Capturing Emotions in Motion: Hugo Carlier’s Vision in “Morning Interlude”.

Hello everyone! Today, we have the pleasure to interview Hugo Carlier, a brilliant French cinematographer and director, whom we’ve featured several times alongside our friend and lighting designer Sidney Baucheron.

This time, Hugo is showcasing his mastery of visual storytelling with his latest project, “Morning Interlude.”

Known for his ability to weave stunning imagery with deep emotion, Carlier’s work spans notable projects such as the visually striking commercials for Louis Vuitton, Hermès, and Dior. His new work uses the purity of dance to explore intense human experiences.

Dive into our exclusive interview as we uncover the creative process and inspiration behind this captivating film.

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Hey Hugo! Can you tell us how you got started in the film industry? What inspired you to become a cinematographer?

There have always been VHS cameras and photo cameras lying around the house. My father always loved capturing scenes of daily family life in abundance. Early on, I took a natural pleasure in doing the same, first with disposable cameras during my first school trips. Later, with my father’s camcorder, I made stop-motion videos with my Legos and more staged, wild videos with my brother and sister.

When I was 15, we hosted the filming of a short film at our house for a few days. Already a cinephile, discovering the behind-the-scenes of film production was a shock that I still feel today. In the following years, a group of friends and I began making our own short films. I directed some and started working as a cinematographer on others. We helped each other on our respective projects, and increasingly I understood the importance of cinematography.

And then?

After high school, I entered ESRA Paris at 17, showing my work, but my only desire was to be on set. During my first year, I managed to get an internship with a Steadicam operator on a feature film that was just starting its shoot. My first day was a night shoot, and the film was being shot on 35mm, Panavision Millennium XL2, which was another shock seeing the magic of shooting fiction on 35mm film.

As a Steadicam intern, there wasn’t much to do besides observing, so I started helping the camera team and gradually made myself indispensable during those few days. The internship week ended, but I wanted to continue all summer.

I approached the production manager to extend my internship for a few more weeks. She was a rather stern woman and declined, saying she already had too many interns on the film. I still remember her face the following Monday when I was unloading the camera truck. I couldn’t just stop this internship; it was magical.

Seeing my determination, the director of photography insisted I finish the film with them. And that’s how I became a camera assistant. In the following years, I learned various camera roles, working on films, TV series, commercials, and music videos before stopping to focus on my own career as a cinematographer.

What were some of your early projects, and how did they shape your approach to filmmaking?

My first projects were short films made with friends, skate videos too, and music videos came later. Filmmaking is a constant learning curve. You can learn from any project, of any scale. And the more you shoot, the more you learn. But you must take the time to reflect and critically assess what doesn’t work deeply in these projects to try to improve it.

Increasingly, I take this time for analysis and confrontation of my own mistakes. My technique hasn’t evolved much over the years, but the method does significantly; this is what I constantly adjust. This ranges from how I prepare the film to communicating with the team.

I’ve tried many different ways of shooting: alone with the camera and the talent, with a small team, and with a large crew. You need to adjust the size of the team to match the film’s ambitions, but sometimes a small team allows you to move faster and find simple, creative, and effective solutions.

“Morning Interlude” beautifully combines dance and narrative. What inspired you to create a film that tells a story through dance?

As a pure product of the MTV generation, I think there’s a shadow of the golden age when many music videos were heavily choreographed, which naturally marked me as a child and teenager. But there has always been a desire in me to capture dance, also stemming from my cinephilia and films that left a mark on me, as varied as Fred Astaire dancing in the rain, Buster Keaton creating comedy through his body movements, Jacques Demy, and Leos Carax films.

Dance is movement combined with emotion; it’s also at the heart of cinema. I’ve always wanted to make a dance film, but I didn’t want to make just a performance film. From the beginning of the project, what interested me was how to tell a couple’s argument through dance.

The film draws inspiration from the work of Leos Carax. Can you elaborate on how his use of dance influenced your direction and cinematography in “Morning Interlude”?

This is where Carax’s cinema is inspiring because in some of his films, he uses dance to convey emotion at a given moment in the story, and it advances the narrative. With this in mind, I wrote the script and the choreography for Morning Interlude. Quite classically, for each scene, there is a conflict, and our characters will express it through dance.

