En
FrTwo Pictures a Day in Peru - 6
Sixth Week: September 3-September 11, 2024
Photo by Gilles Porte (iPhone)]
Gilles Porte, AFC, is currently filming Lady Nazca in Peru, a film directed by Damien Dorsaz. As in 2014 on 3000 Nights, by Mai Nasri, and 2015 on Dans les forêts de Sibérie, by Safy Nebbou, Gilles once again offers us two images per day, taken by him (unless otherwise stated) along with his commentary. A sort of diary of things seen or felt, moments captured on the camera or smartphone.
Here is the diary of the sixth and final week.
Here is the diary of the sixth and final week.
September 3, 2024 - Truck | Photo by Gilles Porte (iPhone)
Between Palpa and Nazca, in the middle of the desert, somewhere on the Pan-American Highway...
September 3, 2024 | Photo by Gilles Porte (iPhone)
The whole crew is back in Lima! Only Damien and I stayed behind in Nazca and returned to the Hotel Majoro. I’m back in room 109, the one I had in 2021 when I met Damien in Peru. He’d just come down with Covid and dengue because of a mosquito. One morning, I gave him a surprise: since I was still jet-lagged, I took advantage of a sleepless night to break down his script on one of my walls, imagining everything that could be shot at dawn and/or dusk. In my opinion, this was one of the keys to the success of the cinematography of his film.
September 4, 2024 - Storyboard extract 1
To conclude this cinematographic adventure, we now had to film Maria’s little red-and-white plane above the real Nazca lines, with a drone and two doubles and a skeleton crew. This was one of the few sequences Damien and I storyboarded.
September 4, 2024 - Storyboard 2
I just replaced the drawings of Maria in the plane with shots taken during the second week of shooting with the plane at a standstill, a green screen, a 9kW HMI on a dolly and two big fans...
Thursday, September 5 | Photo by Willy, van driver (Alessandra’s iPhone)
I receive photos on the WhatsApp group created by and for the film crew... Loly at the airport, heading for Argentina... Loco, heading for Guatemala... Olivia and Devrim, supervised by Alessandra, their “pilot fish”, heading for Europe. Devrim has died her hair red to “help her get out of Maria Reich’s character” (sic). It gives me a strange feeling because shooting isn’t over and everyone is going home…
September 5, 2024 | Stills Arri Alexa Mini LF and Arri Signature 75 mm lens at f2.8
After a photo from “real life”, here are three stills from the fictional Lady Nazca corresponding to sequence 70, shot precisely on Wednesday August 28 at 5:43 p.m. The summary of this sequence read: “Maria bids farewell to Amy, worried”...
That day, the prop car broke down. We had to bounce back very quickly. We pushed the car to find angles that would allow us to keep the Nazca mountains in frame. The two actresses admitted to us later that the setting sun, the car that wouldn’t start and the sense of urgency that had seized the whole team had helped them to find emotion…
September 6, 2024 - Damien in the plane | Photo by Gilles Porte (iPhone)
The reason I’m posting this image today is not to greet the arrival of the plane at the Nazca lines, as should have been the case, but the exact opposite: the plane that had long been promised us was been refused permission to land at Nazca!
September 6, 2024
After the shocking news of the day (no plane), Damien and I worked late into the night to come up with our shots... without the plane! Damien wanted the plane to fly over certain key places in his film before the audience discovered, with Maria, the Nazca lines from the air. I suggested that he might use the stills I’d shot on several sets, as some of them had a lot of sky in them. Then, all VFX team would have to do was to make the plane fly around in the shots...
To illustrate my suggestion, I drew the little red and white plane from behind, in profile, from the front, from above, in a low angle or just as a shadow... This relaxes me... I go to bed (much) too late. Tomorrow everyone must be ready to start the engine at the first ray of sunlight, i.e. at 5:50 a.m...
In the end, this was be our first dawn on Lady Nazca, for the shots set at the end of the day in the film, even though this entire time we’ve been shooting sequences at dusk that take place... at dawn!
