"When there is a scene that makes everyone uncomfortable and that everyone asks you to cut or to do differently, most of the time it's because there is something very powerful." 'The Substance' director Coralie Fargeat explains everything about the pivotal bathroom scene with Elisabeth played by Demi Moore, along with the nauseating shrimp-eating scene with Harvey played by Dennis Quaid. Hear Coralie break down the intentions in detail including the sound, the usage of space, the "slow burn" and so much more.
Director: Jameer Pond
Editor: Morgan Cody
Talent: Coralie Fargeat
Producer: Emebeit Beyene
Associate Producer: Zayne Allen
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Brooke Mueller
Sound Mixer: Justin Fox
Production Assistant: Hollie Ortiz
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim
Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Director: Jameer Pond
Editor: Morgan Cody
Talent: Coralie Fargeat
Producer: Emebeit Beyene
Associate Producer: Zayne Allen
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Lauren Mendoza
Camera Operator: Brooke Mueller
Sound Mixer: Justin Fox
Production Assistant: Hollie Ortiz
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim
Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00When there is a scene that makes everyone uncomfortable
00:04and that everyone asks you to cut or to do differently,
00:07it's most of the time because there is something very powerful
00:10in that scene that you have to stick to.
00:13Hi, this is Coralie Fargeat
00:15and this is Notes on a Scene for The Substance.
00:18The idea was to me to portray this world
00:30and to portray my main character was to work with symbolism,
00:34which is the whole language of the way I work
00:37through the screenplay and through directing.
00:40I always look for the strongest symbolism
00:43that's going to show my idea and that's going to tell the stories.
00:46I inspired myself really from the Jane Fonda character
00:51who had had this kind of trajectory.
00:54Also, I knew that what was so important for me with that choice
01:00is I wanted the movie to be about women's bodies
01:04and so I knew that I had to have something in my character
01:07where I would be able to film the body, to film the obsession.
01:12I knew that this aerobic thing was a main decision that I took
01:17which would allow me to film for real
01:20what I was going to try and tell,
01:22how your body becomes an obsession,
01:24how you wanted to have it perfect.
01:27Happy birthday.
01:29Happy birthday.
01:34Here, this is a main element of how I wanted to craft that world.
01:40This huge corridor with that perspective where everything is super centered,
01:46like everything is in one huge perspective,
01:50is meant to symbolize some sort of domination.
01:55This corridor, she's very, very small at the far end of this corridor
02:01and the walls here are huge and so it's a place that dominates her.
02:06This place is the symbolism of this TV world
02:10and it represents the world of Harvey,
02:13the producer which represents the patriarchy
02:16and that we're going to discover later on.
02:19Here you see almost as if it's Elizabeth's life,
02:23like she started her life here
02:25and when she arrives at the end of the corridor,
02:28soon enough we're going to discover that her life is over.
02:31The colors also are a huge element of the film
02:35and the way that locations are really characters in the filmmaking.
02:40I couldn't tell exactly where the orange came from,
02:44but I think it's probably linked to worlds that impact me when I was younger
02:51and I was watching movies that were making me feel sensations,
02:57not through dialogues, but through images.
03:00Whether it is, yes, the Star Wars trilogy or the 2001 Space Odyssey,
03:07which are creating a world that tells you so much without using any words.
03:18So here, this is also one of the very important locations in the film
03:23that start to build the language of the film in a visual way.
03:28Here, this bathroom, which is the men's room of the TV world,
03:33this is actually a real location.
03:36It's the real toilets of a town hall near Paris,
03:39but we kind of, you know, build the floor red, which was not red.
03:44All the red elements, we kind of build them
03:47to kind of add this almost bloody feeling
03:52that something strong and threatening is going to happen.
03:57What I really liked when I scouted this location, again, was all the lines.
04:02You know, you have so many lines that give a perspective feeling that is so strong
04:07and when you have a static image, it has so much strength, you know, in itself.
04:13And here you have lines as well.
04:15So all this visually, you know, already builds something that is not common,
04:21you know, something that puts you in a world
04:24where there is some kind of gravitas,
04:26when there is some kind of heaviness.
04:29It was also very important for me that this shot was going to be a sequence shot,
04:34you know, that from the moment Elisabeth has entered the bathroom,
04:39the camera is locked with this wide angle
04:42and everything is going to happen in real time
04:46to bring some sort of violence
04:49and some sort of being the feeling of being into the scene.
