Music

Q & A: Director Vincent Morisset talks Arcade Fire, Sigur Rós, and his unorthodox post-production process

by Richard Trapunski

Something about the cathartic, epic scope of Sigur Rós’s music often sees them labeled as “cinematic.” But where 2007’s Heima aimed to recreate that scope by following the tour on a tour of their native Iceland, their new film, Inni, instead depicts the band in claustrophobic, abstract detail. Shot in black and white and manipulated by hand in post-production, the film is visceral and intense in ways that Sigur Rós aren’t often thought to be. We caught up with French-Canadian director Vincent Morisset to ask him why he chose to shoot the film in such a chillingly idiosyncratic way.

AUX: How did the project get started? Did you go to the band or did they come to you?

Vincent Morisset: It started with a random encounter. The band was touring three years ago and they played Montreal. I knew and loved Sigur Ros for a long time, but it was the first time that I was actually seeing them live. They were playing outdoors next to the St. Laurent river in Old Montreal, and it was just a magical moment. At that time the band had just released Heima, their other documentary, about their tour in Iceland. And I was just finishing Mirroir Noir, the Arcade Fire documentary. At the end of the show I met one of the managers of the band and we exchanged our mutual experience of how it was to have a film on a rock band. We were like “Oh, never again.” [laughs] But it was really great to share this experience. Two months later, the band’s management called me with a sense of urgency: “Vincent, would you want to document the band playing live in a normal venue?” There was a sense of urgency of not knowing what would happen at the end of that tour, if they’d ever play again. And so I got on board really quickly.

If there was that sense of urgency that it may be their last performance, wouldn’t they want it to be filmed in a more straightforward way?

I consider it quite straightforward. We’re really focused on the band. Like 95% of the shots are focused on the detail and the effort of these guys playing. So, for me, this film is all about the cause and the effect of the song. But at the same time, I wanted something that could kind of accompany the music and some kind of a mood that would fit with their sensibility. So I guess that’s why it’s not sort of a straight HD-with-crane thing.

Is that why it’s filmed in a more abstract way than most concert films?

Besides the abstraction, it’s more about the intimacy. It’s a bit surprising to want to create something intimate out of this huge rock show in London where there’s 5000 people in front of you. I thought it was kind of an interesting approach because when I’m at a live show, the connection that I have to the band is really personal. I wanted to create this kind of really personal connection from the spectator to the band members, and also kind of present a perspective of the band themselves, this kind of complicity between those four guys. At one point you kind of focus on the drummer and get zoned out and soaked in the music. Then your head pans to the singer and you stay there for a while. I wanted to translate this kind of way that we connect when you’re seeing a show. Your eyes are not jumping every two seconds.

That seems almost antithetical to the way that concert films are usually shot, which is to show the whole scope of the event. It seems in Inni like there’s very little actual sense of place or crowd.

We tried to actually disappear almost all of that. It could be almost timeless, like it could have been in any town or any venue. We do reveal little glimpses of it, but it was the same with the sound as the visuals. We tried to make disappear the visuals and the background and the equipment, you know the gear and the roadie and the stage. As you said, you don’t really have a sense of a place.

The last Sigur Ros movie, Heima, seems to painstakingly create that sense of place and to showcase the beauty and scope of Iceland. Were you purposely trying to veer away from that?

Yeah, I think in a way it is an anti-Heima. We explore a complimentary spectrum of what this band is. Sonically, the four guys were back to the original quartet, so the sound was more visceral and intense, almost violent. That was one of the things that struck me when I saw them live. I was like “Wow, this is like a storm on the stage.” I wanted to translate that part of it that I don’t think we really see in Heima. In Heima, I think we discover a lot of things about the band, but I didn’t want to repeat something that was good and interesting. I just wanted to make something that would be complimentary. It was intentional that we move aesthetically in a way that could still connect and be true to what Sigur Ros is, but with a really different approach.

Can you explain the process you used to film the performance scenes?

I wish I had a visual to show you because it always feels a bit abstract and complicated to explain, but I’ll try to make it as clear as possible. When I pitched the idea to the band, I told them about how Neil Young recorded the Dead Man soundtrack. He just sat in the studio and watched the film for the first time with the guitar in his hand and just started to play in a really kind of visceral, intuitive approach. I thought this could be something interesting for post-production. Instead of putting the image in a computer and using fancy software and whatever to do something clean, I liked this approach of creating happy accidents, something that is kind of fragile and organic.

So did you veer away from the post-production tricks that are usually used in these types of films?

I wanted to go a little bit off the beaten track. Live concert films are a really established genre and I just wanted to do something a bit different. All the camera operators were actually D.O.P.s from documentary, fiction, art. They were not used to filming live shows. Already that shifted a bit the way we approach the framing and the cinematic aspect of it. We shot the images with an HD computer that was really sensitive to the light, and then when we edited it. When the edit was done, we put the large screen on an animation bench and we hanged a 16mm camera over it and re-photographed the whole film playing. And then we developed that film we printed the positive, and projected that film on a wide screen.

So what we did was, with Karl Lemieux, an experimental filmmaker in Montreal, we then manipulated the images with our hands and with objects. We basically put our fingers in front of the lens of the projector so that we could create rhythms with hand gashes or just put a salad bowl over the lens to distort the image and make it something that feels a bit like sparkles or fumes of light. We were watching the film and just kind of reacting to it and trying different things, but in a really intuitive way. So we recorded and then we were rerecording what was projected on that wide screen with another camera, a digital camera. Then we reedited the best happy accidents of this whole process.

What about the archival vignettes in between, are those meant to create a sense of context between those more abstract performance scenes?

I think those archival glimpses are a different use. If these were really the last shows that we would ever see from the band, I thought it was interesting to put those four friends, what they are, into context, to just go back in time makes you appreciate even more where they are at this point. Also I think it gives a breather from this claustrophobic approach and intense grainy images. At first these archives, they’re kind of random, but for me they tell a lot about who these guys are. I think cinema can translate nuance, like subtleties, that are difficult to put in words. And I think some of the moments translate. The live material really keeps this kind of mysterious, moody aura, but at the same time I think those little vignettes put it back into perspective. They’re just four guys playing music. They’re not elves or gods or whatever.