Trivia / Russian Ark

• Absurdly Short Production Time: The Hermitage Museum, the location of the film shoot, was only available for a single day. Aleksandr Sokurov, the director of the film, took the production of the film quite seriously and was determined to make the whole movie be The Oner in every last way. The owners were alleged to have offered Sokurov exclusive access to the whole museum for two days, but Sokurov insisted on only shooting the film in one day.
  • Since the film was meant to be shot in one take, a handheld camera mounted on a Steadicam rig had to be used. No film camera could shoot 90 minutes of footage in a single take (even up to this day as that would require an impractically huge film magazine), so the production had to turn to early digital cinema cameras.
  • The digital cinema cameras at the time were not as robust, reliable, or even ergonomical to use compared to the cameras of today. To shoot the movie, one person held the camera while another carried a hard drive rack connected to the camera that would contain the footage. The first three attempts failed due to technical difficulties. By the fourth take, half the day had gone by and the camera only had enough battery power for one take. Luckily, the fourth take was successful.
• Corpsing: When all of the people are pouring down the staircase, one of the women trips and is laughing when she gets back up.

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