In 1907, Alexander Drankov decided to start his own film-making business and opened "A. Drankov's Atelier" (), which would soon transform into a joint-stock company "A. Drankov &amp; Co". Drankov and his team began to shoot newsreels, him and his cameramen being habitual frequenters of every major event in both Saint Petersburg and Moscow until the October Revolution of 1917. Also, he started shooting feature shorts, such as "Boris Godunov". This motion picture was never finished, though some of the materials shot for this movie were shown at cinemas in that same 1907 under the title "Scenes from a Boyar Life". Drankov’s first ever filming of Leo Tolstoy (1908) was a sensational success. After having failed to obtain the writer’s permission to film him, Drankov hid himself with a camera in a wooden outhouse in the garden of Tolstoy’s estate and shot the promenading writer through a small ornamental window.