My work on the screenplay of Clouds Fly West began the summer of 2008. The reel was released 18 months and 5 discarded screenplays later.

37 548 files – video (clips, stock footage), documents (text, tables, statistical data), images (vectors, textures, objects, fonts), models (drawings, sketches, 3d objects), sounds (ambiences, swishes, impacts, layered tracks) are used in the film. The raw size of the film exceeds 1.6 terabytes.

The length of the final scene of the film, the mighty thunderstorm, is only 15.7 seconds. Yet, I worked on it for more than 10 days 12-14 hours a day. In order for it to be exported, 5 computers labored together continuously in a rendering farm for 49 hours… I was only praying to God that no of the machines gets out of order… or the electricity stops. Eventually two of the computers registered CPU temperature of 82°C Sience initially I was dissatisfied with the results, I re-editted the scene and went through the entire process 2 more times.

For the 12 months following the release of the film I received and replied to more than 2 900 email messages. This figure includes only real person-to-person business communication with users of cholakovv.com, festival directors, representatives of mass media, production companies, etc. If counting personal emails, subscriptions, service messages, updates, etc. the real number goes a way beyond 13 500 emails (on average 35 emails per day).