«It’s all about domination, abomination, and survival of the species. People live in fear, and the worst thing that can happen to us is to die» Gaspar Noé and Benoît Debie
Gaspar Noé and Benoît Debie – an interview with Lampoon
Gaspar Noé recalls having to hold the second camera for their movie Vortex (2021), occasionally framing Benoît Debie in his shots since they were both in the room. Debie reminds the filmmaker that he asked him not to use professional lights for Irreversible (2002), filmed at 360 degrees in whatever light was present at the time of the shooting.
The filmmaker and cinematographer catch up in several movies they have done together, even flirting with the idea of shooting the third installment of Irreversible using augmented reality. As Noé suggests, the rapist comes back and he will be twenty years older.
Gaspar Noé: Capitalizing on the rawness of human consciousness
Noé says that people live in fear and the worst event we can experience is death. His films capitalize on the rawness of human consciousness, from death and drugs to sex and grievances, themes that have existed in history, touching upon abomination and domination among living beings.
While Noé churns out the fear people feel, Debie brings out his vision with his work behind, and at times in front of the cameras, from the gradient of colors that matches the intensity of a scene to the clothes actors must wear to resonate with their dialogues and the disposition of the setting.
Climax, Love and Enter the Void
Noé and Debie treat their conversation as a time to rehash the laughter they made as two male dancers in Climax (2018) went vulgar with their words while talking about sex, how heavy it felt to hold the cameras while shooting their erotic film Love (2015) in 3D, and whether or not Debie knows if some viewers have taken drugs before watching their film Enter the Void (2009).
Gaspar Noé: I Stand Alone and Quand on est amoureux, c’est merveilleux
Benoît Debie: We met for the first time in Brussels for the premiere of Gaspar’s debut film, I Stand Alone (1998). I had done Quand on est amoureux, c’est merveilleux (1999) with Fabrice du Welz, and you saw that short film. You came up to me after the premiere, and we talked about our works and my short films. That was our first meeting.
Gaspar Noé: I like how that short film of yours was colorful, but it also seemed like a documentary with no additional cinematic light. When I was preparing my first industry feature, I wanted that lighting, lots of dark and natural colors, so I reached out to you.
Some directors have a ritual in filmmaking with makeup and projectors, but I like making movies that are closer to being like a documentary with images in front of the camera, and you just take them as they are. You are a lot like that, aren’t you?
Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible
BD: That’s what I prefer. I’m not into using too much equipment, and I think for Irreversible (2002), since it was shot 360 degrees, you asked me not to use professional lights to be able to play with the cameras and not have projectors, flags, and techniques everywhere. It became a point for me to try and experiment with not lighting our movies with the usual lighting styles.
GN: Remember the other day when we went to Germany and you gave this speech where you said that the work for the symmetry in shots comes with finding the right location and the right colors? So, before you even put the lights on, you just decide the colors of the walls or the locations that would fit the coloring of the sequences.
BD: This works best for a cinematographer or even for a director, which is to find the best location unless you are shooting on stage and it’s another kind of movie. But if you want to find a location, it’s best to already choose the location with the decorations and patterns on the walls. This is what we try to do when we work together, and you always find the best place.
Benoît Debie and the color atmosphere in Gaspar Noé’s movies
GN: Are you fetishistic about cameras or lenses?
BD: No, I think the camera is relevant, but having a good location with good lighting, colors, and everything helps a lot. After that, you come in with the techniques the camera has plus its lenses to help you capture everything, including the smoke effect in films.
GN: For me it’s more about the atmosphere. It helps me to have the colors in the space. If you have the space, it feels 3D. The 3D colors come through because when you put on the light and it is in red or green, you can feel the space with the smoke effect, and this is what I like. It adds something.
Cimax (2018)
When the movie is made of shorter takes, I edit them in post-production, but I like shooting long takes and then getting rid of all the elements that I dislike with cuts that sometimes are like blinks with a few frames of black.
But these last few years, we’ve made a lot of movies with long master shots, and when we do master shots, we frame with a larger lens, so the final precise framing is made in post-production. In this case, there’s some work in editing and reframing according to where the characters are heading to.
For a movie like Climax (2018) with lots of dancers moving all over the screen, it was better to have the security of a large lens and then reframe whatever was needed inside that frame after.
The red and violet effect in Climax and Vortex
I don’t like writing dialogues with my own vocabulary, but I like going to a movie set. It feels as if you were going to a party and you know all your friends are there waiting for you. You know that you have new friends that are going to be acting in front of the camera, and you just make it happen in front of the camera with fresher energy than if you had replanned everything in advance with the storyboard, with the dialogues you yourself had written. How many documentaries did you do, Benoît?
BD: In the end, not so many. The only one I did was a film with Nick Cave. In terms of scripts, having one is also great. It’s good to have a story, and sometimes when I’m working on a film, the visuals are relevant for me too. For sure I like to shoot on a good script and everything, but I need to have a visual. If there were no visuals, I usually wouldn’t work on that film.
GN: With Climax (2018) and Vortex (2021), these movies were almost completely shot in chronological order, which allows you also to re-change the style of the movie in its process, so you can have the beginning of the movie shot one way and towards the end, you change your style. It would be more difficult if the shooting schedule would mix the different scenes in a non-chronological order. You can decide in the process of filmmaking that the movie is going to start all green and then maybe all red or violet (effect) at the end.
