Yesterday I wrote about an email I had received regarding an article I had written well over a year ago about the Chernobyl Disaster. More specifically, the article shared a video I had found which had a visual effect of Ukrainian text for what was spoken in actual recordings of calls made to fire dispatch following the event. Naturally, with me being someone interested in history and Chernobyl, it was material which I quite enjoyed — especially the visual effect.
Move ahead a year and a half and that article had gained popularity due to the HBO Chernobyl miniseries. I figured it was coincidence, since I knew efforts to fight the initial fires at the plant were part of the story told in the series. What I didn’t know was that a scene in the program was virtually identical to the video clip I had shared a year and a half ago!
I would learn this just a few days ago when I got an email from Ukranian film producer Andriy Pryymachenko, the creator of the original video which I had shared a re-upload of, explaining the situation to me: That HBO had, as far as one could tell, outright copied his work.
He shared a link to a video on this, and the comparisons are pretty obvious. I quickly got in touch with him the same night I found the email and began chatting with him. He sent me a few links to look over and was able to, as you would expect, clearly demonstrate that his video had been produced and uploaded way back in 2013 (long before a Chernobyl series would have been in the works.)
Before we dive all the way in to this, I asked Andriy to say a little about himself in his own words, both I and you, the reader, would know some about the man behind the original video. I also asked him to express why he made the original video, just so we would know that as well. He typed his thoughts in 3rd person, as I forgot to mention to him that 1st person would be fine but that doesn’t change things — I just felt like addressing that before I share the exact message he sent me.
Andriy Pryymachenko was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. He studied film production in Orange Coast College (California, US). Andriy works as a freelance director\DoP and teaches documentary filmmaking at Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv, Ukraine). A couple of his recent works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6j0LrVoOQA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jG9SnSN6W0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXXvQ-THd00His hobby is videodesign and poster design. Videodesign examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azfjy8ec3yo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkl5JKUfKE0Another example of Andriy’s videodesign is the visualization of the phone call that took place right after the accident at Chornobyl nuclear power plant. The reason he created this video is because he was interested in this topic for years and this was his way of bringing attention to the cause (which usually gets attention only once a year, unfortunately).
As you can see from the above, he is someone who not only is good at what he does, but cares. A professional creative talent and artist if ever I’ve talked with one. I certainly feel a connection to his reasons for making the original video of the fire call, as Chernobyl is an event that, honestly, most of the world has forgotten, and if at all remembered indeed is only thought of during April. I would say, from my perspective, it’s certainly something the people of Ukraine, Belarus, and other affected areas can never forget about, even if they want to.
That’s actually a benefit, as I’m seeing, of HBO’s Chernobyl series — it has brought attention again to the disaster. However, that still doesn’t change the fact that it would appear they have clearly copied what Andriy produced back in 2013.
Let’s actually look at the two videos. First up we have Andriy’s video uploaded on March 18th, 2013:
Following this we have the clip from Chernobyl which was aired May 6th of 2019.
As you can see, the scenes are effectively identical. Of course, the audio is going to be the same, as it’s actual audio from the disaster. That’s not what’s being questioned here — what is under scrutiny is the red text and overall presentation. That is original work of Andriy’s and is his, in as such as it can be. While you can’t really own a particular style of simple text presentation (not in this nuance, anyway) one does have to give pause when the exact same style of presentation is used for the exact same event.
That’s where the issue is — that the presentation of the same historic event are identical and unique — not actual video of the event as it happened, but a custom artistic presentation of text which is in the audio.
Speaking more on the nearly identical nature of these, there is one point that really makes one think, beyond what is obvious. There was an error in Andriy’s text which was re-created in the HBO rendition – to quote the article regarding this on ain.ua:
Namely, an error in deciphering the conversation: instead of “Commanding staff”, Pryymachenko wrote “Our staff”. The same mistake was made in HBO’s rendition.
A comparison of the videos can be found here, for what it’s worth (this video also being linked to in the previous article on this little issue.)
The ain.ua article gives some great perspective on this whole situation and tells some interesting facets on how HBO and the shows producers have reacted to this — first ignoring Andriy before the claiming that the graphic is “100% owned by them.”
It gets more complicated (again, I strongly urge you to check out this link to the English article detailing this event ) but the next aspect I wanted to focus on is a claim made by the Ukrainian portion of the shows production, Radioaktive Films, stating that the footage is available in many places online and is considered to have been created in the Soviet Union and thus public domain.
Okay, I may be an American but I do know a bit about history and last I checked the Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 25th 1991. Now, if I’m correct, the year 2013 was at least 21 years after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Not only that, but Ukraine ceased to officially be part of the Soviet Union on August 24th 1991, again a good 21 years before Andriy would have made the graphic seen in the video and apparently copied in the HBO series Chernobyl.
So, that claim is simply false. While yes, the audio used is certainly of Soviet origin and authentic, the footage is not, and while the two are connected Andriy Pryymachenko would be the creator of the visual effect seen, and thus, per my understanding, own the copyright to it – it’s his work.
So, quite the interesting case, no? What’s more interesting is what Andriy wants from all this, something which I feel really says quite a bit about him as a person.
He just wants acknowledgement. Credit. That’s all. While the experience of seeing his work copied in the show is quite shocking, he doesn’t seem inherently angry at all. He doesn’t want money, or is claiming any kind of status boost from it — he just feels they used his work and that he should be credited.
In my talks with him, all he has asked of me personally is to help spread awareness of it. He has been incredibly nice, very supportive of my work and has been very grateful that I wished to listen to his story and to share it which, honestly, it’s been an awesome experience for me as well. Rarely do I, with my somewhat unique site, get to cover things like this in this kind of detail and perspective and I love when I do get the chance.
Lastly, I feel we should get to the bottom of it — what I do I actually think about all this?
I feel it’s obvious that someone involved in the shows production had at some point seen Andriy Pryymachenko’s work and was, at the very least, inspired to re-create it, figuring maybe the original video creator would never know, or wouldn’t care — that it wouldn’t become an issue. While that wouldn’t be the case — Andriy certainly did see it — it’s quite nice that all he wants is credit for what I could all “inspiring” the scene as presented in the show. While yes, I feel it was completely copied human’s can make mistakes and this may have just been a poor choice rather than malicious intent to just steal a good video idea.
Still, I stand that the video was clearly copied and that Andriy is the creator of the idea of combining that audio with red CRT-Display type text in a dramatic, artistic style, and that someone involved in the shows production took the idea after having seen the video and used it in the final product. In the end I would say, in my opinion yes, it is Plagiarism.
I’ll leave you with this, a recently uploaded video featuring Andriy discussing his work in comparison to that shown in Chernobyl, while Jane Yatsuta of Radioactive Film insists that they worked to clear all copyright issues, with the video showing a screenshot of a Facebook comment expressing the “It was made in the Soviet Union and thus is public domain” line.
Take of it what you will, and certainly make your own decisions on it. I, however, do feel it’s quite an obvious case.
Thanks for reading. If you would like to get in touch with Andriy or follow more of his work, his twitter account can be found here.
https://ain.ua/en/2019/07/08/ukrainian-filmmaker-accuses-authors-of-chernobyl-of-copyright-infringement/ and for those curious, the same article in Ukrainian: https://ain.ua/2019/07/03/ukraine-vs-hbo/
Lastly, a disclaimer — I wrote this article of my own choice after having been emailed by Andriy. I am receiving no compensation or anything for this from him, I simply felt the story worth sharing, as a fellow creator of content and as someone who cares deeply about the Chernobyl Disaster and people being aware of it.