Hugo Carlier on Shooting Stuck on 35mm: Chasing Controlled Chaos

Cinematographer Hugo Carlier returns to FilmmakersWorld with Stuck, a music video directed by Gabriel Dugué and featuring Saint Harison. Following his previous work on Morning Interlude and Sidewalks, Carlier brings his exploration of movement, emotion and visual storytelling into a more visceral and technically demanding project.

Stuck follows a man alone inside a driverless car as a seemingly calm journey gradually descends into chaos. Shot on 35mm and built around practical effects, complex camera rigging and an ARRIFLEX 435 Xtreme, the film turns the character’s shifting state of mind into a physical, tactile experience.

What follows is Carlier’s own account of the shoot, from the low loader that stood in for a driver to the rotating rig that put the car upside down.

Driven by Sensation

When Gabriel and I first discussed Stuck, we agreed that the film shouldn’t be driven by narrative alone. It had to be driven by sensation.

The idea is deceptively simple: Saint Harison sits alone in a car with no driver. At first, the journey feels calm, almost meditative, before gradually descending into complete chaos. The car becomes a physical representation of his state of mind.

Because the film was built around emotion rather than spectacle, we wanted the images to feel intimate, imperfect, and tactile. Shooting on 35mm immediately became the obvious choice. We also wanted to achieve as much as possible in-camera, relying on practical effects instead of visual effects whenever we could.

Visualizza questo post su Instagram

Un post condiviso da Filmmakers World 🎥🎬 (@filmmakersworld)

Solving the Impossible

The first question was surprisingly simple: How do you make a car drive with no driver?

Our solution was to mount the picture car onto a low loader. It gave us a perspective that feels remarkably close to filming from a real moving vehicle. More importantly, it offered countless rigging possibilities for both camera and lighting.

On a music video, time is always your biggest enemy. Every minute spent rebuilding rigs is a minute you lose shooting. Working from the low loader allowed us to move quickly between setups while keeping the camera mounted exactly where we wanted it.

Knowing Which Department Drives the Look

Whenever I start preparing a project, I ask myself one question: Which department will define the visual language of this film?

Sometimes it’s lighting, production design, or camera moves. On Stuck, the answer was obvious from the beginning: grip. Almost every shot required a dedicated rig, meaning our shooting schedule was dictated less by lighting setups than by engineering solutions. Once I accepted that, the priorities became very clear.

I deliberately kept the daytime lighting almost entirely natural and approached the night work as simply as possible. Every hour saved on lighting could be invested into building the next rig.

Looking back, that decision shaped the entire production.

Why the ARRIFLEX 435 Xtreme?

For this project, I chose the ARRIFLEX 435 Xtreme, which remains one of my favourite 35mm cameras ever built.

It’s an incredibly versatile camera, especially when you’re creating practical effects. One of the main reasons was the Time Shift Box, which lets you desynchronise the shutter. That subtle offset creates beautiful horizontal streaks in practical highlights, adding an unpredictable quality that perfectly matched the psychological tone of the film.

The 435 is capable of almost anything, from high-speed photography to complex shutter effects, and despite its size, I still think it’s one of the most creative film cameras ever designed.

Rigging a Film Camera Inside a Moving Car

Rigging a large 35mm camera inside and around a car is never straightforward.

The crew from Grips On Moving became the backbone of the entire project. They consistently found elegant solutions that allowed Gabriel and me to place the camera exactly where we imagined it, whether inside the cabin, mounted around the exterior or in front of a spinning wheel.

Their contribution went far beyond execution. They constantly proposed creative rigging solutions that opened up new possibilities on set.

One of my favourite examples is the wide tracking shot following the car. Instead of overcomplicating the setup, we simply mounted the camera directly onto the roof of our tracking van. It was an efficient solution that produced exactly the movement we were looking for.

Building the Rollover Sequence

The rollover scene was, without question, the most technically demanding sequence of the film. We collaborated with a specialist rigging team that had previously built a full rotating gimbal capable of spinning an entire vehicle.

Preparing the car took almost a full day. Every unnecessary component had to be removed to reduce the overall weight, including the complete engine.

Once the vehicle was mounted inside the rig, we installed the camera in the cabin using a Skater Scope. Besides allowing us to reach the perspective we wanted, it also enabled the camera itself to rotate with the vehicle, reinforcing the disorienting feeling inside the car.

One detail that became surprisingly important was the broken glass scattered throughout the interior. We needed small practical elements reacting to gravity to help sell the illusion that the world was literally turning upside down.

Since the camera never looked outside the vehicle during this sequence, we filmed everything inside a blacked-out garage. We recreated the passing streetlights with a minimal lighting setup, allowing abstract reflections to travel across the windows without revealing the environment.

We also decided to shoot part of the sequence at 100 fps. That’s another feature I particularly appreciate on the 435 Xtreme.

Controlled Chaos

Almost all of it happened in front of the lens: a picture car on a low loader, a grip rig built for nearly every shot, a 435 Xtreme running at 100 fps inside a blacked-out garage, and broken glass falling exactly the way it needed to as the world turned over.

The chaos was engineered, one rig at a time.

More from Hugo Carlier on FilmmakersWorld

Carlier has broken down two other projects for us, both closer to the movement-and-emotion side of his work: his cinematography on Morning Interlude and how he approached Sidewalks.