Often in Carax’s films, the set integrates with his actors, and the urban environment either gives rise to or is used for dance. Once I found the location, I adapted the choreography to utilize the location’s features. A couple arguing is, above all, two bodies in opposition, marked by the car window separating them in the grimace sequence, or later when Robinson is on the ground, and Lilou towers over him, waving a rock above his head.

But, the most obvious presence of Carax is seen in the way Robinson’s solo is filmed. Specifically, with a fast wide lateral tracking shot, referencing a cult scene from Mauvais Sang.

The decision to shoot in black and white and use 35mm anamorphic film added a timeless quality to the project. What were the main challenges and rewards of working with this format?

Besides the evident aesthetic reasons for using 35mm film, the choice of black and white serves the idea of telling a timeless story. Often, color leaves too many temporal markers on locations, and clothing, and can be too distracting.

Monochrome allows for a focus on action and story. I chose to shoot directly on Kodak 5222, an emulsion that has barely changed in half a century. In the cinephile’s imagination, it’s a mythical film stock used for many great films, so its look is immediately recognizable.

It was only after choosing the location that anamorphic made sense to capture its graphic lines of the road and railway tracks. This choice also nods to Western films, a landscape reminiscent of the Wild West, conducive to duels. I love shooting on film because it brings discipline on set. Every department is much more focused since there’s less room for mistakes, and everyone wants to get it right on the first take.

So, for every new setup, I explain what’s going on, we prep, rehearse with the camera a couple of times, and then shoot it, with a maximum of two takes. The wait between the end of filming and receiving the rushes is always long and unbearable, but we are often pleasantly surprised by the result.

You faced some unexpected challenges during production, such as a last-minute casting change and timing issues with the truckloader. How did you and your team adapt to these situations?

The true definition of a production is solving problems while making a film. For “Morning Interlude”, I had cast a real couple of dancers, and a few days before filming, the dancer got injured and couldn’t do the film. We went back to casting and chose Lilou, who had more of an acting background than dancing but had her unique flow.

Ultimately, these imperfections created the character’s charm and served the idea of a film that isn’t just about performance.

During filming, the success of solving problems quickly and finding alternative solutions with minimal time loss lies in solid preparation and the director’s deep knowledge of the film. I mean, not just the shot breakdown but the story itself, its core.

When the crane breaks down or we miss the sunrise, as happened on our shoot, this helps make quick decisions to tell the same story differently, maybe even better, without dwelling on frustration. It’s important to always keep the story at the center when facing problems; that’s what I try to do.

The collaboration between you, choreographer Mès Lesne, and the dancers was crucial to the film. How did this collaborative process influence the final outcome?

When you watch the film, it’s quite faithful to the first script. There were already conflicts, tone, and choreography bases for each sequence on paper. However, the work was collaborative for the choreography and character development.

Four days before filming, after learning of our original dancer’s injury, we met with Mès Lesne and Robinson in a rehearsal room to bring the characters and movements to life. I directed Robinson more with emotions, off-script, and facial expressions, while Mès directed him on body and dance in general.

Robinson is an incredible dancer, always full of ideas. That day was really about constant exchanges of ideas among the three of us, and we saw the film’s foundations being sculpted in that small dance room.

Lilou arrived the day before filming, and Mès taught her the choreography in a few hours. She integrated it quickly, adding elements like shadowboxing, for example. There was only one full rehearsal with everyone, the night before, at 11 PM on a terrace lit by our phone flashes, where we adjusted the choreography.

On set, I directed them as dancers, and I directed them as actors. This mix of body and psychological directions worked well.

What future projects are you excited about? Are there any new themes or techniques you are looking forward to exploring in your upcoming work?

I am currently developing several dance film projects in completely different formats that I am eager to shoot. Working a lot in advertising, I often work on films with large setups, and lots of equipment, often in studios.

I take great pleasure in working in natural settings,  on passion projects and honestly, I find that being technically constrained by budget makes me more creative. However, I find the idea of a single crane shot with a hundred dancers very exciting. Anyone?

Thank you so much Hugo Carlier for sharing your experience and these valuable insights with the community!

Thank you fam for reading, if you wanna learn more about Hugo Carlier, go check his website , Instagram and in case you missed our previous mag piece, go check it out!

Much love!
FilmmakersWorld Team

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