Film Interview: Snow & Ashes

Sunday, 24 January 2010 02:13

Snow & Ashes

Director/screenwriter Charles-Olivier Michaud and producer/star David-Alexandre Coiteux and I chatted about their tense thriller Snow & Ashes. Starring Rhys Coiro (Entourage, 24, etc.) as a Canadian war correspondent who returns from war in Eastern Europe without his longtime photographer and friend nor his memory. Attempting to heal, he must piece together exactly what happened and accept the consequences for his actions.

Vegas Outsider: To begin, what made you want to tackle the subject of war correspondents and how did that then translate into the story of Snow and Ashes itself?

Charles-Olivier Michaud: Well the idea came several years ago when I was traveling and met a few war photographers. It was my dream to become a war photographer; I love photography and the recklessness and courage of this job because they don’t do it for the money, they don’t do it for the fame. It’s more like they’re in search of some adrenaline and the rush; there was something very interesting and visceral about that and I became passionate about it. The idea came from me originally saying “two journalists go to war and only one comes back” and that’s where the story came together. I wrote the script in a very short time. I wanted to make a war film that for once wasn’t told from the perspective of a bad guy or soldier and I love the perspective of a witness of war and journalists are witnesses; whether they are journalists here or in Chechnya or in Hollywood they are witnesses of events and that’s the thing that motivated me the most.

VO: To follow up, how was the research process in terms of getting the film's look right in regards to the wartime scenes?

COM: Yes the research was great, I traveled a lot, read and researched a lot. When writing the script I wanted to be very accurate in terms of the location, the language, the people, what they looked like, how they dressed, what they had in their homes, how things looked outside, etc. It was research that went from Getty Images to Wikipedia to books to photos I got from photographers and videographers who had been to Chechnya. So it was a very nice and long research process where I learned a lot and it was very important to be as accurate as possible and there’s details people may not readily notice. For example in the apartment with the girls, they have fruit and but there’s no fruit over there; all they have is processed food, rice, stuff from the UN, stuff dropped from the sky by humanitarians or stuff smuggled in from across the border. They only have fruit because the only thing the US did during the war in Chechnya, fearing to upset Russia otherwise, is that they sent fruit boxes from the states. I had that included in the set design, but the funny thing is the fruit that got there was all rotten because it didn’t last during the trip.

So little details like that I wanted to have as well as how they are dressed; they are refugees but some of them are teachers, others are educated, they had businesses before the war so it’s really a black market place where you can really get anything you want if you know the right people. They all have different clothes, different shoes, t-shirts from European soccer teams, all kinds of things like that because they smuggled it in through the black market, same with food, etc. It was a really cool process because we had to replicate war in a place where there’s no war, where we were 10,000 miles away from it and it was a very interesting process. We used real locations which helped too so we didn’t have to build sets on sound stages. We used a desolate factory, which was once a trophy factory in the 60’s and 70’s, that was really run down and when we got there we had to trash it a lot. We researched even more and had a great production designer and art director who went out of their way to make it look right, they went to Little Russia in Montreal and spoke to people, they got pictures. For example with the girls’ apartment, it was very important to me to get it as accurate as possible and we got some pictures from real apartments in Chechnya and with those we tried to find the real accessories and make the place as authentic looking as possible.

VO: The film also has a constant, visceral movement, the camera's never still whether it's in the war zone or when Blaise has returned home and is in recovery. I'm curious to know the decision behind always keeping the camera on the move?

COM: Well the camera work was handled by our director of photography, a guy named Jean-Francois Lord, he’s a very experienced cinematographer from Montreal. He had never done something like that before and the cinematography was a process of discovery as well as research for six months. He and I watched a ton of movies and looked at pictures and war footage. For me from the get go, the whole story was going to be told through the eyes of the main character, Blaise, so I always wanted the camera to be with him. That’s why when there’s crane shots or anything like that we were always with the actors and I decided with the director of photography to make the actors as free as possible; so I literally told the actors, “don’t worry about us, we’ll worry about you; we’ll follow you”.

