Most Valuable Commodity: By the way, what does “directing an animated film” mean?

If comedy is the favorite genre of Michel Hazanavicius, he has repeatedly shown his ease in playing with formats and registers, even making a truly silent feature film in the early 2010s, which won him the Oscars for best director and best film.

So should we be surprised to see him sign an animated film? not really. Especially since he tells us he’s been working on another project in this style. “More family and fun, more comedy”Before moving on to adapting Most Valuable Goods, which he did before the release of Jean-Claude Grumberg’s novel.

So there was an opportunity to ask what the director’s position means on an animated film, because everything seems more blurred than in real footage on the set: “I think it totally depends on where you’re coming from, what you want to do”he tells us. “There, in addition to writing the adaptation, I drew the characters, but that’s not what the production is.”

“You do the cutting, it’s you who manages the story, who ensures that everything is coherent. You decide with the collaborators: here, in particular, Julien Grande and Maëlle Le Gal on set. Then the same Julien Grande on artistic direction, light, color… together with your collaborators you determine the identity of the film, what it should be. with story, cut, frames, game”.

“On a film like this, we don’t have actors, we have characters: how they should act, the timing of each look… you decide all that. I had people in Angoulême and others in Paris, so I was on zoom. Every day forces every animator to redo things, every step, every On set, you have to revise or rework everything until all its components fit the story you want to tell, as You want them to tell you.”

“Together with your collaborators, you define the identity of the film, what it should be”

“You’re also directing the voice actors, collaborating with the composer on what we call when the piece of music should start, when it should end, and what to figure out. I had a chance to find out. work with him. Alexandre DesplatSo we are at a very high level. But together we say to ourselves: Is this type of arrangement good? This type of tool? Aren’t we also Miteleuropa? Do we want to be more neutral?”

“You’re in every position, all the time. And you can do a little bit: on the characters, I went back and forth a lot on the performance, on the drawing I get my hands dirty, but a lot less on the set. Color But you work with the station managers, like on a live-action film, you don’t create the direction, You ask what you want from the costumes, you don’t make them yourself, but you help, together with the head of each department, to create a direction that is uniform.

And the idea of ​​being in all positions makes more sense here, since Michel Hazanavicius is also credited as the film’s editor: “Yes. But in my writing process, there’s obviously scripting and filming, but also editing. In general, in an animated film, there’s no real editing because you’re not working small, it’s too difficult, too long to do. An animated shot, and there’s no rush, the concept of editing is a bit vague .

“What I did there was that for two weeks I shot the story with the actors in a theater that was next to the Bois de Vincennes. We also had a forest and we had a little exterior, a little interior, I shot the whole thing. A story that allowed me to edit without sets or extras or other characters, so something very basic, but it allowed me to create the cinematography of the written film to finish and have what I considered writing, which is the script, shooting and editing.

“It allowed me to do tests and the film itself was not watchable and we went very quickly, but I was able to finish the script, shoot and edit it to 1 hour, which we were allowed for economic reasons, we did the story that exists in animation, this Not a memorandum as it provides instructions for facilitators. Decorators…”

“I filmed the story with the actors in the theater”

So I worked with the scriptwriter on every shot, around the duration, around the actor’s movement… It’s very time consuming, very long to do, but you’re starting from scratch, image-wise or sound-wise. live action. The film, if the door is open and there is wind, if the actor has something, we reserve the same, if the cloud passes, that’s too much. Different, everything is a choice, everything is decided and created.

“It’s the same with sound: I don’t have an initial sound, everything has to be created, not just sounds: the environment, the sound of a train, the sound of a bird, the sound of a child.” … It’s quite exciting, you’re really starting from scratch.

Comments collected by Maximilien Pierrette in Cannes 24 May 2024 – Video footage and editing: Mehdi Delavant