ZEISS Talking Cine - Helene de Roux, Pascale Marin, AFC - Welcoming Grace

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:09]I'm sorry I'm late. Welcome to Paris, Grace.

[00:00:12]>> Thank you. No worries. I didn't wait for very long. Can I give you a hug?

[00:00:25]I'm Ellen de Waal.

[00:00:27]I'm a I'm a director and I've been working with Zeiss for a few years now and I'm happy to just have been directed a a movie for you guys.

[00:00:36]I also uh write articles, I interview DPs, and I organize courses about filmmaking.

[00:00:47]But the really the really the really core of what I want to do and what I love doing is making movies for sure. I love cinematographers, but I'm not one.

[00:00:55]I understand what they do. I try.

[00:00:57]I'm Pascal [music] Marais. I'm a cinematographer, uh member of the AFC and the Famala Camera Collective. Uh we had a meeting of uh of the collective Famala Camera together and at the end we I told her, "Hey, would you be available for the next weeks for me and for Zeiss?" And she said, "Yeah, sure. Why not?"

[00:01:15]>> [music] >> And we had lunch together and I just tell her the few basic basis of the story I had in mind. It was not even a script. It was just Ellen and I discussing in a restaurant about would it be possible to shoot that in a month and a week? I felt like, "Yeah, it was doable."

[00:01:39]It's two Elvis fans who met online. They haven't met for real, but they became friends online. And for the first time they meet for real.

[00:01:50]And it's not that easy.

[00:01:51]Ellen had decided to use depth of field as part of the narration. The character of Grace, she's unhappy in Paris. She doesn't feel good. And I felt that the image could try to render the way she was feeling bad. You know, she's physically bad, you know?

[00:02:11]So often we would shoot her wide open and [music] the other character, on the contrary, Audrey, is grounded and at ease. Yeah, she's in her own universe. She's a Parisian.

[00:02:25]She's French. She's She's fine and she doesn't understand why why anyone couldn't feel good. There's It's a nice place. So we we were around 4 or 5.6.

[00:02:38]And we [music] just made shot and counter shot like that with those differences.

[00:02:43]2.5 and 6.0 Yeah, I'm happy. And she 1.5 is um not that good. It was interesting to see how the characteristic of the entire image changes. To use that really as a part of the narration.

[00:03:03]We were all freezing. It was winter. We had We had bad weather. I mean, the the sky was gray as you can have and I was so desperate because she's supposed to have this kind of epiphany in the garden. And who has an epiphany under a gray sky, right? The morning was dreadful and I was just okay. Going through the motion.

[00:03:24]I don't know how I'm I'm going to do that.

[00:03:27]And Pascal was Wait. Wait.

[00:03:30]I think she managed to make the sun come.

[00:03:35]And I I actually have tears coming because I'm I remember waking being so moved. It was a miracle to have the sun coming up and we were able to shoot, I think, three or four takes of Grace walking up the garden feeling good at last. Look at me.

[00:03:51]And as soon as we had the good take, it started snowing and we had to go back inside. The lenses were just not [music] a problem at all.

[00:04:00]They work and that's it. To me, the the Otus were absolutely [music] reliable in all circumstances. We had four lenses, uh 25, 35, [music] 65, and 85. When the night falls near Notre Dame, they are there.

[00:04:17]>> [music] >> And when we are in the car with the sun coming out, they are there, too. I mean, there was not a single situation where I was like, "Oh, no. This thing you can rely on. You can control them. The kind of falloff they have when you shoot a portrait. There's a softness that I really liked. If Zeiss is asking me to to try their new lenses, I'm not in a real danger.