Graduation films 2021

LA NEIGE INCERTAINE - Graduation short film 2021

The Pitch

On the lookout for polar bears in the Arctic, a wildlife photographer realizes she may have missed more than a shot.

The Film

How did you come up with the story?

We were very inspired by a beautiful book written by Sylvain Tesson called La Panthère des neiges (2019). The themes of wildlife photography and introspection approached in the book inspired us to write this story. It was a very difficult story to write, and it evolved a lot before we decided to introduce the romance aspect to it.

How did you do the texture/paint effect?

We animated part of the texture on TV Paint : we painted around the eyes, the nose and where the skin would be in shadows with a specific brush that mimicked traditional paint. Then we added a traditional gouache texture we had made, directly on the character using AfterEffects. Some shots were actually hand-painted with gouache !

What were your visual inspirations ?

We were inspired at first by the photographs of Vincent Munier, whom is mentioned in Sylvain Tesson’s book. We liked how he uses negative space and very low contrast. When we designed the composition of the shots, we wanted to keep things cinematographic, so we were mostly inspired by live-action movies. Our main references were Portrait of a Lady on fire, by Céline Sciamma and Lost in translation by Sofia Coppola.