Notre-Dame brule, released in theaters on March 16, depicts the dramatic and spectacular fire of the building, which occurred on April 15, 2019. How was the director able to achieve such a realistic undertaking? We decrypt.
Notre-Dame brule, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, reconstructs hour by hour the incredible reality of the events of April 15, 2019.
That day, the cathedral suffered the biggest disaster in its history. To save the monument, women and men will put their lives at risk in an incredible and heroic rescue.
To manage to box this story in the most realistic way possible, Jean-Jacques Annaud and his team have done a monumental job.
Made with the ambition of a spectacular fresco, Notre-Dame burns place the famous building as the main role. Thus, Jean-Jacques Annaud was able to shoot a few scenes inside, but above all it was necessary to reconstruct part of the cathedral identically in the studio.
According to the filmmaker, the building remained inaccessible due to the omnipresence of lead and the risk of collapse. “But anyway, we had to drown the building in smoke, cover the ground with ashes and dust, drop tons of burning beams, flood the pavement”he explains in the press kit.
The team rebuilt everything identically. She then set the sets on fire with hundreds of nozzles.
“We rebuilt in the studio on a scale of 1, a large part of the nave, the spiral staircases, the exterior passageways and the framework of the North transept, and the interior of the colossal belfry of the bells of the final scene. In short, all these emblematic places of Notre-Dame which were at the heart of the disaster and which absolutely had to be shown before and during the fire”confides Jean-Jacques Annaud.
THE MOST DIFFICULT SEQUENCE TO SHOT
One of the most complicated scenes for the director to shoot was the collapse of the vault under the weight of the tilting spire. “It’s really a very dangerous moment because we still have an area of I don’t know how many hundreds of square meters falling in flames. And it eats up all the oxygen on the set”underlines the filmmaker.
You can get a glimpse of this sequence in the video above, in which Jean-Jacques Annaud discusses the difficulties inherent in filming this kind of perilous and very expensive sequence.
“Those who stay on the set are almost obliged to have a spacesuit. These are scenes that we rehearsed a lot and it went very well. We obviously had to do it in one take. If I had had to do another, I took a week in the teeth”, specifies the director.
For the father of L’Ours, this kind of hold is magical: “At the moment of saying action, of giving the starting signal to all the special effects, this decor, which seemed very simple, against a calm sky, is transformed into a brazier with gigantic flames. Suddenly there is a magic and a force on set”he says.
The director emphasizes that it was a total reconstruction since no surveillance camera, non-existent at Notre-Dame, recorded this moment. “The firefighters themselves, understaffed in their audiovisual service that day, have no image of this crucial scene”he reveals.
In reality, the vault fell from a height of 40 meters, pouring 500 tons of flaming beams, mortar and stones onto the cathedral’s paving. “This sequence lasts about 1 minute 30 on the screen but it required weeks of preparation!”
In order not to have to redo this crucial take, Jean-Jacques Annaud shot with a dozen cameras simultaneously, from different angles, some being in the middle of the blaze, protected by what are called crash boxes, metal ultra resistant to shock and heat.
“Not a single one of these cameras failed us! On the other hand, the power of the fire partly caused the ceiling of the studio to burn: fortunately we were well insured”says the filmmaker.
BUILD THE SCENES
For the work of constructing the sets and studio filming locations, Jean-Jacques Annaud and his team had to find the right locations. They needed sets large enough to accommodate sets 25 or 30 meters high, most of which would also be completely burned!
“We absolutely wanted to shoot in France, but the fact is that not a single studio has the necessary infrastructure for this project. Two choices were offered to us: La cité du Cinéma in Saint-Denis, and Bry-sur-Marne. In Saint-Denis, we shot indoors and in Bry, on the “back lot” as they say, a vast outdoor space”remembers the director.
The film crew also needed workshops for carpentry, ironwork, sculpture, plaster molding, etc. Annaud managed to obtain the minimum living space for his film in terms of infrastructure. At the Cité du Cinéma, he was able to count on the experience of the technical teams, who are used to this kind of production.
“I also benefited from the extraordinary know-how of Jean Rabasse, an exceptional production designer. Jean worked on several films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, but also for Bernardo Bertolucci and Roman Polanski. Our first discussions were fascinating and productive. Beyond all these difficulties, I kept in mind the spirit of this project: it had to be shot in the right place. Where Notre-Dame was thought out, sculpted, built. So in France”hammers the filmmaker.
To supervise the construction of the sets, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s team set up production offices at the Cité du Cinéma, on the surface of one floor. Drawings, models, 3D models, the filmmaker asked that several reduced versions of Notre-Dame or its belfry be reproduced, like construction games in cardboard or wood.
A LONG-TERM WORK
Each object required several weeks of work because they were made according to the plans of the originals. This allowed the director to imagine very early on the axes of his cameras, the location of his actors, the segments to be set on fire or the way to route safety devices such as water or even exits through all this. rescue.
“And then, all this meticulous preparation work saved us precious time when I shot in the real cathedrals or on the sets of the sets. It also allowed me to build only what I needed At the same time, our technicians have developed special fireproof cameras, capable of withstanding the heat of fire scenes.”he explains.
The director has also shot on location, notably in Sens, the first Gothic cathedral in the world, the true founding matrix of Notre-Dame de Paris. The team also filmed the monument of Saint-Denis, built with the same limestone.
The buildings in Amiens and Bourges were also used for filming purposes. “I wanted to be able to place my cameras in axes with great resemblances to those of Notre-Dame and then be able to connect them to my sets reconstructed identically in the studio”specifies Annaud.
PASSIONATE ARTISTS
Throughout the meticulous pre-production work, the director was enthusiastic, going from one workshop to another, to see the joy, the pride of these passionate craftsmen. Cabinetmakers, plasterers, ironworkers, glaziers, painters, etc.
“All of them are real goldsmiths who do not often have the opportunity to build Gothic columns, vaults. I took my decoration teams on several occasions to scout real cathedrals so that they could be inspired by the patina of the walls and statues for example.
We also ran tests to find the right way to replicate the melting of lead from roofing to the ground or firefighters’ helmets due to the heat of the fire. I felt carried by this collective enthusiasm”says the director.