Dinner with Le bruit du gris (The Sound of Grey)

Interview with Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, directors of Le bruit du gris [The Sound of Grey]

 What techniques did you use to develop the animation? Is it exclusively stop motion?
Yes, it’s mainly stop motion, but there’s also animated painting for the fresco on the scenery.

 Did you make the film as part of a specific project that needed to respect certain constraints, or did you choose the unity of place for script reasons?
The film was made as part of the collection “Dessine toujours !” [“Keep Drawing!”] produced by Canal+ and the only constraint common to all the projects was the topic: freedom of expression, in reference to the attack on Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015. (The Collection was screened at Clermont-Ferrand during the 2016 Festival – editor’s note.)
As for choosing unity of place, that was for script reasons but also for practical reasons. We made this film at the end of shooting an episode for Panique au village : la rentrée des classes [A Town Called Panic: Back to School] (which can be seen in program C3 – editor’s note). We opted to use a single setting since our team was pared-down by then and the choice of a static shot in a single set was an obvious one. Once the set was built, the director of photography installed the light and all we had to do was the animation. The two of us took turns in twelve-hour shifts (Vincent during the day and Stéphane at night) from Tuesday November 10 to the evening of Saturday November 14. That means we worked on the animation non-stop for five days and finished the film the day after the attacks on the Bataclan.

 Why did you choose the Indian, the horse and the cowboy as characters?
Since we’d completed the filming for Panic, we had all the figurines right there. And anyway, for us, they sort of represent everyone and anyone.

 Over the course of the film, other characters turn up at the party and add to the swirling mix. Was that collective composition important?
Our idea was to have lots of people from different backgrounds participate and all end up at a collective party: combining music, literature, dance, drawing, painting and, in a larger sense, all cultures.

 Le bruit du gris depicts a world in constant movement, like a back and forth between sound and silence. What interested you in the meeting of these two facets?
We were thinking primarily of Zbigniew Rybczyński’s film Tango, but in a more general sense, it’s simply the idea that the calm follows the storm…

 Finally, why choose the color grey, which is generally associated with monotony and blandness?
That’s exactly it: grey is absolutely necessary for representing a sad, lifeless world that contrasts with the arrival of characters who bring their different ways of thinking and of expressing themselves in an multitude of colors.

 Any cinematic coups de cœur in the past year you’d like to tell us about?
Jodorowsky’s Dune, My Life as a Zucchini, The Nice Guys.

 If you’ve already been to Clermont-Ferrand, could you share with us an anecdote from the festival? If not, what are your expectations for this year?
This is the first time we’ve had a film selected at Clermont-Ferrand and we’re very proud. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to take part in the Festival. We hope the audience will be kind to Horse, Cowboy and Indian.

Le bruit du gris is being shown in National Competition F4.