Hélène Ducrocq – Elle Demeure
thenewfilmmaker: What’s the story of your film?
Hélène Ducrocq: The song is about an old lady living in a mansion. The house and she have lived many stories through History. It is what I tried to say with the movie. When you cut a tree, you can see one circle a year. In the movie, I wanted to cut the house in order to see all the story ‘she’ lived.
thenewfilmmaker: What inspired you?
Hélène Ducrocq: First I didn’t know how to express the idea of piling up all the stories. Then I saw the student film of the American Javan Ivey “my paper mind” and I realised it was exactly like that I could get it. With the stratastencil technique I could enter the house and see all the stories cut in slices.
thenewfilmmaker: Your video software ?
Hélène Ducrocq: First the storyboard and the animation are drawn in the TVPaint software. Then I print each frame on a Canson paper, and shoot it one by one with the Dragon stop motion software.
thenewfilmmaker: Film school or learning by doing?
Hélène Ducrocq: I ended the French directing animation school “La Poudrière” in 2006. Then I learned by doing as many films as I could. I love to try new animation techniques. The music video is perfect for experimentations, I love that. With “Elle Demeure”, Ana Dess totally trusted me, that was very cool!
thenewfilmmaker: Who influenced your way of filmmaking?
Hélène Ducrocq: Of course Michel Gondry for the crazy ideas with low budget!