04:53So the camera was just right here,
04:56like the real wall of the bathroom was a little bit further behind.
05:00So we had maybe 50 centimeters, you know, to get this.
05:05So on a very technical process,
05:08we kind of removed the body of the camera
05:10to have as little, you know, room that the camera would take.
05:14And we had a super wide lens,
05:17almost a fish eye that we had tested with my DOP.
05:21So that the image wouldn't be distorted when you are in a wide shot,
05:26you know, it's very static.
05:27But when the character is going to enter,
05:31then when he gets close to the lens,
05:33he's going to be a bit distorted.
05:36Look, I'll make it simple.
05:39We need her young.
05:40We need her hot.
05:43We need her now.
05:44This is crazy.
05:45Like we're shooting with Demi Moore and Dennis Quaid
05:48in the toilets of the, you know, suburb town hall.
05:52And everyone is hiding in the toilet or under the lavatory.
05:56The continuity girl, she was crouched like that under this.
05:59I was in a stall that was over there.
06:02We had the gaffer, which was hidden also in one of the stalls.
06:06This is the cinema I love to make.
06:08When you have those mix of elements that you cheat with everything
06:12to create something unexpected.
06:15How the old bitch has been able to stick around for this long.
06:18That's that's the fucking mystery to me.
06:20So here, I really like the idea of discovering this character in real life
06:27by the way he behaves and by the way he's going to take the space.
06:32Literally, like, you know, he start as very small
06:37and basically he's going to eat all the space.
06:40He's going to stick his face right in front of the camera
06:43and he's going to be like the character who literally does whatever he wants.
06:49He does whatever he wants with people
06:50and he does whatever he wants with the framing
06:53and whatever he wants with the space.
06:55The sound work that we did here was a key thing
07:00and one of the most important thing that we added
07:03to characterize his character was the sound of his boots.
07:06The sound of these boots with the kind of metallic sound that we hear.
07:12Every fucking young girl in this fucking town in the next few weeks.
07:17I remember the Foley artist who is great, Grégory Vincent,
07:21who builds so much creative sounds for Foley and he adds a lot.
07:26So he created this kind of metallic sound
07:29that we're going to have all the time when Harvey arrives someone
07:33and literally when he arrives somewhere, we hear him, you know, we feel him
07:37and we see him like taking all the space
07:41and kind of showing that basically he's the king of the world.
07:46No, I don't give a fuck what we promised her.
07:51And so here it was also the idea that to have kind of in a symbolical way
07:58like he's peeing on the audience, you know,
08:00like there is this urinal, you know, that we figure is, you know,
08:04at this place of the camera and he's literally, you know, go and pee on us.
08:11Unfortunately, when we had the tragic news of Ray Liorat passing,
08:15we took some time, you know, to process the news.
08:18And when we decided to cast the part again,
08:23I gathered my thought about, you know, searching for a new idea
08:28which would, you know, give the similar vibe than what I love with Ray,
08:33but would be also different, you know.
08:36And what I love with the idea of Denise is that, first of all,
08:41it's something we haven't seen him in, like it's very something new
08:46and we're not used to see.
08:48And I think he has both this softness, like cheerful,
08:52you know, you kind of want to laugh with him, you know,
08:54he has this kind of funny vibes, but also, you know,
08:59those very sharp eyes and almost like wolf teeth,
09:04you know, that kind of give a very threatening thing.
09:09So here, this is for me such a powerful image with the eye and with the nose,
09:15you know, and it kind of defines evil.
09:18Like he's, you know, the bad guy, like,
09:21and this relationship to the lens is so powerful.
09:25And I remember what was great with Denise.
09:27So our camera was there and there was a little monitor screen
09:32that is normally used for our DP to check the image.
09:36And he asked if we could turn the monitor of control here
09:40so he could see himself in the monitor and adjust his position precisely
09:47so his eye could be at the right place.
09:51And we did maybe like 13 or 14 takes of that, you know, of that shot.
09:56He kind of is a slow burn.
09:59Like at first he needs to put the dialogue into his mouth
10:02and then we need to find the right pacing.
10:05And everything is very, very millimetered.
10:08Did you know that a woman's fertility starts to decrease about the age of 25?
