I first started working on CORAL with Theo Ronceray, as it was our homework for l'Ecole de la Cité. Writing about a true story, it being either documentary or fiction. We decided to focus on my friend's account of her near death experience, and sew a narrative around the facts.
From kindergarten up until today, sticking to rules, abiding to the "common way" of doing art has never been engrained in me. Not bragging my rebellious side, but I was going to direct CORAL in the best possible way, or not do it at all. And I managed to get the shooting dates to corroborate with the school, in order to get all of our light, grip and camera equipment for free, from our very kindhearted partners Transpa and Next Shot.
After a couple of months reworking the script with Theo, digging for the best possible structure for a 15" short, we came to a final version.
I started building my team straight away, starting with my 1st Assistant Matthieu Barazer.
In need of an excellent DOP, I figured the prestigious Louis Lumiere's school would have someone who would be trained enough, and fore mostly, free to work for free.
I posted an add on their Facebook group, and I noticed Naomi Amarger had added me. I did stalk her a bit and found her website, and her demo reel, which frankly I absolutely admired straight away. I tried to call her but she didn't pick up. Seconds after I hung up, I saw she had messaged me on Messenger. We spoke on the phone, and turns out we had cinema friends in common, and that she had seen the film I did as a child. When we met at a Montparnasse café, things clicked instantly. She had understood the entire film and each proposition she made for the aesthetics of CORAL were spot on to what I had imagined.
My vision was already shaping up and we hadn't even started the technical script yet.
Shortly after, I started auditioning for the parts of the film. Rachel Desmarest from The French Brit opened her studio and her arms wide open to me, proposing a large amount of people for each parts of the script. I felt very privileged to be able to hold castings at her office, and benefitting from her knowledge and her eagle sharp eye.
Fred Malek, who runs Caractères agency in Paris, was also extremely kind and supportive, helping me find a big part of my cast.
There were Carol and James. Nina Aboutajedyne and Yuming Hey.
Shooting a student film in a hospital setting turned out to be extremely difficult. With Covid 19 at the door, most private clinics refused us, or asked for sums that students cannot fathom. After begging different ones, Naomi and I went location scouting at the Ville Evrard mental hospital, which happened to have a few derelict buildings used for filming.
The building Ile de France was perfect for our hospital. Therefore, we set the deal and went ahead with booking the shooting dates. We got very lucky as the day we finalised the papers, the management office received nearly 30 calls to shoot at those dates.
I had a team, a cast, and a location. Next up, I'll be talking about how it all went down.