Brice Pancot, AFC, talks about his photographic work on Vincent Maël Cardona’s "No One Will Know"

This is your third collaboration with Vincent Maël Cardona, whom you met while studying at La Fémis...

Brice Pancot: No One Will Know is a project I’ve been familiar with for quite some time. Vincent told me about it even before we shot his first feature film, Les Magnétiques, in 2019. I even remember taking part in the initial location scouting with him at the time. The script has certainly changed since then, but the essence of the project has remained. Particularly with this dual temporality throughout the film and right up to the end. And, of course, the cinema parable, about the way people tell each other stories and make their own films.

Was the film always written around Versailles?

BP: Yes, Versailles and its Palace were there from the beginning of the project. You could almost say that it’s one of the characters in the film. During the preparation of the film, I remember talking to Vincent about the reception that Carlos Ghosn had given in the Palace, with that rather incredible evening that made the headlines. This privatisation of public and patrimonial space by money sets the story in motion—I wouldn’t really call it a red herring—but more of a prologue. The fact that the setting changes completely afterwards reinforces the idea of a Russian doll-like structure that we wanted to give the film. A box within a box that opens onto another box... a perpetual confinement.

Why did you choose the Scope aspect ratio?

BP: Vincent and I really like anamorphic lenses, which we used on our previous projects together. Although we initially thought of 1.66 for this story of confinement, we had to face the fact that the sets weren’t really suitable. So we went back to Scope, looking at TSF renting for the lenses that would work for this film. I needed lenses that were bright enough, especially for the night scenes at the Palace, and controllable enough to allow us to use almost exclusively key lighting in the bar set. We opted for the Cooke S6 Anamorphic series (which opens at 2.3) and the Cooke 35-140mm Anamorphic zoom, used in Super 35 on an Alexa Mini camera, which gives a fairly modern, neutral look while retaining the personality of the Scope. We sought to break up the sharpness of the lenses and give them a particular texture by combining them with a series of Fog filters. It was also a way of bringing a little bit of the uncontrollable back into the shooting process.

The film opens at the Palace of Versailles, at night...

BP: The Palace of Versailles was obviously a bit of a challenge for me. We had to start shooting with these scenes for scheduling reasons, and we only had one night on location! For organisational reasons, we worked by moving from one sub-set to another, with two camera crews and three teams of electricians and stagehands working in shifts throughout the night, one taking care of the pre-lighting, one staying on set, and a third dismantling the set to limit the amount of equipment and make the most of the shooting time. Among the locations we used were the gardens, the Hall of Mirrors, the Cour d’Honneur and the Gabriel staircase for the reception. Finally, other interior sets, such as the King’s bedroom, were shot at Vaux-le-Vicomte over an additional night. From a photographic point of view, we wanted to show the place differently from the familiar image of Versailles, avoiding at all costs the use of existing chandeliers or anything else that was already installed on site. At the same time, with Benoît Jolivet, the gaffer, we absolutely had to find a mobile and versatile system to make this marathon night a success... The Hall of Mirrors, for example, is mainly lit by Astera AX2 LED ramps (PixelBars) placed outside, which provide this night-time lighting through the windows. As these sources are self-contained with built-in batteries, like most Astera projectors, we save a lot of time on installation and cabling. Thanks to the console control, it’s also very flexible for switching between different moods, or even for video mapping by sending images of fire, for example, when we want to create a flame or torch effect. That’s what we did in the Cour d’Honneur, to reinforce a large number of braziers and torches that we had installed with the decoration team to cover this truly immense space. I remember that it was so big that the first torches we lit were going out by the time we lit the last ones!

The film has a very anachronistic feel right from the start... A kind of end-of-the-world vibe.

BP: We wanted to set this story in a somewhat unreal dimension, suspended in time. And I think the desertification of the locations plays a big part in that. Whether it’s in the first shot, with the characters reflected in the mirrors of the toilets... or the party in the almost empty castle. We made sure to shoot the few outdoor scenes on days when there was no one in the city, which wasn’t really easy in the centre of Versailles! It was also the idea of representing reality as something that could be entirely invented, as will be the case with the film’s temporality. This is an element that becomes central as the story progresses...

Let’s talk about the heart of the film, this kind of labyrinthine closed environment. How did you develop it?

BP: During the preparation, the first thing was to determine the precise geographical layout of the action. The bar itself, with its kitchen, its outdoor courtyard and this kind of back room that gradually changes in size and atmosphere as the story progresses. And then there were the basements, which we were going to shoot separately in a natural setting.
Then there was the question of the different times in the film: how the outside affects the inside, how the setting changes and, above all, how, as we travel through the narrative, the viewer can quickly understand where we are. Given the complexity of the script and the different possible storylines that unfold, certain key elements had to be determined in relation to the image and the set. For example, the metal curtain in the bar, which closes after a while and transforms the initial visual atmosphere of the set.

So it’s a studio film?

