Interview with Godefroy de Maupeou from France | 4th KIIFF

"Dance! - A Cinematic Ode to Unity, Resilience, and the Transformative Power of Art"

KIIFF: How did you get the idea and what inspired you to create it?

In 2012 I saw an announcement from the organizers of the Défilé de la Biennale de la Danse (a parade) who were looking for people to film. I replied not really knowing if I would just make a small capture or more.

From the second film, I knew that I would film everything. It was so engaging that I couldn't stop after a few days.

For nine months I filmed everything I could which resulted in more than 300 hours of rushes. As the shooting progressed, I mounted short films entitled Instants Volés but, given the magnitude of the shooting hours, it was impossible to show everything. So I thought, during the shooting, to edit a feature film afterwards.

It was not possible at the time due to lack of means for this, but I always thought that I would have to make this film one day. I owed it to the dancers who had integrated me as one of their own and let everything I wanted be filmed.

Ten years later, the project became possible. But ten years later, what form to give it?

Seeing that this event had remained intact with the participants, the idea came to tell this strong human adventure with a look at it ten years later.

I thought of the following form:

Place the dancers in the rooms where they had played, show them images they had never seen and then talk to them about this adventure and what it meant to them.

For the speakers, whose job it was, do the interviews on their premises.

Integrate the Instants Volés.

KIIFF: What are the main challenges you faced during the film-making process? How did you overcome them?

On the technical level, the 2012 images were in H264 1080i and Mpeg2 HDV and those of 2019 in RAW 4K DCI and AVCHD 4K UHD, that is to say that once deinterlaced (the cinema does not accept the interlaced format), they were eight times less precise than that of 2019. It was necessary to connect all this and the first tests were catastrophic. I didn't see how I was going to maintain a constant quality.

There was the idea of putting the 2012 images in screens, as we can see at certain times in the film, but we could not do that all the time. To understand this adventure, we had to be able to immerse ourselves in the images of 2012 which required a full screen.

That's when I saw the arrival of Topaz's software, especially Video AI, which made it possible to recalculate in AI videos in low definition up to 8K. The calculation was very long but the result was satisfactory and this started the start of the realization.

I registered as a beta tester and I was therefore regularly receiving new versions. These were more and more efficient in terms of rendering and calculation speed, which means that I constantly recalculated the images already mounted to make them closer and closer to those of 2019.

The real qualitative leap came when the deinterlacing was managed by Topaz Video AI. This is where I was able to arrive in a good homogeneity, sometimes perfect, between times.

In terms of filming, the great difficulty has arrived with covid and lockdowns.

It is no longer possible to shoot in groups and in public places. So we stopped shooting in the gymnasiums of repetition with all the groups and we went to small spaces with few people.

KIIFF: What unique characteristics have the pre-production, production and post-production phases of your film? Did specific incidents or interesting experiences occur during these stages?

The main difficulty for me is that it is a film without a budget. I finance it with my own funds which are very limited, it must be said.

I make a lot of order films which makes me buy the equipment with these contracts. So I am equipped to film what offers me a certain freedom.

But in front of a film of this magnitude, the time factor plays. Time spent on Dance! Is time that passes the simple time off. You have to take it on the work one which reduces income.

On the other hand, spending 300 hours of rushes in 1080i and HDV to ProRes 4K or even 8K for some sequences, involves quite considerable storage costs.

In the end, the entire film folder occupies almost 100 TB including backups. That, it must be financed.

А This adds the travel and distribution costs.

Less income, more expenses, the equation was not simple but after three years of filming and post production, the film was finally released.

KIIFF: Did your film include a particularly difficult place or setting to find or use? How did you take on this challenge?

The first difficulty on the scene was to have the gymnasiums of repetition.

One of Thonon's places of repetition was demoly and we could not turn in the other gymnasium anyway because of the confinement. So we shot in an apartment with just four people.

The Saint Gervais gymnasium had its furniture completely disassembled because it was going to be removed.

We were lucky enough to be able to shoot in it just before this demolition.

Without the ladders along the walls, the sound resonated even more. The K6 ME66 are microphones that allow you to remain intelligible even in a case like this. But the connection with the other sequences was felt.

