the doubts they had about the script, after which they decided to work on Mimino as an alternative. Petritskiy was surprised that Goskino had already approved the film and that funding had been secured, and the project moved forward. Petritskiy discusses the locations of the various shots in the film, to include various villages in Georgia, the Tbilisi airport, Moscow, and what was then West Germany. According to Petritskiy, casting the film was not a problem, as Daneliya was familiar with all of the actors in the film. More strange to the cinematographer, was Daneliya's wish to shoot scenes in the mountainous region Tushetia, because it was a very remote area that could only be reached by helicopter, rather than roads. Petritskiy described the conditions as "medieval". He noted that the lack of electricity had "put its stamp of the character of the population of Omalo", which basically lived without light. He described the society as "patriarchic". He describes this as the conflict in the film—the conflict between the simple way of life and the way of life in the big city—this is the meaning of the film as he sees it. It is because of this that he filmed the movie in a very simple style, "a restrained style". He points out that even the portions of the film shot in Moscow are static shots or simple panoramas. He considers the landscapes of Georgia in the film to be "extremely beautiful". Petritskiy then discusses the various shots at airports, which were done as a montage—the helicopter in Tbilisi, and the magnificent TU plane shot in Moscow. Initially the latter part of the film was to be shot in America, but because of "purely budgetary reasons" according to Petritskiy, the cast and crew could not film there, so opted to shoot in West Berlin. Thus, the script was revised. Petritskiy notes that the Soviets were in power during 1977, so it was arranged that the group would stay in East Berlin—again "for economic reasons", and every day had to cross the border to the American zone to film at the Tegel Airport. As for the scenes with the cow (hanging from the helicopter), it was shot in two stages—a papier-mache dummy of a cow was used with the helicopter for the far off shots, and a live cow was lifted by a crane was used for the close-ups. He notes