Producing the Azerbaijan chapter of a two-country road movie
Egor Kreed’s Sweet Bastard is a nostalgic road movie filmed between Azerbaijan and Los Angeles. Directed by Nikita Vilchinski, the video looks back to the emotional directness of 2016, placing the viewer inside a relationship through a first-person camera.
Kreed was already travelling to Baku for DREAM Fest, creating a narrow opportunity to produce the main part of the video in Azerbaijan. With one week to prepare, 25BUREAU took responsibility for the complete local production.
The route
Building one world across two countries
Azerbaijan was not presented as a destination. Its locations needed to become part of a universal road-movie setting and connect naturally with the scenes filmed in Los Angeles.
Working with the director, ZEYN led the location search and helped develop the shoot around the roads of Khizi, the Caspian coast and different parts of Baku. The first-person perspective emerged during this process, turning the locations into fragments of a shared memory rather than a conventional performance backdrop.
The production
One week to make it happen
25BUREAU managed the Azerbaijan unit from end to end, including budgeting, scheduling, permits, equipment, transport, crew and on-set coordination. The production moved continuously between distant locations while adapting to an intensive and frequently changing schedule.
Most of the final video was filmed in Azerbaijan, with the local material integrated into the Los Angeles footage as one continuous journey. Following its release, Sweet Bastard reached number one in Russia’s YouTube trends.
Credits
- EGOR KREED
- Nikita Vilchinski
- 25BUREAU
- ZEYN