Lunch with Tout va rentrer dans le désordre [Everything’ll Go Back to Disorder]

Interview with Cheyenne Canaud-Wallays, director of Tout va rentrer dans le désordre [Everything’ll Go Back to Disorder]

Where did you get the idea for this film and what interested you about disorder?
I worked in a market for years while I was studying. Disorder is a part of a market, which is a very rich place that offers a wide range of situations and encounters. People from all walks of life meet in the same place with the same goal: buying food. Socially, it’s a great source for reflection and inspiration, which made me want to make a film about it.

What techniques did you use to create the images? How did you create the impression that the bananas are cut in paper?
On this project, I used a procedure that mixes paper drawing, digital drawing and 3D. I built the whole supermarket setup in 3D with a drawn quality by doing all the textures by hand, with pencils and pastels. That way, once the setting was done, all I had to do was navigate the camera inside and select my view angle based on the shot. That let me have a detailed setting, bubbling with stuff. A supermarket has to be swarming. For the bananas (like all the other objects), I really drew them on paper, then gave them depth with the 3D program, which gives the 2D feel but with genuine volume. All of the characters are textured in digital 2D, so that they fit properly in the setting. The customers are very stripped down to focus attention on the two brothers who are the most detailed.

Was the song at the end of the film written before or after the script? What is its connection to the film?
From the beginning, I had the idea of putting a song at the end. I had the style in mind and the feeling that I wanted to give the viewer but I wrote the song after the script. Midway through production, when I was doing the animation, I wrote the words for the musician to write the music to. The song was very important to me, I wanted it to awaken the viewer a bit after the last part of the film, which is calmer and has more feeling. I wanted happy, quirky music that would revive the lives of the characters.

Why did you not want to say more about your characters – their jobs, their personal life, etc.?
I would like to have been able to! But in four minutes, I didn’t have the time. This is a film school project and I didn’t have the choice of format, which limited my scope. It forced me to concentrate on the heart of the story (the two brothers) and summarize what I wanted to say about the market and about society. I had to concentrate on the emotional development of the two brothers to make them endearing. All the same, I tried make some little details clear (for example, the financial pressures of overdrafts).

Have you discovered any advantages that the short film form offers?
Yes, absolutely. This short film allowed me a lot of graphic freedom. I think there are forms of graphic expression that are possible in short films that would be unacceptable in a feature. At the same time, the limitation of four minutes was a little frustrating because I wanted to do a lot of things with this film. I wanted to develop various emotions: dramatic moments (for example, when Adel, disguised as a banana, slips and winds up crushed by all his bananas) or moments of tenderness, but generally tinged with humor. All that and still talk about society and the complexity of human relations. That’s a lot and I was forced to make concessions. For me, the film would have been better if it were just another two minutes longer. Anyway though, it was a really interesting exercise to condense my ideas into only four minutes.

Which works did you draw from?
As I was writing, I watched Cédric Klapisch’s Un air de famille several times. I think the distinctive comedy of Jacques Tati and Albert Dupontel also gave me inspiration. Roy Andersson as well. Music is also a source of inspiration (for example, the world of Philippe Katerine).

Tout va rentrer dans le désordre [Everything’ll Go Back to Disorder] is part of National Competition F8.