10:12How old is Jennifer?
10:15You're gonna get busy.
10:21And so here, everything in the sound is important to build the scene.
10:26The fact that we're going to hear him disappear, his laugh going away,
10:31the of the door, you know, closing and then the silence.
10:41The silence and we're exactly in the same shot
10:44than when Demi arrived and closed the door.
10:47But the same shot now has a totally different feeling, you know.
10:53Now the space is full with the gross words, you know,
10:57that he used like the fact that he peed on us,
11:00like the fact that it is this bad joke, you know, at the end.
11:03And so the exact same shot with the same framing,
11:07the same silence is received totally differently
11:11and adds to the scene something that I've totally shifted the scene.
11:17And so here, it's the first time that Demi is going to look at herself in the mirror
11:23and the way she looks at herself is through Harvey words.
11:29She's not worth anything, like she doesn't deserve to be here
11:33and that basically he just erased her from the space.
11:38Also, the way the shot is framed here,
11:42with this very aligned perspective.
11:46And she feels that she's a little static person
11:50in the middle of the huge bathroom
11:53and that all the space around her makes her feel small.
11:59And the way she holds herself,
12:03the way she holds herself in the middle of the huge bathroom
12:07makes her feel small.
12:08And the way she holds herself a little bit numb,
12:13you know, with as if, you know,
12:15all everything that has been told was weighing on her shoulders.
12:20So you can see that, you know,
12:21she has everything that we've heard before now on her shoulders
12:27while she's standing in that bathroom.
12:31This shot to me is also very important in the symbols,
12:36in the way that here, this shot on the water going down the sink,
12:41like is the projection of her thoughts.
12:44It's like if she was eaten up, you know,
12:47and was disappearing into this water.
12:50All those close-ups are for me,
12:53we're used to call them insert shot,
12:54but for me, they are hero shots.
12:57The same way then for the actors,
12:58they're just hero shots with no actors,
13:01but who play a part in conveying to the audience
13:06what's the mind of the actors,
13:08what the mind of the character at that moment.
13:11And this one in a very, you know, kind of symbolical way
13:14tells the audience that, okay, it's something that goes away
13:18and that you focus your thought into it.
13:24This is one of the, I think, most important shots
13:30and something that I want to tell
13:31about my work relationship with the me.
13:34I really wanted to be sure that the actress who would come,
13:37you know, and perform that part
13:39would be willing to take all the risks that the film required.
13:44So that's why I spent a lot of time with the me
13:47when we started to meet,
13:48explaining her everything about the filmmaking,
13:52everything I'm telling now,
13:53the importance that it has to convey the story.
13:56So it requires a lot of technical challenges,
13:59you know, on sets that the actors have to deal with.
14:02And in that scene,
14:04something very interesting and important happened.
14:07It was one of the first scene
14:09where we were lighting her in a way that is real,
14:14you know, like we were in real restrooms,
14:18you know, in the middle of nowhere
14:20with a very harsh, ugly light.
14:23And I had asked my DP to keep it in a very real way,
14:29not to make a beauty light,
14:31not to make a light, you know, that would soften everything.
14:34I wanted to see the reality of her face,
14:36of what she feels,
14:38of what we feel on her face facing herself.
14:41And I remember the first time
14:42that she discovered herself in the mirror for the scene.
14:45She said, oh no, but we can't have that light.
14:47It's not possible.
14:48Like you need to make the light better,
14:50you know, you need to make it here and here
14:52so we don't see this and we don't see that.
14:54And I went to see her and I told her like,
14:58no to me, we can't do that.
15:00You know, the movie is exactly about getting this reality
15:04about who you are,
15:06about seeing you in that mirror
15:08with all the violence of what that guy has just said
15:12and to see yourself confronting yourself
15:15and looking at yourself for what you really are.
15:18And it's really important that at this moment
15:21we have the reality of the shitty restroom in a TV,
15:26you know, in a TV show
15:28that's not gonna enhance you.
15:30At first she was a little bit resisting
15:33and you know, and then she understood
15:35and then she said, okay, okay.
15:37And she did the scene.
15:39And that's where I understood
15:41that she had understood the film
15:43and she was there for the right reasons.
15:45Even if this was taking her outside of her comfort zone,
15:49she had the intelligence and the instinct
15:51to understand that it was needed for the film.
