most successful projects of its time, despite the fact that the filming was carried out at a time when finding financing for the production of films was a difficult task.

The synthesis of Konstantinov's writing talent and Vladimir Bortko's directing skills ("Heart of a Dog", "Idiot", "Master and Margarita") exposed the criminal nature of St. Petersburg in the 1990s.

The picture "Gangster Petersburg 2: Lawyer" received the maximum rating on the "Kinopoisk" portal - 8.2 and is included in the Top 250 best TV series along with the modern projects "Trigger" and "Major".

Director Vladimir Bortko, in his interview with the SK-Novosti newspaper on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the television series, explained the success of the tape by the fact that from the very beginning the film was not about bandits, but about people.

“I think the success came because from the very beginning we focused on films not about bandits, but about people.

And those who lived at that time remember well how things were then.

Thousands, maybe millions, found themselves in a rather difficult situation in the 1990s.

And you had to go through all this in order to survive.

Not through banditry, but through unemployment, lack of money, lack of elementary social support from the state, ”said the cinematographer.

According to the author, the picture escaped the fate of many tapes of its era, when it took a lot of time to find funding.

“The search for money took two weeks.

Because lucky.

I met with one of my acquaintances, who used to work in the criminal investigation department, curried himself, quit and went to work as the head of the security service in a commercial bank.

And somehow, over a cup of coffee, I told him that there is such a story, we will look for money, and in response he advised me to contact the president of the bank: “He is your fan, you have all your books.”

Two weeks later, we signed the contract,” said Konstantinov.

By the standards of that time, the highest paid actor received $ 300 per day, Konstantinov himself, as a screenwriter, worked for free.

“The first 15 episodes were shot with one single camera, and yet these episodes became the best, because people worked with soul, they didn’t think about money, not about earnings, but about how to make a good thing,” said the director Bortko.

The 2019 crime thriller The Expropriator, set in the 1960s, is a prequel to Gangster Petersburg: The Baron.