Jean-Julien Pous vient de soumettre ce court métrage de toute beauté au Louis Vuitton’s Journeys Awards. Réalisé en seulement 2 semaines, le film intitulé Aurore raconte l’histoire d’un homme qui voyage à travers ses sens…

In a hauntingly beautiful short film, Jean-Julien Pous submits this number to the Louis Vuitton’s Journeys Awards. Produced in just 2 weeks, the film entitled « Aurore » tells the story of a man who travels through his senses, and through the other’s body, discovers his own …

Behind the scenes history by Jean-Julien Pous

Here is the story. A little crazy. My producer in France told me about a contest made by Louis Vuitton around the theme « What a journey means to you ? ». But, we were October 15th and the deadline was two weeks later. She suggested me to create an original content. But in such a short time, the only thing I replied was « No way ! » And that’s precisely when I said that, that I swore I would do something. I needed some serious help to pull out something so fast.

I called my friend Denis, and moved to his appartment in Brussels. Together, in a day and half, we found several ideas. The next day, we decided to go with the nudes. And almost immediately thought « Wait, no way we gonna find people to get naked… For free ? » But we still kept on.

We finished our treatment: jjpous.com/louisvuitton/treatment.pdf

Sent it to everyone that could – even remotely – help us. Couldn’t get the back up from my producer in France, as it wasn’t a good time for them. One of the most important helper for this project was out… We had to find serious help and fast. Sophia, my dear producer from Hong Kong (on the music video I made earlier), introduced me her friend Stanley. She was amazing. From Hong Kong as well, she moved to Belgium to work on films. And we met, and talked, and talked. At the end of the day, we had a production plan, a budget (our own), a team, camera and lenses, lighting equipment. Meanwhile, we gathered almost everything for free in Paris: models, lighting, studio. But both there and in Brussels, we lacked of essential things: lenses and camera, or models.

A week went through, our chances were narrowing. I asked my producer in the Netherlands, Raymond, if he could help us. And it was hard to believe. In 5 minutes of chat, we had a studio. In a day, a D.O.P. In three days, everything. Literally. We were stunned. One more big gift: my dear photographer Tommy, met on the set of my earlier music video, was willing to shoot amazing stills for us. So we all moved there, met each other and the team, talked through the storyboard that was freshly finished from the night before: jjpous.com/louisvuitton/storyboard.pdf

Next day morning, 6am: we wake up, go to the studio half-asleep. With one more challenge. 40 shots, 4 hours make-up, models that have to leave at 7pm, extremely tight budget that doesn’t allow us to go overtime. Especially when a whole team of hard-working volunteers is willing to help graciously. And the shooting went, peacefully but neat and fast. Well, with a few improvisations, last minute changes, limited shot dropping and adaptation to the situation. But also nice little extras, free from the storyboard while framing most shots.

And… It’s like the beat never gets slower. October 25th. 5 days left. And we have to do: editing, visual effects, music, sound design. And: we have one computer down, the sound design hardware is left in Paris, we couldn’t shoot on green screen because of our lighting intention. So: we rush to repair the computer, we rush to Paris to pick up the data, we rush to remove frame-by-frame each background to isolate the characters.

October 30th, 2 hours before the deadline. Film is finally finished, but, the icing on the cake: the Internet connection is down. We ran through Brussels to find a cybercafé still opened. 1 hour left, we enter into one. And… Handle the project on time.

Two weeks earlier, we had no idea of what we would do.

Equipment used for the film

– 2 Nikon D-90 bodies, to counter the overheat issue,
– Zeiss lenses: 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm
– Nikon lenses: 10mm, 14mm, 200mm
– Edirol R-9 recorder
– Laptops, hard drives, lights, flags, clothes and stands
– After Effects, Premiere, Sound Forge, Sonar

Credits

Written & Directed by: Jean-Julien Pous & Denis Huneau
Starring: Kim Captein, Sam Azami
Producer: Raymond Van Der Kaaij
Production assistant: Dijana Olcay-Hot
Director of Photography: Gregg Telussa
Sound design: Jean-Julien Pous
Gaffer: Adriaan van de Polder
Stills Photographer: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Body Painter: Ferry Zeeman
Runners: Jasper Bakker, Dave Bras
Visual Effects: Gilles Brinkhuizen, Denis Huneau, Jean-Julien Pous
Visual Effects Assistants: Sylvain Jorget, Caroline Voglaire, Jean-Michel Trauscht

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