This project marked our first collaboration with HoYoverse and its globally acclaimed video game, Genshin Impact. With the launch of Version 7.0 and the introduction of a new region, Odette also made her debut as a new character. Drawing from the cultural influences behind Snezhnaya and Odette’s character story, the film brings together ballet, theatrical spaces and the lived experience of a real dancer, creating a way for audiences to understand the character through something tangible and human.

The film begins in the everyday reality of a ballet dancer’s rehearsals before gradually moving into a more internal, imagined space. On stage, the boundary between the dancer and Odette begins to dissolve, allowing their parallel identities to overlap and ultimately leading the audience from the real performer into the world of the game character.

The film was shot in St. Petersburg, Russia, with Maria Khoreva, first soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre. As a professional ballet dancer with a demanding training and performance schedule, Maria had very limited availability, so the production was built around her schedule and filmed where she was based. Her physical language, discipline and presence also gave the fictional character a more grounded emotional dimension.

The theatre presented a different challenge. A grand historic theatre with the scale and visual richness required by the concept would have involved a lengthy approval process and a substantially larger budget, neither of which the production had. To meet the visual expectations for the theatre sequences, we therefore combined practical location footage with extensive digital set extensions, rebuilding the surrounding space to create the scale and atmosphere of a grand theatre. Although the fully extended environment appears only briefly in the finished film, it was essential to making those moments feel convincing.

External links:

Dance Video: YouTube / Instagram

Interview: YouTube / VK

CREDITS

Client: HoYoverse (miHoYo)

Featured Artist: Maria Khoreva (@marachok)

Producer: Grace Liang

Project Manager: Qinru Wu

Production Coordinator: Aliks Chen

Director: Zhuo Lan

Director of Photography: Hark Xu

1st AD: Shiyu (Mickey) Pan

Production Designer: Jiaqi Tang

Still Photographer: Boya Liu

Editor: Ye Sen, Jin Xiang

Interview Editor: Shilong Liang

VFX Artist: Jiaming Zhang

Colorist: Jia He

RUSSIA CREW

Producer: Daria Vakhrusheva

Gaffer: Yegor Petrovsky

Arri Trinity Operator: Nikita Rozhdestvensky

Focus Puller: Aleksandr Chirukhin

Camera Mechanic: Dmitry Bebikhov, Ivan Yakubovsky

Playback Specialist: Sergey Gruzdev

Art Director: Polina Chereda

Props Assistant: Yaroslav Chistov

Sound Recordists: Michael Tentler, Aleksandra Golubeva

Behind-the-Scene Videographer: Aleksandr Solovey

Translators: Sylvia (Shaohui) Xu, Mila Liu, Petr Kim

Special Thanks: Vladimir Khorev, Anna Baglyk

Filmed at the Railwaymen Palace of Culture, St. Petersburg

Equipment Provided by LKS Rental