Russian version.
Hi!
Here I am. At the heart of Paris, discovering the real places of shooting the mindblowing film called "Inception" of 2010 year (dir. Christopher Nolan).
I was on my vacation, far away from visual effects & compositing stuff, but the professional interest in on-set vfx-supervising gave me the huge desire to crack those scenes from one of my most favourite movies.
My goal was to imagine how the shooting material could look like, and to compare what at the end in those shots was a real footage or a computer graphics. But I am not trying to discover the way those visual effects were achieved. Because I enjoy on-set job more than disappearing behind the computer around some magical stuff. I am looking for the clues, allowed the crew to make the film footage acceptable for such complicated kind of visual effects. It is important to prepare and hold the shooting well, because no vfx-studio would take the film in a processing, if it is made below their quality standarts.
I was studying scenes frame by frame, disappeared at Google Maps, discussed my theories with colleagues, but it was still not enough. The verdict was simple: I need to drive at the location and to take a look in live. And I did it.
I am pulling your attention, that this blog article is not an instruction for beating the path along those streets. Pay some respect for the residents, for whose those locations are the home, and if you would ever get at that place, please, be quiet. This post is just a note about the observations and impressions for self-education purposes in filmmaking. It is also assumed, that you, dear visitors, already have watched the movie, and are not afraid of catching any plot or visual spoilers about it.
So, let's expand some boundaries of that well-known dream...
Film poster.
Take your coffee. It's not a short reading. As you may remember, the parisian scenes include the shots about the Cobb's team workshop, the radical notions withing the dreams and a few lessons in shared dreaming. I mean the scenes, where Arthur reaches the workshop doors, where Cobb teaches the basics of shared-dream features, and where Ariadna recreates locations from a memory.
There is a one scene I had not visited - Cobb enters the university. The street was shot in Paris indeed, but the interior scenes are from London, so I decided to my shame, that the exterior is British too.
I don't know how much time the film crew spent in the preparings and shooting, but it's obvious a few days. The natural lightning varies from morning to night, but not too fast for one day shooting.
All the exterior locations in the movie about the Paris are the real places with real adresses, not the temporary built sets, existing only at the production period of time. This allows nerds like me to visit the locations after years.
I've got the great help in planning the walking path along those locations from one old forum:
http://www.nolanfans.com/2009/08/17/images-from-inception-filming-in-paris/
There are dozens of paparazzi photos, sometimes equal to on-set backstage in their information value. For example there is a photo of a call sheet with three script scenes, shot in one day.
1. Scene 63 - Exterior. The parisian Cafe Debussy. Continuation of the dialogue, and a real hollywood mess at the street.
2. Scene 65 - Exterior. Cobb continues to explain the logic of dreams and dreamers.
3. Scene 65 - Exterior. Ariadne foldes the world in closed shape. They enter it.
All three scenes take place at the Bochut street and the area around it. The first zone, as I will call it. For a convenience it was tagged with Place Georges Mullot. There is an easy for remembering monument on it. The place is in the 15th district of Paris, not too far from the Eifel Tower.
(Photos with me are made by Nicolas Brunet)
Before we will navigate with a map, let's take a look at the place out of the film space, like at the ordinary location. There is a short video about walking from Bochut to César Franck. It is warp-stabilized. Sorry for that. There was no chance to shoot smoothly. But in this case the unreal picture is good.
Rue Bochut is a little street, cornered between buildings near the Sévres metro station. The street is shockingly short. Just 200 meters. It is noticeable very much if to arrive on it from the south, Barthélémy street. You are getting closer to the buildings, start to recognize the facades, you are expecting to see something with a prospect, but the only one thing you see is a wall at the end. Much closer, than you expected. But the buildings with such height are standing too close to each other for not being lost out there at once. The César Franck street, crossing the Bochut, is even shorter - about 180 meters. It is a small location, in one word.
But! Keep in mind, that Paris almost doesn't have any completelly flat streets. All of them have changes in height or direction, or even angle. That's the reason why the Bochut street looks much longer from the north, than from south. The exactly the view of a perspective, so showilly folded into a cube by Ellen Page's character. But there are still 200 meters. It's really short. For comparison, the Palace Bridge at Petersburg is 300 meters. Although, everything is being sensed around the proportions. The Paris area is by 13 times smaller, than Saint-Petersburg's, but you have no chance to cross it from corner to corner on foot by one day, if you are going to walk on the next day. But tbe separate small areas can be recognized as quite flat ) Back to the Bochut.
The first discussed scene is the dialogue scene, where Cobb explains the job details to a new architect. It's a corner between Franck & Bochut.
Rue Bochut. Odd side of the street.
I'll put some screenshots from the movie for a better plot navigation. (For the copyringt concerned ones: I am not making any money on this.)
"Inception". 2010
So...the cafe "Debussy" is fictional, but there is really a cafe these days at that place. Maybe it wasn't in 2009. But the interesting thing, you can definetly notice between these two images is the lightning. Paris is really attractive for me exactly because of it dynamic lightning. The city is covered by lots of fast moving clouds, so the sun rays reach the buildings only at selected areas dynamicly. They can give you totally different frame composition withing a minute! I've got the diffused lighting on that hour.
And here comes a few of my nerd images. I've compared the film shots with my photos and marked the camera movements on a Google Map. There are the approximate locations of the film camera for that dialogue scene. At the middle distance they were shooting the "classic eight" (180 degrees rule in editing).
The camera is smoothily getting closer withing the medium distance shots, but I think that that zooming effect is made on post-production period for the better diving into the conversation's topic, to make the audience listen carefully.
The next set of shots are dynamic. They were shot with a steadycam movements. I mean the shots with walking along the streets, which dominate in the final montage for the parisian scenes.
Moment: The beginning of the second Ariadne's shared dream. Ariadne & Cobb are discussing some of the spy tricks. They were shot at the Cesar Franck street. Right at the background of the previous dialogue shots. Too with 180 degrees angles.
The next part is the coolest. Ariadne decides to experiment with a physics of a dream. Some people have catched visual spoilers of it in a theatrical trailer. Sorry for them...
For this part the crew have moved on the last street, crossing the Bochut - the Pérignon street.
I'll map all of them in one image. The shot, where characters are stepping from one gravity plate to another is made withing a green-screen box, matching the place proportions. So, you are watching at the keyed plate & well-projected geometry at that shot. I know that from the blu-ray bonus materials or something around that. It was long ago.
This video is about the another side of the corner between the Bochut and Pérignon streets.
There are several points at this part:
- Ariadne is folding the street (Bochut from the Perignon);
- They are entering the world (Place Georges Mulot);
- They are stepping between 90 degrees gravity plates (back to the corner at cafe "Debussy")
- They are resuming the conversation about the projection's behavior (César Franck street).
Now you can compare the shot with a real plate and to imagine how huge effort was spent on compositing this shot, because it still looks real even after years.
Let's finish this location with a few photos (by Galina Yakovleva and Nicolas Brunet).
The overall map of camera spots at this zone:
As you can see, it is more than real to shoot everything withing one day. And it would be happen withing one day, if not the complexity of required practical & visual effects. So, two.
That's all for the first part. The next post will contain the second filming location in Paris - Bir-Hakeim Bridge.
