Silence we turn… in Gaillarde land!

“Presidents” by Anne Fontaine

Anne Fontaine, international director and screenwriter, has around twenty films to her credit in which she has cast the greatest French actors: Depardieu, Poelvoorde, Luchini, Ardant, Huppert, Béart, etc. And it is with Jean Dujardin, Grégory Gadebois and Pascale Arbillot that she comes to shoot the film “Presidents”.

The pitch

A comedy about power and the difficulty of no longer being in charge with the meeting of two political adversaries, inspired by Sarkozy and Hollande, who will experience a kind of adventure... What other place to choose to tell such a fiction, than the one already named Land of Presidents?
A month-long shoot which took place between Uzerche, Aubazine and Saint-Robert.

I tested: being an extra

For the film shoot, they were actively looking for more than a hundred extras. How to resist ? What girl doesn't want to spend a day alongside Jean Dujardin? It's not every day that this opportunity presents itself! Obviously I want to live this experience, well try at least! I send photo, measurements, experience in cinema (none), ... and I wait, I wait, ... but no response. A little disappointed, I must admit, I am resigned to my film career which will not succeed 😉! 

Then a few weeks later, Friday October 16 at 17 p.m., to be precise a text “Hello tomorrow we have an appointment at the town hall square in Saint-Robert at 12:30 p.m. having eaten, please bring 3 different casual mid-season outfits (no fluorescent , no marks and no scratches. No big coat on the set so wear damarts. Formal ban on taking photos of the set." 

Obviously the next day at 12:30 p.m. I was there!

Two outdoor scenes were filmed that day: one in the village square and one in the public gardens. I will appear in the second for a village festival. The main actors were all playing, they spent the day on the set very friendly and in complete simplicity. Ladies: Jean Dujardin is as beautiful in person as he is behind the screen 💕

But then what does the extra do? He doesn't actually do anything! You wait in the middle of this bustling anthill and you have Jean Dujardin passing next to you carrying his chair to settle down here and there as the set changes.
You wait until the man in charge of the extras looks at you from head to toe, points at you and says "in 5 minutes I'll call you and you position yourself there", then you do so when we say “silence it turns”. 
But it's a truly incredible experience, you can't imagine the number of people who work on a set (make-up artist, hairdresser, dresser, cameraman, assistant cameraman, sound engineer, sound assistant, boom operator – the one who holds the boom; ) -, director, her assistant, producer, many other assistants,... and all the others, men and women who are away from their families for more than a month), with the extras more than 100 people i.e. equivalent to a third of the village's population. Gigantic logistics over a day for a few shots which in the end will last on average 2 minutes or will be cut.