The central idea behind the choice of filming locations and the production design sketches was to see the world through the eyes of a pilot who could no longer fly — to imagine the protagonist as buried alive. The horizon had to be blocked by high walls and earth embankments, creating the impression that we were below ground, with no hope of ever rising into the sky again. In the interiors, the windows had to be above head height; this was the principle behind the prisoner barracks set. Even the airfield was cut off from the rest of the world by a four-metre earth embankment.
Most of the film takes place at an airfield. Unfortunately, no German wartime airfield has survived intact in Russia. We had to build the set on an abandoned airfield in the Leningrad region, as well as clear the bushes, cut the tall grass and remove turf from the joints between the concrete slabs.
We built two versions of the aircraft in which Devyataev escaped: one for exterior shots and another for scenes inside the cockpit. Both versions could move around the airfield. No reliable information survives about the precise appearance of the aircraft he seized. After consulting our historical advisers, I proposed that the Heinkel He 111 H-22, designed to launch V-1 flying bombs, had been converted from the earlier He 111 H-6 bomber. This was consistent with the available historical evidence. Archival photographs show aircraft covered in soot, oil and scratches, so I chose to make ours look worn by use rather than like the restored exhibits seen in military aviation museums. I deliberately gave the green paint a cooler tone than the historical colour. Conversely, the authentic colour of the underside of the fuselage seemed too blue, so I made it light grey. This made the overall colour palette of the scenes in captivity much more cohesive.
Every detail of the aircraft was made from scratch, using drawings and photographs. The propellers turned, and every lever and button worked, allowing the actors to interact with the aircraft more naturally. Only the movement of the instrument needles was left for post-production. The power sockets, extension cables and generator in the hangar also had to be made specifically for the film. As no original fuel tankers had survived, we designed and built one from photographs for the airfield refuelling scene.
The Bell P-39 Airacobra fighter flown by Devyataev was also built in two versions: a full-scale exterior and a cockpit interior. A particularly valuable discovery was the unit’s combat log, which gave us the correct aircraft numbers for the mission on the day Devyataev was captured.
Before filming, our physical aircraft model was scanned, and all its surface textures and markings were transferred to a digital model for subsequent filming in the virtual environment created specifically for the film. In a museum photograph, I noticed that pilots had added explanatory notes to the American instruments. Since memorising unfamiliar terms is an important plot point, we echoed this detail by covering the instrument panel with handwritten crib notes in Russian.
Karlshagen camp on the island of Usedom, where Devyataev was held, was destroyed during the war, but the surviving ruins still give some idea of its appearance. It was a relatively small labour camp in the interior of the island. During my research, I found two images of other concentration camps that shaped the camp’s design in the film. The first photograph showed a deeply unsettling barracks building dug into the ground almost to its roof. In a watercolour painted by a prisoner, I was struck by the perspective of rows of barracks terminating against a factory building. In our design, a Constructivist power station therefore rose like an ominous temple above the tomb-like barracks. We were extremely fortunate to find this power station and build our sets beside it: a power station from the same period had towered over Usedom and still survives there today. To emphasise the industrial character of both the island and the camp, I even decided to mount the gallows on wheels. It was also important to establish the proximity of the sea, since some of the prisoners planned to escape from the island by boat. We therefore built the camp parade ground on the windswept shore of the Gulf of Finland, with only a barbed-wire fence separating the prisoners from the open sea.
In his account of the escape, Mikhail Devyataev describes landing in a field. We initially developed this version, but ultimately chose the more dramatic and visually effective solution of landing on a slope. For the first time since their imprisonment, an endless, unobstructed landscape had to open up before them.
The film’s interiors were designed so that the protagonist could never see the sky through a window. The windows were either set too high or obscured by shutters, bars, sheets of fabric or a thick layer of dust.
For Sachsenhausen, the second camp to which Devyataev is sent, we decided not to build an exterior set and instead created the entire scene digitally. We imagined the location as a gigantic stone trench leading into hell. I incorporated this trench into the historical plan of Sachsenhausen, placing it where the commandant’s office and the avenue by the camp’s main entrance had stood. The remaining buildings and the semicircle of barracks were left largely unchanged. The abandoned Petrovsky Dock in Kronstadt provided the texture reference for the digital model.
For the visual effects department, we developed a plan of Usedom showing every location that appears in the film. We took the layout of the area where we had filmed and fitted it within the outline and scale of the real island, constructing the geography the story required. The entire island was then created in 3D from this plan and used in the flight sequences. Our work for VFX also included a series of postvis shots, concepts for the sky in its different states, asset reviews, visual research and much more. This was the first project on which I remained involved throughout the editing process, and it made me fully appreciate how important the production designer’s presence is at this stage.
