The Great Race with Danny Boon: How to shoot in Paris without traffic jams?

During the course of Une belle, Line Renault and Danny Boone cross Paris in a taxi. Christian Carrion’s film, based on Cyril Gale’s screenplay, tells the story of 92-year-old Madeleine, who has to go to a nursing home, where she now lives. She asks Charles, a slightly disillusioned driver, to drive past the places that have been important in his life to see them one last time. Gradually, an extraordinary past appears in the bends of the streets of Paris, which excites Charles. There’s a taxi ride that can change lives… The city of Paris and certain iconic locations take up all the space in the plot.

But what kind of technical equipment was there to shoot so many scenes in the car? As director Christian Carrion points out, in the making of the video, which we invite you to discover above, the idea of ​​actually shooting in Paris was quickly discarded. “Driving and turning in Paris is very difficultThe director explains that it was necessary to experiment for weeks to find the best way to create the illusion of truly rotating in Paris.

“We started from the beginning with two observations: Today, traveling in Paris has become very difficult, and therefore filming Line Renaud on board a moving car 500 meters away to do scenes in traffic jams was both risky and unimaginable…”Continues Christian Carrion in the Une belle course press kit.

Thanks to its chief cameraman, Pierre Cottereau, a technique was chosen that made it possible to avoid green screens and an immersive filming system for the actors and the entire technical team. “He offered me this system of LED screens that he recently tested on a Canal+ project. He told me that this technology was developing quickly and that it was worth getting interested in… so we spent weeks experimenting to see how far we could go, especially with what we call “transparency”. “.”

and add:Basically, we used to put a screen behind the car and project the scenery or the road onto it while shooting. I am very impressed with this device that for example Claude Sauté at home used it a lot for his car scenes… So you can tell me that today there are green screens, but it prevents the actors from visualizing what is going on around them. them. Then everything is done in post-production, so no interaction is possible…“

We are one of the first films to use this technology on this scale

Not a green background here, but a fully immersive device. “In the studio, we set up 4K screens around the taxi in a crazy high definition “L” shape, onto which we projected the entire route taken by the taxi during filming. A trip that we filmed earlier from all angles and from all angles, thanks to a platform truck that has many cameras… This is about the sky, because we had another screen, it was to the car that brought us the light on the windshield and gave us life. Inside the cabin…“- explains the director.

Line and Danny actually felt like the car was starting to roll!

“Thus the line and current, surrounded by these screens 3 meters by 8, were completely submerged. When I said “action” they could really feel the car turning! I know Dan was a bit destabilized at first, but I found the result to be stunning and the actors can play with him.“

He concludes: “I know that we are one of the first films to use this technology on this scale: it represents almost half of the total sequences… I am sure that this is the future for shooting in urban environments..”

The Une belle course, with Line Renaud and Dany Boon, runs from Wednesday 21 September.