 Production on the unreleased film cost 2 million rubles , and spanned two years . When casting the production , Eisenstein had preferred to not use professional actors , instead using people who represented " types " to play a given role . Two thousand young boys were auditioned during the search for the ideal young actor to play the part of Stepok , the renamed Morozov character . Filming took place in many locations , primarily in Moscow studios , and remote locations in the Ukraine and the Caucasus . During production , Eisenstein had the foresight to save the edited @-@ out frames from every shot in the film , which allowed for the later reconstruction of Bezhin Meadows in the 1960s , even though the original prints were destroyed . 
