S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

In an earlier post I mentioned how the movie by Andrei Tarkovsky utilized the urban exploration concept in his "Stalker" movie long before wasteland tourism became in vogue.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. computer game series by Ukranian GSC are based on Tarkovskys movie. The Games are centered around the Chernobyl area, naturally enough, which bears several similarities to the "zone" concept of the orginal movie, even if the nuclear accident happend several years after the movie was released.

In fact, this games series was my main reason to get a new computer with a decent graphics card, I simply had to experience it! And I was truly spellbound by them. Ok, indeed the first two games, Shadow of Chernobyl and the prequel Clear Sky, had plenty of bad bugs. Call of Pripyat however improved a lot on the technical side. Also, as all first person shooters, they carry a solid amount of violence, but that is not really the point here. The atmosphere of the games along with the wonderful graphics is simply staggering.

The developers put a lot of care and detail in the graphics development, it took me some time to realize that most buildings and sites in the game actually exist in reality.

For this post I made a ton of screen shots, and compared some of them with real pictures I could find via google maps and panoramio.
(Click on images for a full scale version, most of them are very dark, but improve when viewed in full size.)

A model of yanov railway station at noon and dusk.

Yanov railway station is located south of Pripyat.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/20352657

Yanov station in reality. 

In the western part of Pripyat there is the "Jupiter" factory, as seen with google maps:

View Larger Map

Below is a screen shot taken while inside the factory. The amount of details in the shadows rendered by the sun really demonstrates how computer technology has accelerated in the last 10 years. When I still was a little kid, a super computer might take days to render such an image via raytracing. Now they are generated faster than 50 times a second, and the CPU still has time to do the physics engine, artificial intelligence of non-player characters etc... Whee, I feel very old now!

The "Jupiter" factory in real life.

See http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21305364

I was astonished how close the game developers stuck to the real layout of Pripyat city. The hospital, kindergarten, shops, movie theater, landmarks and building blocks are located at the correct places.

"Univermag", Soviet time supermarket.

Same place in reality.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/27682851

What really adds a lot of quallity to the game is the fantastic lighting engine. The movement of the sun with all the resulting shadows are rendered on the fly. Different weather conditions and positions of the sun, dims or increases contrast of the shadows.

Awesome lighting engine! And walls half painted in blue-green colors, very Soviet Russia style.

And all runs fluently with plenty of frames per second, of course. This makes me speculate what would happen if computer game programmers would develop applications for medical physics.

In the nortern part of Pripyat there is the "Prometei" cinema.

Movie theater "Prometei"

And a shop for consumer goods:

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/29016229


Housing:

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/29016249

The Duga-3 antenna complex (Nato codename "Steelyard"), is a long abandoned over the horizon radar. See e.g.:
http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2010/09/15/chernobyl-2-a-pearl-of-the-past/

Nearby the Duga steel giant they were also carrying out some ionospheric experiments, which probably inspired this part:

Note how the antenna ceramic isolators were carefully modelled.

Close to the "Duga-3" antenna complex.

And a few random screen shots from the game:

I guess those are figures from a Russian children cartoon.

"Chernobyl"

The machine to the left is a very typical soviet time water dispenser.

Inside a building in Pripyat.

The "Gastronom" welcomes you. I am afraid that pelminis are out, though.

Most Soviet housing architecture was standardized, and that way may cities tend to resemble each other a lot. I had the chance to visit Russia a few times, and always got a mild deja-vu feeling when seeing those buildings again in the game:

"Books"

Pripyat seen from below. Game is not entirely bug free...

 

Sunset at a small train depot.

Video below gives a quick tour through Pripyat city model, at varying time/weather conditions. (Never mind the split screen.)



This is the eastern part of Pripyat, it fits pretty well with google maps. (Try to enable photos, to compare some of the locations).

View Larger Map

Last but not least: a very nice trailer for the "Clear Sky" prequel (in my opinions that game still had the best atmosphere.) Video shows how to model Soviet nostalgika:



Large post, but I wanted to post this for a long time, and finally I had a Weekend off! :-)

A few notes on Andrei Tarkovsky

One of the most famous russian film directors is inevitably Andrei Tarkovsky. During his career he only shot 7 films, most noteworthy the autobiographic movie Зеркало "The Mirror" and the two science fiction movies Солярис "Solaris" and Сталкер "Stalker".

Tarkovsky tries to emphasize the cinema genre as an art form. Generally you can consider his movies as paintings with a time dimension added to it. For instance in "The Mirror" Tarkovsky let a famous paintings by the flasmish painter Bruegel come alive. "The Mirror" is a complicated film though, and personally I like "Stalker" the most with its strong meditative and post-apocalyptic feeling. This is not only expressed by the photography and the story line, but also by the sound design: in the scene shown below, the three main characters enter the zone on a motorized draisine:



Note, how the engine sound fades away, and only the sound of the rail joints remains, slightly electronically modified. Epic: their wrinkled faces, and a very characteristic Solonitsyn dozing off. The black and white shooting adds contrast emphasizing every little fold and the battered souls. When they finally enter the zone, the movie switches from B/W to colour:



"Urban Exploration" is about visiting recent ruins of our civilization, and that concept has surged during the last 5 years, becoming widely popular among people on my age. Arranged trips can be bought places such as Chernobyl. I prefer the term “Industrial Wasteland Tourism".

Tarkovsky truly was ahead of his time with the post-apocalyptic scenography in Stalker. Along with the absence of special effects which tend to look cheap after some time, this makes the footage timeless.

Our most noteworthy contemporary danish director Lars von Trier ("Antichrist", "Dogville") is heavily inspired by Tarkovsky (also his "Europa" trilogy). Checkout this scene from "Antichrist" :



the scenography, even the colour balance is very Tarkovsky-ish, there is a similar scene in "The Mirror", but I could not find it on youtube. :-/

Last year there was a one-day course dedicated to my favourite director, arranged by FOF in Aarhus. The program involved a lecture on Tarkovskys life and creative portfolio and watching the movie "The Mirror" followed by a discussion. "The Mirror" is probably the movie which is most difficult to understand. It is full of biblical references and encrypted symbolism, I have real trouble to uncover all layers. However, this is of course challenging and makes the movie even more interesting. So, this course seemed very promising, and I signed up. Did some preparations and tried to group all the questions I wanted to discuss.

Of course, if you have high expectations, chances are high you get disappointed. Apart of me, 6 people attended. The lecturer was a teacher of a Russian language course, and all participants (except me) where students of her class. Unfortunately, I was the only one who had seen more than just one movie (and more than just once...). The discussion part was therefore rather halting.

Yet, what I found very interesting was what the teacher said about how the films were received in Soviet Russia at that time. She was a teenager during the 70ies, and generally what was shown in movie theaters was daft simple minded movies. (I.e. imagine all you were allowed to see was mainstream hollywood movies! Gaaaahh...!) The Tarkovsky movies tended to be very controversial, they were not banned though. Instead they where rarely shown, but if they were, people flocked to the movie theatres. She and her friends brought paper and pencil into the cinema and took notes in the dark of the poems occuring in Tarkovskys movies.

As mentioned earlier, Tarkovsky tried to emphasize the art element in cinematography. The pool scene (yeah, we had it in an earlier post, music is by Artemiev) then must represent the classic still life discipline in painting!




All Tarkovskys movies can be watched here for free:

http://www.openculture.com/2010/07/tarkovksy.html

Later I plan to add a post about the STALKER computer game series made by Ukranian GSC. They are based on the very same movie, and certainly worth a closer investigation.