#celina sciamma

[valeriesportfolio]

Working With The Crew: Planned Spontaneity

During the pre-production stage, I researched the different methods filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Celina Sciamma implement to coordinate a team of creative individuals and inspire them to produce a single, stylistically unified and coherent cinematic story. My main takeaway was that communication is key, especially using visuals and pre-existing examples. 

It was important for me to be accessible to my actors and not bury myself in technical and logistical issues on set, therefore, all the discussions had to happen long before we started filming. I’ve created storyboards for our cinematographer, our production designer and I made mood boards together, and I exchanged playlists with our composer. Everyone was working together to honour the themes and the tone of As You Wish. 

However, whereas the final scene of As You Wish is an example of what can be achieved with meticulous planning, the ballet scene shows that there is still room for spontaneity in filmmaking. I believe that as an indie student director, one of my strengths is being able to think on my feet and come up with shot ideas on the spot. The ballet scene, which tends to be cited as the highlight of the film, did take a lot of preparation: we had a test shoot to figure out the lighting set-up, Joeley Gibson (Ava) choreographed her dance, we created a list of shots that we definitely needed for coverage. However, thanks to mindful scheduling, we had enough time to experiment with camera angles, movements (dolly, 360 etc.), and blocking. I believe that the playful spontaneity that was present on set can be felt through the screen and it makes sense considering that this is the only time when Valentine experiences pure joy. I knew that we were all working toward making the same film and trusting my team allowed me to create magic.

[johncassavetes]

Noemie Merlant, one of the lead actresses in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, is a fan of Cassavetes! (x)

#noemie merlant #john cassavetes #cassavetes #opening night #gena rowlands #portrait of a lady on fire #celina sciamma #adele haenel

[soracities]

do you have any pieces on a lovers language + the world between them? ❤

“Erotic play discloses a nameless world which is revealed by the nocturnal language of lovers. Such language is not written down. It is whispered into the ear at night in a hoarse voice. At dawn it is forgotten.”

— Jean Genet, The Thief’s Journal

“you up? you ever think about how / english maybe isn’t our first language? / the way I’m sitting right now is my / first language. the way I bring my / hand to your jawline is my first language. the / way I become movement inside / your hands is my first language.”

— Rachelle Toarmino, “You Up?”

— Chuck Carlise, “I Can Tell You a Story”

“We two remake our world by naming it together.”

— A.S. Byatt, Possession

“Lovers who touch each other with words, whose contact with each other is  made of words, and who can thus repeat themselves without end,   marveling at the utterly banal, because their speech is not a language, but an idiom they share with no other, and because each gazes at themselves in the other’s gaze in a redoubling which goes from mirage to admiration.”

— Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

“I need you, my fairy-tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought–and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smiled at me with all of its seeds.” 

— Vladimir Nabokov, letter to his wife Véra

— Porpentine Charity Heartscape, PSYCHO NYMPH EXILE

“You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.” 

— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“I always have such need to merely talk to you. Even when I have nothing to talk about – with you I just seem to go right ahead and sort of invent it. I invent it for you.”

— Virginia Woolf, in a letter to Vita Sackville-West

— Celina Sciamma, in an interview on Portrait of a Lady on Fire

“Do you remember a night when I came along the dark passage to your room in a thunderstorm and we lay talking about whether we were afraid of death or not? That is the sort of occasion on which the things I want to say to you,–and to you only,–get said.”

—  Virginia Woolf, in a letter to Vita Sackville-West

“The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.”

—  Alain de Botton, On Love

— Vladimir Nabokov, letter to his wife Véra

“I love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences, it is a strangely alive silence, like a trap open over a well, from which one can hear the secret murmur of the earth itself.”

— Anaïs Nin, Under a Glass Bell

“It would be madness to try and live so intensely as lovers that every word and every gesture between us was a sacrament, a pure sign that our love exists despite and perhaps even because of our mortality. But we can do what the priest does with his morning consecration before entering the routine of his day; what the communicant does in that instant of touch, that quick song of the flesh, before he goes to work. We can bring our human, distracted love into focus with an act that doesn’t need words, an act which dramatizes for us what we are together. The act itself can be anything: five beaten and scrambled eggs, two glasses of wine, running beside each other in rhythm with the pace and breath of the beloved. They are all parts of that loveliest of sacraments [....] that passionate harmony of flesh whose breath and dance and murmur says: We are, we are, we are...”

— Andre Dubus, “On Charon’s Wharf”

(post via @akamaruu​)

#quotes #quote compilation #quotes about x #ask #anonymous #the topography of love #a country of two #language #x #all the world's a queue

[accio-prongs]

lovers and their own language

PSYCHO NYMPH EXILE, porpentine charity heartscape / the writing of the disaster, maurice blanchot / illict affairs, taylor swift / the lovers ii 1928, rené magritte / the vine, tennessee williams / you up?, rachelle toarmino / reunion 2018, salman toor / interview on potrait of a lady on fire, celina sciamma / everything is illuminated, jonathan safran foer / 400lux, lorde

#im LOSING my mind ! #im going CRAZY!! #love languages #web weaving #compilations #parallels #porpentine charity heartscape #maurice blanchot #taylor swift #folklore #rene magritte #tennesee williams #rachelle toarmino #salman toor #potrait of a lady on fire #jonathan safran foer #lorde #400lux #<3

[caffe-shakerato]

Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Celina Sciamma, 2019)

Saw this yesterday at the Beau Regard in Saint-Germain-des-Près, one of the most visually stunning films I’ve ever seen

#Portrait de la jeune fille en feu #portrait of a lady on fire #adele haenel #celine sciamma #film #movies #cinema #cannes #oscars #french cinema #painting