15:54To me, that's, you know, what a great collaboration
15:58between actors and directors is.
16:00It doesn't mean that you get along necessarily well
16:04all the time and there are not tough moments,
16:06but it's when you understand the work
16:11and the way of working that is in the service of the film.
16:19People just love that.
16:21I mean, that's just the way it is.
16:22He really ate them and he was so happy to do so.
16:25He was committed to the part.
16:27I asked him, Denis, are you sure?
16:28Are you okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:29Because he loved the excess of this character
16:32and he understood how important it was to symbolize,
16:35I think, you know, what everything his character
16:38was representing.
16:39So I remember like everything that he is doing it
16:42again and again.
16:43We did maybe 13 takes of this
16:46and he ate the shrimps all the time again and again.
16:51And I have to give people what they want.
16:55From the moment when I write,
16:58I already build the way I'm going to film it,
17:02also because I'm building the way I'm going to edit it
17:04because I'm also an editor on the film.
17:07And because those macro shots where the sound
17:11and the image suddenly shift perspective...
17:16So you're me.
17:17...are a huge tool of my language as a filmmaker
17:22because they're a way for me to express in one image
17:27a whole story.
17:28And here in that image, it's really like how this mouse,
17:34you know, which represents Harvey,
17:37all the toxic masculinity,
17:39all the patriarchy and everything,
17:41how he's going to literally crash and destroy these shrimps,
17:45which at this moment represents Elizabeth.
17:48You know, so there are the words that he says,
17:51which try to be nice.
17:52And there is what he does,
17:54which is literally making as if the world was his
18:00and he was, you know, able to destroy and kill
18:04and rip off all the people the way he wants.
18:09And just with a shrimp, with this noise
18:12that take all the space and that destroy...
18:15It stops.
18:17A shrimp becomes a war scene, you know.
18:20That's the way I love to express the violence
18:25that, you know, I feel about those issues.
18:28The thing that impressed me the most in the editing
18:32was how much this shrimp scene made people uncomfortable.
18:37It was from all the scenes,
18:39if I had expected people to have a strong rejection
18:42of something, I would have imagined everything.
18:45But the shrimps, like, and it's true,
18:47it was all guys telling me,
18:48oh no, but the shrimps, it's too much.
18:50Please tone down the shrimps.
18:53And I was like the power of the shrimps,
18:56like, you know, like to make them feel so unwell.
19:01And I learned on my first feature
19:04that when there is a scene
19:05that makes everyone uncomfortable
19:08and that everyone asks you to cut or to do differently,
19:11it's most of the time
19:12because there is something very powerful in that scene
19:15that you have to stick to.
19:17It symbolized the way I needed to symbolize Harvey
19:21and the world that represents Harvey.
19:23Oh, George!
19:25Oh, oh!
19:26I'm sorry, I gotta run.
19:28Harvey!
19:29George!
19:30This is, for me, a very strong image of the boys club,
19:34you know, which I think is very there as well.
19:37And to me, this tap on the shoulder
19:39was very important to have.
19:42Which leaves us with Elizabeth.
19:45Again, Harvey is this thing on the fly
19:48where the image becomes a projection
19:51of the way Elizabeth feels.
19:53And she feels like this fly
19:56which is drawing, you know, in the glass of wine.
20:00And basically, she's been destroyed.
20:03So again, like with Dutch,
20:05just this very simple shot
20:08which took us a lot of time to get,
20:11which to me is a hero shot.
20:13The language of the film is here.
20:14And this is also one shot
20:16that many people wanted me to remove
20:18as if we didn't need it.
20:20And for me, those shots, they are the one,
20:22of course, the movie can live without.
20:24But that's what makes, to me, the identity of the film.
20:29It's because those shots, you know,
20:31mean so much in a different way
20:33than what you see, you know, in more traditional films.
20:37So I was so happy because it's one of the shots
20:40that I prefer, that it's the one
20:43that finished that scene
20:45and kind of show us where Elizabeth is
20:48at the moment of the story.
20:56To me, the success of the film
20:58is really the greatest achievement
21:01I could have also for myself as a filmmaker
21:03to feel proud of, you know,
21:05having expressed who I was
21:08in all my differences, in all my singularity.
21:11And it gave me, yes, so much happiness and strength.
21:15And I just want to make the next one now.