The Wedding Threesome
Le Mariage à troisBut the concern for the text, always at the top of our preoccupations, and the involvement of actors less and less inclined to rehearse, made things more difficult and we had to find a middle ground.
Doillon shoots too many takes (10-30) to take his (often lengthy) shots lightly, so with our small budget we knowingly chose to shoot digital : two 3700 Panasonic cameras equipped with two zooms, the most often on two dollies that were perpendicular to each other. The carefully rehearsed composition was set up word for word and step by step. Two monitors gave the director the possibility to think about cuts with precision.
Lighting for two cameras is always a perilous exercise. I had already done this fairly systematically on Alice and Martin by Andre Téchiné. One has to maintain a lighting direction without "getting in the way" of the other camera, and try to make for the best, and deal with the variations in outside light which are always a problem when you shoot an average of 20 takes ; not forgetting that the film is supposed to take place in real time over a few hours in the summer, around lunchtime.
However, even in this complexity, the precision of Doillon’s requests encouraged one to succeed, "to polish one’s act" in a certain sense, face to face with actors who are themselves tightly determined by the constraints of the text and the staging.
There is a lot of pleasure to be had in seeing the fluidity of the result. So thank you therefore to these brilliant actors, Pascal Greggory, Julie Depardieu, Louis Garrel, Agatha Bonitzer and Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, thank you to a team of concentrated assistants Stephen Mack and Lucy Colombie who, in addition to focus, also ensured the on-set workflow, thanks to Leo Hinstin for the second camera, to Emmanuel and Michael Demorgon Wallet for the lighting, to Kris and Lucien Theuws Liegeois for unceasing movements.
Thank you to Eclair and, especially to Aude Humblet, for having so finely readjusted both cameras and for accurately placing the blacks, sequence after sequence, thank you to Gerard Savary for his viewpoint and his point of yellow...
Thank you to Tatoo for this pleasant first collaboration.
Équipe
Camera assistants : Stephen Mack and Lucy Colombie2d camera : Leo Hinstin
Lighting : Emmanuel and Michael Demorgon Wallet
Key Grip : Kris and Lucien Theuws Liegeois
Technique
Camera equipment : TatooLaboratory : Eclair
DI : Aude Humblet
Photochemical color timing : Gerard Savary