The software also helped a lot. iZotope's RX made it possible to suppress, or at least lower the resonance of the reverbation. The different versions of RX (the last one used in Dance! Is the 9 I think) also improved the rendering а each time, but I believe that the best reduction of reverberation was the one that arrived in Final Cut Pro at the end of the editing. It is the one that generates the least audio artifacts.

During the filming in Thonon, bells rang very loudly during the interview. With RX I was able to delete them completely without affecting the voices.

KIIFF: How was your collaboration with your production team (actors, technical team, etc.)? What key leons have you learned to build an efficient team?

In my case, for the production team, I was shooting with my wife for interviews so no difficulty at this level if it is not everyone's availability (my wife is a teacher). If it implies to manage everything so having a huge concentration and no rights is a simple forgetfulness, it is very pleasant because we can react very quickly. There is no staff to gather.

On the feature film I am currently shooting, for example, there is an additional person who conducts the interviews with me. We immediately see that everything gets complicated with the schedules.

The most difficult thing was to contact the participants because I did not have access to the list of the 400 dancers.

So we used the word of mouth of those with whom I had a direct link (Saint-Gervais and Thonon) and launched advertising campaigns on Facebook with a teaser calling for participation for a year. Despite everything, some people who would have liked to participate could not be touched by these means of communication and did not learn the Dance project! That after the release of the film.

KIIFF: What is the central theme or message of your film, and what do you hope the public will remove from it?

What stripped me when I was filming in 2012 was the deep humanity of such a project.

400 amateurs from all social backgrounds and all ages (from 8 to 80 years old) worked together. Most had never danced and they arrived after nine months to produce a magnificent film in front of 250,000 people.

Ten years later, this is still in their mind and in their hearts. Something very strong happened and it's a real lion for our human relationships. Let's listen, let's discover the other, the one who doesn't seem like us and, together, we can experience extraordinary things. The fear of the other leads us to confinement.

Bouba Landrille Tchouda, the choreographer, has been working on this for years.

With this film, I wanted to pay tribute to all this and show, as Bouba says in the film, that "yes it is possible to live together". It is not only possible but it makes us happier in the end. So why not try to be?

KIIFF: Is there an experience of this project that you plan to apply or avoid in your future work?

Dance! Shot with 1080i cameras in 2012 and a mix between 4K UHD cameras (Sony FDR AX53) and 4K DCI Raw (Canon C200). Even with a charter, some sequences have been very difficult to set (Geneva's interview for example and I'm still not perfectly satisfied with it).

For my new feature film, I started on identical cameras: four C200 for the start (a fifth should arrive this winter).

For financing, I am making an aid file in writing with the CNC and we will launch a crowdfunding campaign.

Finally, the ideal would be to find a real distributor. If we have the help of the CNC, it may facilitate this research.

KIIFF: How have festivals and public comments influenced your artistic journey?

Prizes, support are essential for us to move forward and continue.

When we believe, we constantly doubt, and this support allows us to tell ourselves that we are right to continue, that there is an audience that wants to see our films. This is what allows us to spend so much time, money and energy in our work because we know we don't do it for nothing.

The only difficulty is that this audience finds our films, and the work of the festivals, the spectators' reviews are essential for this.

KIIFF: As an independent filmmaker, what advice would you give to other people who enter this field?

Do with your means, even a simple phone, but make movies and make them as you want to do them.

You have to listen to the advice and criticisms and correct certain things if the remarks are relevant, but keep your line. It's your movie, not other people’s.

Apply what everyone tells you, you end up making a film without any flavor or vision, just a bland exercise that can only direct you towards dissatisfaction and oblivion.

Sergio Leon's films had been down by critics, often those of Ridley Scott like Blade Runner too. Today they are cult films considered masterpieces. Their directors were visionaries who are now ultra copied.

KIIFF. If you had another opportunity, what changes would you make in the process of creating this project?

Remove covid for not having managed the confinement that went with it :-)

Shoot with identical cameras (which I do now)

Use micro ties whenever possible. I did it after Geneva where I could have put some (we were 5) but not the case in Saint-Gervais (I only have 8 and we were much more)

Seek financing but without affecting the creative part, so ask for a small budget to make sure not lose money to those who take the risk of supporting you.

Find a good distributor.