The director of the stylish Paris-set future noir talks about the rigours of high-tech filmmaking
The director of the stylish Paris-set future noir talks about the rigours of high-tech filmmaking
Christian Volckman sounds worn out. His film Renaissance is the result of six years of work, replete with financial issues, technological trouble-shooting and enormous imaginative labours to create a striking black and white vision of a future Paris. "It's unbelievable, when I started I was very enthusiastic, but I didn't know I would work for six years on something that would last an hour-and-a-half on the screen," he says. "Looking back, it's really a crazy adventure."
The germ of Renaissance comes from when Volckman was working on his previous film, an eight minute short created using blue screen techniques. He met Marc Miance, who was a pioneer in the new technology of motion capture. This was 1999, years before Hollywood made a big noise about the process for The Polar Express, even before Gollum made an impression in The Lord Of The Rings films.
"At that time it was pretty strange because it was really a new technique," says Volckman. The technology piqued his interest. "When you shoot on blue screen you have the actors actually present [in the finished image]. I wanted to do something very artistic, and with the motion capture you can really forget about the human anatomy, the skin and everything. Then with black and white there was a way of stylising everything."
Next page • "I don't think it's a risk for Disney"
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