The split-screen movie in Vortex
For Vortex (2021), the split-screen movie we did together, we had two cameras. You were holding one, and I was holding the other. The idea around this goes back to the other movie we did before, Lux Æterna (2019). Vortex (2021) was initially planned to be a long master shot like Climax (2018), but the shooting started in such a messy mood that it became impossible to revert to that split-screen idea. After one day of shooting, I decided we should shoot with three cameras, with me holding one of those. In the end, I had all this footage to edit, and I decided during the editing process to have multiple screens.
Vortex: a movie about Alzheimer’s
I remember my producer had asked me before we worked on this movie if I had had an idea for a movie that would be shot in a single location with two to three characters? I said yes, a movie about Alzheimer’s. I could make it – I knew the subject.
Then, we had done a movie together before with double and even triple screens, so it would make sense for us to go for a split screen in this movie. We started with two cameras, but the problem was, we had the two cameras. You had two grip men and two mic boomers in this tiny room.
We were rats in a cage
It seems like it’s just the actors and the two cameras in there when you watch the movie, but there were people almost in every corner hidden behind the cameras. We were rats in a cage.
BD: We were trying to follow these actors for Vortex (2021). One was following the actor and the other one for the actress. It was quite fun that we did a split screen for this. I remember we started the movie in the same room, and we just went on our way whenever they separated. More than that, we had to focus on the character and their acting with our cameras on hand.
GN: There were times when you would frame me in your camera and I would do the same, so we had to edit this footage or do additional shots to avoid too much editing.
It’s all about domination, abomination, and survival of the species
When it comes to the themes of our movies, they deal with the topics that exist since the Bible was written. It’s all about domination, abomination, and survival of the species. People live in fear, and the worst thing that can happen to us is to die. Our movies deal with the cruelty of sex and joy, but I’m not a transgressor. They’re a bit edgier than most movies though. Also, I avoid the Bible and any religious texts as a reference. Those things are contagious. They’re like drugs – you touch them and they can infect you.
BD: I usually try to follow your ideas for these films to help bring out the visuals that you want to see. For me, the colors are key. If a scene is intense or profound, there is a certain color that I should use. The contrast in color should also work, the play between light and dark, because it helps with the intensity of the film, script, and acting.
Gaspar Noé’s movies – the performance of actors
When we shoot these scenes, emotions come out too, and I’m sure you feel it too. When the actors perform well, we feel their emotions for the first and second takes.
GN: I remember when we shot the scene with the grandmother crying in Vortex (2021). She suddenly burst into tears, and I said Wow, this is crazy. I didn’t expect her to cry like that. It made me tear up from joy and pain. Sometimes, it also happens when people improvise their own dialogues. If they are funny and you are operating the camera, you can’t help but laugh then it becomes noisy all of a sudden.
Then, the actors look at the camera, wondering. It has happened to me once or twice. In Climax (2018), there were these two dancers, two boys, talking about sex, and they were so hardcore with the words they were using that it was impossible not to laugh.
The 4K definition in Noé’s cinema
Anyway, are there any new technologies that you haven’t tried, but would like to try?
BD: In terms of camera? What I would like to try is to shoot a film with something small because we always shoot with big cameras. It doesn’t mean that I want to shoot a low-quality film; it’s just that I would love to find a small camera where it can do mostly what big, cinematic cameras can do because sometimes they’re too heavy and restrict our movement on set. I would love to find good tools that we can play around with and not just be stuck with the same techniques and cameras that we have and use. But it’s a bit difficult to find a good one. There are some now out there, but still not a lot, so finding a suitable one isn’t so easy.
GN: Now, we have small cameras with 4K definition. Their resolutions are so high.
BD: Yes, or maybe find a solution to tone down the sharpness, even find a camera that can do just that. I don’t like high sharpness in films. It looks too clean and digital. Maybe we can find a way to tweak that a bit while still maintaining a nice look on film.
iPhone, smartphones and the distance from traditional cinema tools
GN: Have you ever shot something on an iPhone that was shown on a big screen?
BD: I shot a few things on an iPhone, but sometimes when you project them on a big screen, they don’t look so good. Also it’s not easy to frame the shots with an iPhone because most of the settings are automatic, and everything – the lighting, color, and location – changes often, so it’s a challenge in the end. I’ve been thinking how cool it would be to have a small camera that’s able to still project high definition with its size.
New technologies and the augmented reality
How about you? Do you have any new technologies that you want to try out?
GN: I’ve been proposed many times to do virtual reality short films, but more interesting is that this is what they call enhanced reality (augmented reality) where they have almost-real images flashed. The feeling is closer to drug hallucination. First, you scan the space where you are, then you put on the glasses, then the characters appear in the area that you shot. The result is quite shocking, so it’s better not to do drugs while you watch using this technology.
Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé (1963) is an Argentine filmmaker based in Paris, France. He is the son of Argentine painter, writer, and intellectual Luis Felipe Noé. In the early 1990s, Noé along with his wife Lucile Hadžihalilović were the co-founders of a production company Les Cinémas de la Zone. He has directed seven feature films: I Stand Alone (1998), Irréversible (2002), Enter the Void (2009), Love (2015), Climax (2018), Lux Æterna (2019), and Vortex (2021).
Benoît Debie
Benoît Debie (1968) is a Belgian cinematographer. He is best known for his work on his frequent collaboration with Gaspar Noé, started in Irréversible (2002). He also worked on features including The Runaways (2010) and Spring Breakers (2012).
