An Industry Case Study
Narrative | Dramatic Features
Film Name: Discovery
Genre: Drama
Length of film: 6:35 min
Date: 01/20/22
Director: Mikhail Saburov
Producer: Mikhail Saburov, Dmitrii Saburov, Galina Saburova
Executive & Creative Producer: NA
Writer: Mikhail Saburov
Cinematographer: Dmitriy Surin
Editor: Mikhail Saburov
Composer: Philipp Abramich (Snowbox band)
Production Company: Saburov Films
Budget: $750
Financing: Self-financed
Shooting Format: 4K digital,
Screening Format: 2K digital, 2:35:1
World Premiere: August 19, 2020, at Melrose Film Festival
Awards: Best Cinematography award at the Beyond Earth Film Festival, Best Short award at Miami Independent Film Festival 2020, and scoring Best Experimental Film Nomination and Best Written Film Script Nomination at Art is Alive Film Festival.
Website: msaburov.com
The Official Trailer for Discovery
Watch The Official Trailer for Discovery directed by Mikhail Saburov
A Short Biography of Mikhail Saburov
Mikhail Saburov is a Russian filmmaker. He spent 10 years+ performing and directing plays at a local theater. After, he graduated from School of Visual Arts, and, most and, the AFI Conservatory. Meanwhile, I have made several award-winning short films; Remember Us, Bound, and recently Like Us which premiered at the AFI Film Festival Conservatory showcase and was released on DUST.
Mikhail has also written several feature films both on spec and assignment. Currently co-writing an undisclosed feature film with director Theo Lindquist in LA.
The Mikhail Saburov Interview
indieactivity: What is your film about?
Mikhail Saburov (MS): “Discovery” is a father-daughter story about the importance of imagination not only in our daily lives but in our relationships. As kids, we all live in between the real world and one of our dreams, but as we grow older the imagination fades giving way to mundane and often bleak reality. Only the world around us doesn’t change – it’s still full of wonder, magic, and discovery. We just forget how to look at it.
Tell us about the festival run, marketing, and sales?
Mikhail Saburov (MS): I’ve been incredibly honored by the reception the film has got throughout its festival run — especially with international audiences. So far it played in over 10 festivals winning awards and earning nominations including Best Cinematography award at the Beyond Earth Film Festival, Best Short award at Miami Independent Film Festival 2020, and scoring Best Experimental Film Nomination and Best Written Film Script Nomination at Art is Alive Film Festival. Even though I made the film a few years ago now, it began its festival run relatively recently – so I hope to continue on for a few more months. As of now, the film doesn’t have distribution.
Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?
Mikhail Saburov (MS): A father takes his little daughter on a fishing trip. The girl is clearly imaginative as she finds nature around her magical and sees rocks and trees as fairy tale buildings, creatures, and animals. The father though is clearly not interested in the game — their relationship is strained, detached and the father doesn’t know how to mend it. While fishing the girl runs back with a discovery – there’s a castle in the woods! A real one! The father dismisses her – there are no castles around here. Everyone knows that.
Yet, the girl won’t stop. Switching his attention for a moment when a fish bites, the father loses track of the daughter. Scared for his child, the father ventures into the woods finally finding the daughter near a large rock — so that’s the castle. Not in the mood for the daughter’s shenanigans the father tries to take her home when the girl asks about her mom picking her up.
Turns out their family has just gone through a divorce — that’s the reason why the father feels so lost with his own daughter. He simply doesn’t know what to do with her. Seeing that his child also is deeply affected by the divorce, the father makes a decision to play along for the first time. Suddenly the castle “comes to life” bonding the estranged family.
Development & Financing?
Mikhail Saburov (MS): I came up with the story out of necessity in a way. At the time I was applying to the AFI Conservatory master’s program in directing and one of the requirements was to come up with a story on a given topic. In my year it was the topic of discovery. I spent a long time thinking about how that topic can be visualized until I stumbled upon a simple idea: when you’re a kid every day brings discovery.
Once I had the core, I just had to build conflict and characters around it to make it resonate, but the premise was clear. I do a lot of writing, so the script came together relatively fast. I specifically made the project easily manageable production-wise, so the budget was not an issue. Most of the people on it were not even professionals, just interested friends — that let me self-finance it and keep the budget to under $1000, post-production included.
Production?
Mikhail Saburov (MS): I was in my hometown of Yekaterinburg, Russia at the time, so I knew I wanted to use the nature around it as the primary location. I was looking for something that can give that magical feeling of wonder. Luckily, there were a few natural parks around me, so finding the exact locations wasn’t hard.
The biggest question was casting. It can be extremely difficult to find the right kid for the daughter’s part. Luckily I used to be a child actor in a local theater group myself — so once I had the script, I went straight to the theater. They have an incredible child-actors program and every time I’m home to shoot a film and I need to cast children or teenagers – that’s where I go. That’s how I found Galina Boyarskih to play the daughter.
She was 4 at the time, so I had to come up with a plan on who to cast for the father. It’s a big risk to have a person she’s never seen in her life — kids of that age (with no prior film experience) can get shy around strangers really easily. So I asked a director-friend who also works at that theater group to play the father. That way Galina would act opposite someone she’s at least seen before — which proved to be the right choice.
Scheduling and principal photography weren’t a challenge since I’ve been working with a tiny crew and practically no gear. The entire production took two days: one by the stream where the father was fishing and one in the woods. After working in the US for a few years on bigger projects scaling down like that was a breath of fresh air.
I made the cut for AFI in a week or so and did all the sound and colorwork myself as well. I have a strict deadline for the application, plus there was a time limit of 5 minutes run-time. Yet, that was not the film that got released. Once I was done with the application I went back to editing and cut a longer version that ended up being the final product. Since I was not pressured for time anymore I asked my friends in New York to sound design and color it, as well as brought a composer on board to produce the score for the film using one of Yekaterinburg’s local bands.
Festival Preparation & Strategy?
MS: I never really planned a festival run in the first place. Since the film was born out of an assignment my first intention was to leave it at that. But when we finished production and I cut the film together I understood that the story is good enough to be shared with a wider audience and, luckily, I was right in my assessment. Often, sharing foreign language films with international audiences can give you an edge. The trick, of course, is to make a universally relatable story, then the culture and locations that feel mundane to you as a Russian would shine to the worldwide public.
The Release?
MS: Outside AFI Conservatory, the film premiered at the Melrose Film Festival and continued on its festival run. I’m currently exploring the distribution options in hopes to reach an even wider audience.
Advice from the Filmmaker?
MS: “Discovery” taught me that story is the most important thing. A banal truth, but as I found, we so often can lose track of it distracted by the technological side of filmmaking. This film was by far the smallest production I’ve ever had, yet one of the more successful ones. I think it’s important to step outside the usual routine to make something small. Often those projects shine the brightest.
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