VI - The Perfectionnism Trap

​Chapter 32
Re-Shoots & Re-Edits: Doing It Right
(Nov 2020 - June 2021)

Following Myriam Ajar's suggestion, I changed the character of the narrator from my (fictional) psychologist to my (actual) mother. As I re-wrote the part, I decided her identity and relationship to my character would remain a mystery throughout the film, so that the audience would only discover in the end that she's a mother trying to help her son kickstart his own life. The reveal also resolves her own conflict by conveying that, despite sacrificing the pursuit of a life as an actress, she found satisfaction in the life she led. Given all this, I wanted to show my mother's face at the end of the film (my mom and I look a lot alike too, so, it could help get the idea across). This meant going to back Pornichet to film her, and I realized then I could make the most of such a trip, by re-shooting scenes I'd already shot several years ago.

Re-shooting by the sea

Back in the winter of 2015, I had already gone to Pornichet to shoot the scenes for the "6th version" of my character, the one who was unable to chose a life to lead. Initially, this character was intended as a shabby hermit who'd hardly left his apartment in years, and that's originally how I designed him. I found a 35 euro women's wig in a hair salon in the Goutte d’Or neighborhood of Paris ; I bought a white bathrobe that I stained and scruffed up ; I borrowed some big serial-killer specs ; and then I spent half a day messing up my grandmother’s apartment in Pornichet with junk food and sodas. I had gone full Howard Hughes. We shot over the course of a weekend in November 2015. And because at the time I thought these were the last shots I needed to film and that I wanted to move on with editing the full project, I rolled with them.

But over the following years, as I came to watch the film at various screenings (including at the MIT screening in 2018), I became increasingly frustrated with my choices in this regard. The other five lives in the movie (each living in one of the five cities) looked believable, but this one was the weak link: the dirty bathrobe was over the top, the long hair was visibly fake and some of my contorted facial expressions were so dramatic they were cringeworthy. At each new screening, I felt more and more embarrassed every time this character appeared on screen. And so, in the back of my mind, I started harboring the desire to re-shoot them.

Fast-forward to the end of 2020: as I was going back to Pornichet to film a portrait shot of my mother, I had one last opportunity to re-think and re-shoot the hermit character in his apartment.

So, on December 15, after the second Covid lockdown was lifted in France, I raced to Pornichet with my girlfriend, Claire. I had met her 6 months prior during the first lockdown, and we’d been together ever since.
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Originally, in 2015, I shot these scenes in my grandmother's apartment by St Marguerite Beach, south of Brittany. This apartment had stayed in my family for years and I used to go there every summer as a child (my childhood picture we see in the film is taken on the balcony of that apartment). However, by the end of 2020, it was no longer available as my uncle had fully redone it and was now living there. But luckily, he’d become friends with a lady who’d just moved into the apartment two floors above. It was empty and she agreed to let me shoot there for a day. It was perfect: I furnished it minimally to make it look like my character was living a stripped-down, uninvested life watching movies and binging on junk food and beer. Everything was all set to shoot the following day.

The final drone shot

​I also planned to re-shoot the scenes at the end where the character walks out onto the beach, as well as the final shot of the film. This was a particularly tricky shot to get. The first time around, I was running on the beach with my camera on a wonky Glidecam, and the result was so shaky that even when digitally stabilized in Premiere Pro, it looked fuzzy. So this time around, I wanted to do it right, and considered using a drone. However, I didn’t own one or know how to operate one. Through the magic of Facebook, I found that an old friend from high-school, Julien Tonnellier, had become a professional photographer, specializing in drone shots and aerial videography (he’s a paragliding afficionado) – and he still lived nearby. Back in high school, we had bonded mainly over our mutual love of filmmaking, joking about making Hollywood movies and going to the Oscars. I hadn’t seen him in 15 years, but when I reached out to him, we chatted away like we were teenagers again. He’d quietly monitored updates of psi online and when I asked him if he’d be willing to help out with the final drone shot, he immediately jumped onboard. It was fitting that in its final hour, psi became a good excuse to reconnect with a long-lost friend and fellow film-geek.

Julien Tonnellier on his paramotor

The next morning, Claire and I met Julien at St Marguerite beach at 7 am, to begin with the drone shot. The beach needed to be pristine, with no other footprints, which meant getting there before any early walkers. But when we showed up, there was a full-blown storm going on, with gusts of wind and sharp rain. It’s not like for the last day things were suddenly going to get easy! Nonetheless, we scampered down onto the sand to set up. And sure enough, 30 minutes later, the heavy dark clouds broke up over the horizon, pierced by the golden rays of the sunrise. It was majestic. Claire blocked the pathway at the end of the beach, I started running along the shore to make a line of footprints and Julien flew his drone into the wind. After a few takes, we had what we needed, and proceeded to film my character facing the waves. I was out of breath from all the running and my bare feet were freezing cold, but in that moment, filling my lungs with Atlantic oxygen, sensing Claire and Julien racing to grab shots behind me, I felt fully alive.

The final shot: my Mom

We then headed into the apartment to shoot the indoor scenes, with Claire and my mother taking turns operating the camera (Julien had to leave for work). Just like the first-time round, filming in the apartment turned out to be stressful, as the light kept changing throughout the day. But we worked around it and got what we needed.

​The last shot was eventually the most important one: my mother’s close-up portrait shot. She was pretty uncomfortable standing in front of the camera, but we cracked some jokes and captured the half-amused, half-relieved smile that’s now in the film. This was the final shot.

​Almost 7 years after the first time I hit record on my Canon 6D, it was officially a wrap.

Sophie Michel-Hardy, my mother

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