madsA edgy new horror thriller on Shudder, sweeps through a French city in one chaotic, continuous take. When all the blood is spilled and the credits roll, many responses may come to mind: “This is probably fake” or “Wow, where did they have the camera for this sequence?” or “How did the team accomplish this?”
The only thing viewers probably won't think is “Hey, looks like that was easy to pull off.” But director David Moreau says that, in a way, it was because the challenge of putting together an uncut 90-minute film put the entire cast and crew on exactly the same level, all focused on the same goal: simply keeping the action on track. march.
“I didn't think it was that difficult, because of the pace it gives you on set,” Moreau tells Polygon. “The way we were all together, to achieve something like that, even if some members of the team made 50 films, others like three, some of the actors never made any feature films, [it didn’t matter]We were all on the same team.
“So I think all movies should be made like that now. I didn't find it difficult. I mean, it was intense.”
mads It takes place in real time over an hour and a half. It begins with Romain (Milton Riche), an 18-year-old party animal, who takes a new recreational drug at his dealer's house, then hops into his father's fancy convertible and returns to his wealthy neighborhood for a booze- and drug-filled party. . Along the way, he runs into a desperate and terrified woman (Sasha Rudakova) who needs help. Before long, there is blood everywhere.
Image: Shudder
Seasoned horror fans will realize what kind of story this is right away and know where it's going, but that familiarity with the genre adds to the tension, as it becomes obvious how much danger Romain and everyone around him are facing. The one-shot trick is a trick, to be sure, but it's impressive, making the film feel breathless and fierce as the camera races from place to place.
Many films stylized as a single shot are actually assembled from long takes, from Alfred Hitchcock's film to Rope (which ran into the limits of how much film cameras of the era could hold at the time) to Sam Mendes' harrowing journey in World War I 1917. But Moreau swears mads It really is a true one-shot movie, or “oner,” as film and television professionals would say.
“I needed this film to be as truthful and honest as possible,” he says. “So when I had the idea to make one, it seemed like has be a take. So we filmed five days and had five takes. The first day was a disaster. The second day was a disaster. And the last three days were really the movie from beginning to end. The movie you saw is the last shot we did on Friday. I have the GoPro tapes [from the cameras] We put in some of the team members who can really show that we made it in one shot. Making movies is not like a contest, it's just that I wanted this to be real and true. So we had to do it in one take.”
Image: Shudder
When asked what the “disaster” shots were like, Moreau says the problems were just technical glitches: loss of focus, loss of camera power when the connection to the battery failed. The third take of the film was almost ruined by a tremendous storm, but it passed just in time for filming to take place, which was a thrill that left Moreau overcome with emotion. “I would do it again tomorrow,” he says. “It was great. It was like a football team achieving something. We were really connected. “It was really a wonderful, really wonderful, really strong human experience.”
Moreau says he shot mads on a Red Raptor VV camera, built into a custom box system (“there's only one in the world”) that allowed it some of the mobility and flexibility of a portable camera without the usual accompanying shakiness. He wanted the look of the film to be stable, but not rigid: “not portable, but not static either.” The equipment he commissioned allows the camera some vertical bounce, but not horizontal movement, “which means you still have emotion, you still have movement, it's constant, but not too much. And that was for us, so we wouldn't throw up after 25 minutes.”
The most difficult scene to film, Moreau says, was actually a sequence at the beginning, where Romain tires himself out to carry an injured hitchhiker to safety, and the camera moves back and forth between them.
“It had to be very choreographed,” Moreau says. “There was a choreography between the camera and the actors, who needed to move inside the car, movement without a green screen. We had to do it for real. You can't cut it, so you have to find a way to choreograph a camera inside a car. It was quite hard. That's why we had this great American car; of course, because he had an attractive appearance, because Romain is a rich boy, so he takes his father's car, but also because he was big and we could move around.”
Image: Shudder
As for all the behind-the-scenes GoPro footage (proof that Moreau and his crew shot the entire movie in one take), he'd like to see it released to the public in some form. “We're working on it,” he says. “It's a great idea, it's just a lot of footage. But yes, we are thinking about doing it. We're actually working on it, because it's interesting to see how we did it. For movie lovers, it is always interesting. [to see] those different ways of shooting.”
Some reviews of mads They have turned it into a political metaphor or social commentary. Others see it simply as an adrenaline-filled exercise in style. When asked where he would prefer viewers to go, Moreau pauses.
“I mean, the message is… I have an 8-year-old,” he says. “And when I was young, I didn't listen to the news every day. [saying] that the world is going to end, the world is going to end. Children today live with that and this is really difficult for them. So I don't know if [MadS is] political, but there is this [sense of] How can you try to look forward with dark noises in your ears every day? So I'm sure this has a connection, even if I didn't want it to be political. I want to hug [positivity] and tell the children today that I am truly with them because I hope we still have dreams ahead of us. But nowadays it is difficult to find them. “I mean, it’s harder than it was 20 years ago.”
mads It is now available on Shudder.