How was the mad scene of La Land’s opening scene filmed?
Damien Chazelle and his team did a job as Titan.
La la Land Returns this Sunday evening on W9, followed by another cult musical: West Side Story. We cannot resist the desire to review his opening scene, deciphered by Damien Chazelle a little after his release, in early 2017.
Why La Land is a masterpiece
“”The scene comes from the fact that I live in Los Angeles and that I am all the time in the traffic jams, to ask me if I want to shoot myself or dance. And we had already seen the version where you want to shoot yourself in Free fall, “summarizes Damien Chazelle to Entertainment Weekly When he evokes the opening scene of La la Land. Crazy, incredibly joyful and choreographed with genius, the start of the film seems to be a six-minute sequence plan. This is not the case: the director and his teams cut the scene in “three plans“, as he recently confided in The Wrap (A 3 -minute cut, another at 4 min 45). Once perfectly assembled to the assembly, it is difficult to realize it on the screen. And each plan was to be turned at the same time of the day, so that the light is always almost identical. “”It was a technical puzzle“, assures the leader Linus Sandgren in Indiewire. “”We kept the idea of the movement, but we had to stay behind the dancers instead of front“. But how is this crazy scene – which asked for six months of preparation and a few bumps on the cars that were used for rehearsals – was it concretely filmed? A video that compares the film and its behind the scenes gives a good idea of the device:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9NNUMDBXSY
Damien Chazelle: “At no time was the Land obvious”
But before the shooting, it was necessary to obtain the authorizations to close an access ramp to the exchanger which connects the highways 105 and 110 of Los Angeles. “”We closed it on a Saturday and a Sunday in August 2015, but a week before we had an authorization for a Sunday, in order to carry out costume tests“explains the director to EW. Chazelle, the choreographer Mandy Moore and the dancers repeated in city parking lots, trying to limit the space to find the same dimension as those of the highway. “”We were so precise in rehearsal that we took a little too much confidence“.
And the awakening was all the more difficult when arriving on site for the first time: “Previously I used my iPhone, but obviously, it’s more complicated with a crane. There were lots of things we had not even thought of. The highway ramp is sloping, it’s never flat. You must dial with the heat, the sun that makes the roof of the cars burning … and the wind was powerful“, It was therefore necessary to manage the movement of the crane to prevent the camera from bumping on a dancer or a vehicle.
It was also necessary to hide the shadow of the crane, obviously visible on the ground: “This is why we decided to cut the sequence shot in several plans, and to hide them with a very fast panoramic“, Details Sandgren.”For the public, it’s invisible, but it was important for Damien to keep the idea of sequence“.
Damien Chazelle and his team then decided to slightly modify the choreography to adapt. HAS Time.comhe specifies that the first take was a disaster. The cranes failed to hit the dancers’ head and the choreography dangerously brought them closer to the side of the road … The second catch was the right one. “”It was difficult, we were limited at times“, he explains. But he confides in EW that “Thanks to the rehearsal of the week before, we managed to complete everything in two days. I wouldn’t say it was easy (…) But we had what we wanted. And without these months of preparation, we could never have done it“. A complicated shoot for a scene that has already found a nice place in the collective memory.
Damien Chazelle: “Basically, I did not contacted Ryan Gosling for La Land, but for First Man”