BP: Yes, the bar set was entirely reconstructed in Bry-sur-Marne by Marion Burger, the production designer. As I mentioned, only the basements were shot on location in the last part of the shooting schedule. In the central part of the film, being in a studio, we were able to shoot almost in chronological order, which helped us a lot given the complexity of the different timelines.
For the first part, which takes place at dawn with the metal curtain open, we looked at different options for the reveal. A green screen was considered, but we preferred to work the old-fashioned way, with a large photo print on canvas, which allowed us to manage everything during the shoot and also gave the crew a sense of realism about the set. This discovery was made by a photographer who assembled several shots and composed the view of the square. This montage of images was then printed on canvas (UV digital printing at Multiplast, in duplicate to increase contrast) and backlit by SkyPanels 360, which had the advantage of a very wide beam angle given the limited space we had on set. It was really comfortable for us to work this way during the first two weeks in the studio, until the metal curtain went down ...

Can you think of any other famous single room movies?

BP: To be honest, the film we were making was so strange that I found it difficult to relate to anything tangible. It was hard to find a visual reference, except perhaps a few atmospheres from Vincent’s and my shared taste for Asian cinema. Among the images we selected during pre-production, we pinned a photo of a small bar in Japan with a few simple tubes hanging from the ceiling... a very contrasting, very simple image that guided us at the beginning. I think that’s the kind of atmosphere we were looking for as the bar sank into darkness. For example, when the owner (played by Maria de Medeiros) arrives, the light from the kitchen next to the bar, which is very green, spills into the darkness. That’s something I remember seeing in Diao Yi’nan’s films.

How did you manage the lighting in this bar?

BP: To give the director as much freedom as possible, and given the number of characters and angles to cover, we integrated almost all the light sources into the set in advance with Marion. Essentially LED tubes or strips, like in the few ceiling lights that were our main sources above the bar. We really wanted to enclose the characters in this space, with the very present ceiling, in contrast to the back room, which is much more open. It’s a strange appendage, where things get lost in the darkness above, much more theatrical and made up of curtains, with a very abstract feel, which also allowed us to stay within our budget. In the back room, a grid of projectors above was there. So I installed automatic LEDs from Ayrton that completely transform the atmosphere of the place in the last part of the film. This somewhat mysterious room suddenly becomes an old karaoke bar or a mini nightclub as the jukebox lights up and the music plays on a loop...

The film is also full of very complicated movements... sometimes shot in slow motion.

BP: Yes, we really struggled with that! Vincent really likes to combine camera movements with zooms. Outdoors, for example, there’s this long shot that starts with a low angle shot of the church bells and trees at dawn and then follows a character coming out of the bar... Most of the shots in the film were done on a dolly, sometimes with the help of a simple offset arm, which helped us deal with the various obstacles in the bar! For some doorways, especially in the kitchen, we had to use the Ronin. But the space was so cramped that we had to take turns with Thibaud Cloarec, my key grip, passing the camera back and forth. And then there’s also this transition sequence with the dog that takes us from the prologue in the castle to the first scene in the bar. After sending a B team to shoot a lot of shots between the castle and the city streets with this dog, which was—ike all animals—quite difficult to control, we finally decided to try our luck again with him on the last day of shooting, with a very small crew. After a few shots at dawn around the large pond, we came up with the idea of doing these few subjective shots with the Ronin, with the camera in an ultra-light configuration. It was really fun shooting those last shots of the film, running through the grass to get the dog’s point of view!

What do you take away from this experience?

BP: Working in a single set is always a real challenge. You have to reinvent yourself with every scene, while also ensuring continuity. So it was a very complicated project to tackle, not only from a technical point of view, but also in terms of finding the film we wanted to make with Vincent and Marion on set.
And then there’s also the special aspect of being able to shoot in continuity, with a sense of camaraderie, seeing all the actors almost every day in the studio. For example, the arrival of Maria de Medeiros’ character in the middle of the film, as the middle of shooting, resonates both in the temporality of the film’s production and that of the story. Definetly a both exciting and demanding experience.

(Interview conducted by François Reumont for the AFC)

A man dies at Le Roi Soleil, a bar in Versailles. He leaves behind a lottery ticket worth several million euros. By bending the truth and their consciences a little, the witnesses to the tragedy could walk away with the money... What if the truth were just a well-crafted script?

Le Roi Soleil
Directed by Vincent Maël Cardona
Produced by Srab Films and Easy Tiger, distributed by StudioCanal
With Pio Marmaï, Sofiane Zermani, Lucie Zhang, Maria de Medeiros, Panayotis Pascot, Joseph Olivennes, Xianzeng Pan, Némo Schiffman, Claude Aufaure
Cinematography: Brice Pancot, AFC
Set design: Marion Burger
Costumes: Gwendoline Grandjean
Make-up: Emmanuelle Velghe-Lenelle
Editing: Flora Volpelière
Sound: Mathieu Descamps, Pierre Bariaud, Raphaël Mouterde, Samuel Aïchoun
Script supervisor: Mathilde Profit
Production manager: Olivier Lagny
Post-production manager: Francesca Betteni-Barnes