How indie horror MadS was filmed as a one-shot thriller

my interview / words for RED

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Writer-director David Moreau gives the audience no chance to escape in indie horror MadS which unfolds in one long, unblinking take. It’s a remarkable technical feat that feels creatively justified because it pins the audience to the screen just as Stanley Kubrick forced open the eyelids of his chief protagonist in A Clockwork Orange.

At the outset of MadS, we meet teenager Romain (Milton Riche) visiting his dealer to try a new drug before heading out for a night of partying. Driving home in his red Mustang convertible, he encounters a bloodied and bandaged woman who crawls into his car and events soon spiral downhill. The entire 88 minutes of the film’s run time is filmed in one take.

“I told David it wasn’t just a challenge - it was madness,” says cinematographer Philip Lozano, AFC (Furies, The Nun 2). “Where some other one-take movies have had the action kick in after an hour, the script for our movie is a non-stop roller-coaster from the start.”

For Moreau and Lozano, the main reference for what was possible was the 2015 German crime thriller Victoria shot in a oner by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen. After watching it Lozano says he better understood Moreau’s intent.

“David’s idea was absolutely not about having a show-off technical challenge but to try to create a story where everything takes place in real time and the actors’ performance and the camerawork feel visceral and in the moment.”

The filmmakers had to make the most of limited resources and that included finding a series of locations that would work for a script that shifts locations from the drug shack to a party in an apartment in cars, on scooters and on foot. They shot in and around Mulhouse, a city in Alsace in Eastern France, over a 10km stretch from the opening to the last location.

“On paper, we had five days to rehearse and five days to shoot but in reality, this time was even more compressed. We rehearsed the scenes in three segments for the three different parts of the city we were shooting in because we couldn’t block off streets and locations for two weeks.

“On top of that craziness, we planned to start shooting the story at dusk for the opening scenes in which Romain discovers the runaway girl. That meant we could only make one take per day.”

Rehearsals gave Moreau and Lozano the chance to refine the film’s complicated choreography. “When you can’t cut and you know there’s going to be no edit you have to do your best to edit the film through the rhythm and flow of the camera and in response to what your actors are doing,” says Lozano.

“I did pose the question to David, ’What if it doesn’t work? What if all of our takes fail at some point? Shouldn’t we have a Plan B or a Plan C for ideas of where could we make some cuts if needed?

“David was adamant that he didn’t want to even think along those lines because then we’d be opening up the possibility of failure. There was no Plan B.”

One of the main considerations for the DP was whether he would be able to physically hold a camera for an hour and a half. Despite a youth spent in physically demanding sports such as football, MMA and crossfit, Lozano also undertook four weeks of cardio and physical resistance training specifically for this job.

“The weight of the whole package, including battery and lens, had to be something I could carry easily. I didn’t want to start shaking involuntarily because my muscles were tired,” he says. “Nor did I want to photograph with a lower spec camera. It had to be very light and it had to have an A-list movie aesthetic.”

Lozano turned to rental house RVZ and camera department manager Samuel Renollet for collaboration in building the right camera package and tested a number of cameras. “The RED V-RAPTOR VV was half the weight of an ARRI. That was immediately a huge advantage.”

A second consideration was that Lozano wanted to record RAW without changing media for at least 90 minutes. “I didn’t want to compromise on the quality of the image to do that,” he says. “RED enabled me to record over an hour and a half at 6K resolution which was more than twice that of any other camera.”

Lozano could have shot the whole film using a shaky handheld look but decided he wanted more fluency and flexibility in movement. He worked with RVZ to customize the RED with a carbon prototype rig called Unity developed by Belgium Steadicam operator Jan Rubens that stabilized the horizon.

“The film would have been unwatchable over 90 minutes of continual shakiness. The rig gave me the ability to stabilize the horizontal movement of the camera. The idea was that I could move the cameras as if I had a Steadicam or dolly as well as handheld.

“The whole package including camera, rig, battery, lens was only 12 kilos in total but you still have to have the core strength to be able to control the wides and the tight shots. The V-RAPTOR was the perfect combination of size and weight, picture quality and flexibility.

Focus puller Michel Galtier operated an ARRI WLCS Hi-5 wireless focus control using the RIA-1 and C-Force mini motor to pull focus remotely. This was especially tricky when Lozano was getting in and out of cars.

“When the actors and I were traveling by car, Michel, David and the crew followed behind like a support team of a peloton.”

He used 35mm OLYMPUS TOKYO by ZERO OPTIK T:2,2 Cf:9, shot T/2.8 throughout, with a 5000 ISO base since the variable ND in front of the lens (used to keep a constant T-stop) was taking 1.5 to 2 stops. “I knew that the V-RAPTOR VV sensor is exceptional under low light conditions which helped us use a lot of available lighting, such as streetlights and practicals in apartments and corridors.

“I wasn’t worried about having natural noise in the image. On the contrary, I embraced that direction. It helped us convey an organic and visceral ‘dirty’ look. I ended up increasing the grain in post.”

The first of their five attempts, on a Monday, was a disaster. “Nothing worked,” says Lozano. Tuesday’s one-take faced technical challenges. A tremendous storm nearly spoiled day three. It passed just in time for the shoot to happen, and it was technically a success, but the director wanted more from his actors. The fourth take was also complete, but Moreau still didn’t think they’d quite nailed it.

“Friday was our last chance. Either we get it or there's no movie,” says Lozano. “I loved embracing the challenge. It's the World Cup final. It’s a last-minute penalty kick. You either win, or you lose. That’s what this felt like. The pressure is on, the adrenalin is flowing. Only occasionally do you get this kind of pressure on a regular film. Maybe you have to capture a scene at sunset but in this case, we had to shoot the whole feature film in an hour and a half.

“When we’d finished the final shot on the Friday and we felt that it had all worked, you can imagine how special it felt. The actors, the director, everyone was crying with emotion. David also held onto the final shot longer than he’d done before. I was holding the camera, waiting, waiting, until he called cut. Then there was this immense feeling of elation.”

There have been other movies which are apparently told as a single take when in fact ‘invisible’ edits have been masked behind an actor’s back or a piece of set. To convince any sceptics that they had, in fact, shot this 90-minute drama in one go Moreau had his crew document the event.

“The behind-the-scenes film is as cool as the movie because it shows how it was made - and how we so nearly didn’t.”