How Tetris crew turned Aberdeen into Moscow and Japan

Tetris director Jon S Baird has talked about the challenges of turning some of Aberdeen’s most well-known buildings into Iron Curtain-era Moscow for his new film.

Here the Peterhead-born filmmaker talks about how screen magic turned the Granite City into Soviet-era Russia for the movie, streaming now, which stars Taron Egerton and tells the origin story of the popular Nintendo video game.

Seamount Court flats

Jon S Baird: “We used interiors and exteriors. We used the walkways and the stairwells and the forecourt on top of the car park.

“I showed this film to a group of Russian actors who in post-production were doing the ADR (additional dialogue recording) for the Russian crowds. I showed them the scene where Alexey’s playing tennis out in the snow and said, ‘where do you think that is?’

This scene from Tetris was shot at the rear of Seamount Court – and even fooled Russian actors. Image: Apple TV+

“And they named pretty much every Russian city and couldn’t get it. And then they started on Hungary, Budapest, Czechoslovakia, all these places. And when I said Aberdeen, they were absolutely floored. And that was genuine Russians as well, so I think we’ve been convincing.

Crowds watch as the Tetris crew film a sequence on the walkway at Seamount Court. Image: Darrell Benns

“The walkway at Seamount Court was a real find. We nearly never got to use it because the walkway had been closed for years. We had to get a structural survey done as there was a real concern about whether it could take the weight. We also had to remove glass too, so it was a big operation with cranes involved.

“I think that was one of the reasons why the council were going to say no to us because they just didn’t want to get involved with this. But they just couldn’t say no, so we got to do it.”

The walkway at Seamount Court features during a tense scene in Tetris. Image: Apple TV+

Halliburton building, Dyce

The former Halliburton building in Dyce was used as Nintendo’s Japanese headquarters. Image: Apple TV+

Jon S Baird: “The building in Dyce doubled for the exterior Nintendo headquarters in Japan. It sounds absolutely hilarious when you say that – we’re in Dyce doubling for Japan.

The interior of the building was used too. Image: Apple TV+

“We also shot the interiors there too and had a load of south-east Asian extras – many of them with north-east accents.”

The zoology building

Jon S Baird: “I went to University of Aberdeen, so I used to walk past the zoology building every day nearly. And it never occurred to me that I would actually be turning it into Soviet Moscow.

“It’s one of the most famous brutalist pieces of architecture in the whole of the United Kingdom and I struggle to think of something that’s more appropriate for what we were trying to find.

“We had a lot of CGI in the background to make Moscow look huge because we needed those aerial drone shots of the flats and the zoology building to look like real Russia, real Moscow.”

Gerrard Street

Jon S Baird: “We were trying to tell the story of how Alexey gets thrown out of his apartment and gets put into a rougher area. Gerrard Street on its own doesn’t look rough at all. So we had a lot of tricks up our sleeve – like the burned-out car and the guy peeing in the middle of the street and people looking down on their luck.

“I send my apologies to the residents at Gerrard Street – I know your street doesn’t look like that on a day-to-day basis.”

Tetris is streaming now on Apple TV+