September 7, 2024 | Photo by Gilles Porte (iPhone)
Three drones stare at me like three cyclops in the middle of the desert, while the sun is slow to rise above a hill, delaying my forecast by 20 minutes: an Inspire 3, an Inspire 2 and another, smaller drone. Now that’s a luxury I’ve not been very accustomed to on this shoot! The answer to my question is not long in coming: the small drone won’t film, but it will help us spot our targets and save us flight time for the other two drones, given the low number of batteries we have!
On the first flight, I get out my stopwatch. The result is clear: 3 sets of batteries last between 10 and 15 minutes each for the Inspire 3... 5 sets of batteries last 15 minutes each with the Inspire 2... We must also account for the fact that it takes 40 minutes’ time to recharge a set of batteries with the small red generator that we have brought along with us, so long as other batteries are not being recharged at the same time... That would be too easy!
To top it all off, I discover that the Inspire 2 has a 400-meter range, after which we lose connection. Even though Alberto (the archaeologist) gave us a free pass to get as close as possible to the figures, some of them can only be filmed by the Inspire 3, such as “the fisherman”, my favorite one!
And to think I had thought for a moment that this last shoot was going to be like a vacation!
September 7, 2024 | Photo by Gilles Porte (iPhone)
What could be better than the sand of the Nazca desert to show Daniel the angles he needs to locate with the little scouting drone...
September 8, 2024 | Stills Arri Alexa Mini LF and Arri Signature 47mm lens at f4
Because we’re in Nazca amongst the real lines, I have chosen to show 2 stills of Maria (Devrim) with our lines created in the Pan de Azúcar desert by Blanca Remzo and her crew. Here, a detail of the monkey that Maria (Devrim) photographed before presenting them to Paul (Guillaume Galienne) and one of his assistants (Claude Amaranta).
September 8, 2024 | Image Inspire 3 Drone - 35mm at f5.6
... and the real monkey (and a few other lines) photographed with a drone...
September 9, 2024 | Photo by Gilles Porte (iPhone)
Damien imagines Maria’s plane while Daniel pilots the drone...
September 9, 2024 - Very low plane | Photo by Gilles Porte (iPhone)
This photo was taken without any editing... Paulo is guiding the pilot with his radio... Damien is checking the frame... Daniel entrusted Ricardo, his assistant, with his drone. His job is to maneuver it from behind to ensure the best visibility within the frame of the red and white plane… We shoot it every angle to give Thibault (VFX / Digital Color) as much material as possible so that he can juxtapose the plane against the real Nazca lines.
September 10, 2024 | Photos by Gilles Porte (iPhone)
Damien is all smiles as we return to Lima. He knows he has won his bet... Shooting Lady Nazca at this time of year, in 28 days! It’s winter here in Latin America, so the risks were significant. During location scouting, I was able to get a feel for the famous “Neblina” that everyone here dreads! A kind of fog that sometimes reduces visibility to less than 10 meters!
September 10, 2024 - Royal Air Force advert | Photo by Gilles Porte (iPhone)
A Royal Air Force advertisement seen in the terminal of San Bartolo airport. An image that makes perfect sense, given that a film will always be the result of a team effort!
September 11, 2024 | Internet Archives
Of all the lines, I have a definite preference for one of the few drawings that isn’t horizontal in the Nazca desert: “The fisherman” or “The astronaut”... I simply call him “The little man”!
September 11, 2024 - Self-portrait Syrine, age 4 (December 2006)
It’s impossible not to juxtapose this these lines with others (drawn by my daughter Syrine when she was 4) that I have been carrying around with me for seventeen years... Seventeen years...
Exactly the same number of years Damien waited before finally getting the chance to make his film!
Epilogue
“It’s not Peru!”
It finally took the making of Lady Nazca for me to grasp the meaning of the saying my father used to say to me when I was a child [“Ce n’est pas le Pérou” an expression meaning something isn’t brilliant]…I always thought the expression owed its existence to Peru’s many gold mines, but today I know that, in fact, it refers to the incredible light found in this country... That sunlight always guided me and I already missed it when I landed at Terminal 2B of Paris’ Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport as hail was falling from a huge grey sky...
Huge thanks to Marc Salomon, without whom this “diary” would not exist...
Thanks to Jean-Noël who encouraged me to create another “2 Pictures a Day In...” when I told him that the shoot in Peru was finally confirmed.
Thank you Damien and Matthieu for having given me permission to share some news through pictures...