I really wanted that natural feel where it felt like the camera is almost a character in the story where it follows and is very spontaneous. That then allows the actors to be very free and inspired to create in the moment which may not have happened if we had very rigorous blocking or mise en scene. So for me it was important to always stay with the actors, there’s no dolly, there’s no crane, no tripod, nothing like that. The camera is always on our shoulder and I felt this position was very inspiring because it allowed us to get very close to the actors whether it was Blaise, or David, or Sophie, etc. We were always with them and I wanted movement because film is still moving images. I wanted to have that feel where the image constantly moves from one place to another even in Quebec, which is more static, I still wanted it to look very dynamic.

VO: I have to comment on the film's casting, especially Rhys Coiro, David, and Lina Roessler, who to me, bear the brunt of the film's emotional weight. I'm curious to know how you came upon them and what in your eyes made them perfect for their roles?

COM: Well, basically I wrote the script and David was the first one to get on board when there was only a script, a vision and a passion with me; there was no money, nothing but a script. David gave me a call, we had lunch, I gave him the script, and he read it and fell in love with it. From there, I really molded the character to him and his traits; he gave me a lot of his time while we were prepping the film. For David it was his first feature as an actor and it was my first feature as a director so it was very nice to have the actor also be a very close friend and have him here to help mold the character, that’s a luxury that most films don’t have.

David-Alexandre Coiteux: And then with Rhys, we were looking for Blaise’s character and one morning Charles shows up in my office and says “David, I think I know which guy I want” and I said “well who?” He said “you know that character Billy Walsh in Entourage?” and I replied “that’s the guy, that’s the guy we need”. The casting director then called his agent and Rhys called Charles directly at his office, spoke for two hours, connected, Rhys loved the script and that’s how we got him. He did a terrific job and was on board the whole way. And for Rhys, it was a very challenging part because the story is told entirely from his perspective so he’s in every scene. And unlike other films where actors have to sit and wait around a lot for their closeup, I told Rhys “you better understand that you’re going to be working twelve hour days, you’re not going to be waiting.” But he loved the challenge and responded to the material, so he was in. When it came to our working relationship, he didn’t know me; I only knew him from Entourage, 24, and plays he had done, so it was a very naïve way of doing things. He came about a week before the shoot and instead of focusing on reciting the dialogue scenes; we just talked about what the film was about, what each scene was about, who was this character and came to this postmodern Western tale of this silent character going through these traumatic events and the relationship with David is extremely important. I’m glad that it came together in the final product because it was in the script and was probably the most difficult thing to get because chemistry isn’t always easy but it was a very fun, very great learning experience.

I would have loved to have spent more time with Rhys beforehand but he only came a week before shooting so I was worried we wouldn’t have that bond going in but it does come across on screen. And for Lina, who played the character of Sophie, we did a casting session and saw around fifteen different actresses, some more known in Canada than others. When Lina came into the room, the energy that she had was incredible. She did the part and on the first take I had tears coming down my face; she asked if she could do it again and we agreed but in my head she had it. We then did a lot of spontaneous rewriting on the set; we stayed pretty close to the script but all the actors came together in a very natural, very involved way because they really loved the material, wanted to make it work and made these relationships very strong. The same went for the Russian actress, Patricia, that Blaise falls in love with; she’s a real Russian, born in Ukraine, is from Montreal, did an amazing job and was very surprised because she had a much smaller role in the script but she was so spontaneous and had such an amazing energy on camera that it grew.

VO: The film ultimately to me deals with consequences and sacrfices, both personal and professional, and how one chooses to deal with them. How would you sum up the themes that are communicated by this story and these characters?

COM: Well the story is driven by these characters, specifically Blaise’s journey in the film where he’s someone who feels more comfortable in war than he does at home and makes choices that are sometimes very dangerous and risky that threatens not only his life but David’s life too. And he doesn’t face the consequences of his actions until the very end and he can’t deal with it. For me it was, from the very beginning, that journey of these journalists being witnesses to these events, never being implicated, just watching and writing about them for the news, but never participating. And ultimately what happens is Blaise participated in his own war, where David is wounded and he needs to choose whether to kill him, die with him, or leave him there and I left the ending up for people to decide what Blaise does for themselves. For me then, what’s left is him needing to face his consequences and can he do so and live with himself after becoming an active participant in the events and not just a witness. From the beginning I wrote that character’s journey and it brings moral questions as to what we would do if we were in that situation.

*To learn more about this film, check out www.snowashes.com

*The film also won the Grand Jury Sparky Prize for Narrative Film at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival