Cinematographer Pavel Kapinos, who shot “The Last Hero,” died in his sleep

On February 1, director of photography Pavel Kapinos suddenly died. This became known only on February 2. His relatives reported: “He left in his sleep. His big and kind heart stopped. He left like an angel.” Pavel was 48 years old.

Instead of a traditional farewell, his family – his wife and children – decided to hold an “evening of love and remembrance” at a later date.

Colleagues say that Pavel came to Sochi to choose a location and did not wake up. Died in his sleep. The heart stopped. He worked a lot, quickly moved through space, from one point of the world to another, worked on complex projects in a short time, as he said, on the run. Filming was often associated with risk to life. This is the nature of filmmaking. This requires strength. For example, when they were filming “Spiritless 2” – his first large-scale project – they worked in Bali on special boats, rode into the waves with the actors, and filmed underwater. We didn’t get enough sleep, and after filming in the evenings we discussed plans for the next day. At seven in the morning we went to the site. We were exhausted, but we fought through, as Pavel said in our interview.

Pavel Kapinos was born on October 8, 1975. He graduated from the camera department of VGIK and was proud of it. Its master was the classic of Soviet and Russian cinema Vadim Yusov.

In our interview, Pavel told how he came to cinema.

– I was 12 years old when my second cousins ​​were studying at the film studio of the Palace of Pioneers. It was led by a wonderful innovative teacher Alla Ivanovna Stepanova. It was a corner of dissidence in the Soviet education system, which in 1991 became the Moscow International Film School. And I got there. Valery Todorovsky, Ksenia and Polina Kutepova, Zhenya Tsyganov, Yura Kolokolnikov, cameramen Vanya Gudkov and Denis Panov graduated from this studio. My parents are engineers, and my grandfather is a chemist. The fact that I got into cinema was fate, an accident, a coincidence. At the age of 13, I was already actively photographing and shooting on 35 mm film, but I entered VGIK the second time, in the workshop of Professor Vadim Yusov. I spent the first two years only at the institute, filming educational papers, taking laboratory tests on optics and films, and from the third year I began working on television, but always attended the workshop – it was sacred. Vadim Ivanovich was a man with humor, he could do a little for pedagogical purposes in front of everyone. But he understood that we were young guys with ambitions. Petya Dukhovskoy, Andrei Naydenov, Gosha Pestov, who works in cinema in Germany, and Pasha Trubnikov studied with me. Yusov always tried to push his students to understand what camera work is, but he never gave specific recipes. He believed that a cinematographer is, first of all, an intelligent and educated person. This was his approach. He is an amazing world class master.

Pavel worked a lot with director Roman Prygunov, with whom he shot the film “Spiritless 2”, the series “Female Praying Mantis”, “Dead Lake”, “Unprincipled”. His filmography includes “Hardcore” by Ilya Naishuller, “Kitchen. The Last Battle” by Anton Fedotov, the “The Last Hero” franchise by Dmitry Dyachenko, “8” by Anna Melikyan, “Oranienbaum. Silver Samurai” by Vladimir Kott, “Open Space” by Denis Neimand.

– I’m not a conceptualist, I don’t philosophize about film images. I am a productive, straightforward and fast working operator. I try to build on history, genre and drama, the atmosphere that arises on the set, and specific artists. I haven’t worked with directors who are significantly older than me. It is probably easier to find a common language with people of the same generation, because we grew up on the same films, books and music. Roma Prygunov is a little older, but we were both born in the USSR, we saw both that and this era,” said Kapinos.

Pavel Kapinos worked with Pyotr Weil on the television project “Genius of the Place” and traveled with him around the world. During the break between big projects, he shot advertisements, videos, worked with Kristina Orbakaite, “Bi-2”, “Disco Accident”, filmed television advertisements for “Coca-Cola” and “Renault”. And not just for the sake of making money. Pavel said that this is his favorite job.

“I like to shoot advertising and perform various visual tasks,” he said in our interview. – . When you film food – this is one thing, cars – another, a living story with actors – a third. For an operator, advertising is a good experience, giving the opportunity to try yourself in different creative styles. In a 30-second form, you need to graphically formulate the main thing – catchy and succinct. This is very disciplined and trains your imagination. I worked with many foreign and Russian directors, often filmed abroad – in America, Israel, Thailand, France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, and the Czech Republic. I am a freelancer, I am hired for a specific project. I do it, get the money and go home.

I can’t say that I traded my life for nickels for the sake of the advertising market. Filmmaking is now becoming flexible. Technologies are changing, and films can be made on your knees. There is an opportunity to work in all professional guises, which, in fact, is what our leading operators do.