DIRECTOR’S NOTE

First of all I’d like to introduce myself, I’m a French movie director and have been involved in the industry since 1996. I’ve done some music videos, commercials, corporate films, two short films and am now making my first steps into the world of feature length films, which has always been my dream.

I haven’t written this script as I usually do, Steve Piper from Coffee Films asked me to give my thoughts about it. I loved it when I first read it. Some situations, characters and the subplot seemed to need some work, so collaboration started between Steve, James the writer and I. I’m also happy to work with Xavier Gens, a director that I have known for years. Xavier helped us a lot with his precious advice on the script development. It was a tremendous adventure, and now we all love the story.

Focusing now on purely directing rather than writing it is very clear that the detail, personality and arcs we have created for the characters can only truly work with an outstanding cast of experienced cinematic talent given the opportunity to develop each character even further around their own concepts and ideas. Making these characters, their illnesses and their experiences really breathe life with emotional depth and unique personalities can bring huge impact from the drama, tension and events they go through. In short, filmmaking technique and beautiful cinematography can always make something gorgeous to look at but characters are everything to the story. So I really want to work with my actors to help them giving life to all thoses great characters.

I always loved thriller movies so really want to do it properly using the codes of these kinds of movies, mixing it with my sensibility and vision; I absolutely don’t want to make fun of it. Visually Lucid will be dark and sober, I won’t use a lot of digital effects, nor a lot of complicated shots. The POV device will feel real in order to be very efficient, I would rather get a few perfect effects than a lot of cheap CGI. I want to create my atmosphere playing with frames and depth of field. I will work a lot with my crew and especially with the actors before the shoot; everything has to feel real.

I want to work with Yohann Charrin as the DOP, because I know him and love his work, we’ve done a lot of films together. The photography of this film will be very dark with a lot of contrast, we will create a tense atmosphere mixing slow travelling and handled camera shots, but I want to get a great picture quality so ideally I want to shoot it in 35mm Scope.
Gwenael Giard Barberin is a brilliant editor I’ve been working with. He will help with his vision to create the general atmosphere and with a smart way of editing we will build the audience tension and make them jump out of their seats. The music will help to maintain this creepy atmosphere, but won’t create it, as I prefer to work with the sound design.

Nicolas Fogliarini
Director