Director Anastasia Mikova and colourist St phane Azouze recall shooting and grading a powerful documentaryBy Contributor
Published: April 2, 2020
Director Anastasia Mikova and colourist St phane Azouze recall shooting and grading a powerful documentary
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Directed by Anastasia Mikova and Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Woman is a remarkable documentary, which brings to the screen almost 2,000 women, from 50 countries. It focuses on what it means to be a woman in today's world by looking at various topics in women's lives, both big and small. It was graded on Baselight by freelance colourist, St phane Azouze, who had worked with Mikova and Arthus-Bertrand as DIT (digital imaging technician) on an earlier project called Human.
Human saw Mikova and Arthus-Bertrand interview men, women and children all over the world. Men were really happy to share their story, Mikova, who was then the first assistant to the director, recalls. They were proud and quite at ease talking in front of the camera. But the women at first would be quite suspicious - why were we asking all these questions?
However, once in front of the camera, it was like they had been waiting for this moment their whole lives - things that they had kept inside for many years could finally be released. It was so powerful and so incredible.
The two directors began working on the project four years ago, before the #metoo movement and the Weinstein scandal and were not surprised by the events that unfolded.
I have been doing documentaries for many years and in some countries, 10 or 15 years ago, it would have been almost impossible to find a woman who would be able to share her story and intimate experience in front of a camera, explains Mikova. So, seeing more and more women willing and ready to be heard, was a big difference and we thought, OK, the time has come, let's create a window for them'. And that's where this project began.
Mikova and Arthus-Bertrand have worked together for 12 years, first on an ecological TV show for French television. Then Mikova joined Arthus-Bertrand at his small, tightly bound production company to create these epic documentaries. A project like this takes three or four years, Mikova says. It's a very long time, so it creates quite a strong relationship across the team.
Having spent the first year in planning and preparation, over the next two years they shot almost 2,000 interviews, in 80 sessions and 50 countries. Mikova did as many of the interviews as she could, but had a trusted team of five journalists, only women, to support her as well as several camerawomen and cameramen - one of which was Mikova's husband, Dimitri Vershinin, who worked on Human and Woman and was already comfortable with the specific format of the interviews the two directors wanted to reproduce everywhere. They also worked with local journalists, again only women, in every country where the interviews took place to find the women to interview and prepare each shoot in advance.
Once you have 2,000 interviews with women, many of whom have opened up for the first time in their lives, the challenge is to go deep into yourself to determine which ones you should use, she says. We would gather topics - like sexuality, motherhood, empowerment, education or work - then we would listen for hours and hours to make a selection on which we all agreed.
That first version was maybe eight or nine hours long! Mikova recalls. Starting from there, to get it down to one hour 45 minutes was really difficult, because we had to lose so many interviews that we really wanted to keep. It took us almost a year to come up with the final editing, which is long for a documentary. Thankfully, we were chosen to premiere the film at the Venice Film Festival, which gave us a deadline to work towards. If not, I'm afraid we'd still be editing the film today !
The editing process was made slightly easier in the knowledge that accompanying the film will be a book and an immersive exhibition that will travel the world. All of the women will exist in some way in our project, Mikova insists.
The nature of the content means that the filming style is extremely simple and intimate. We set up simple studios, sometimes in incredible locations like in the middle of the desert, Mikova explains. It was always the same thing: you see just a face, on a neutral background, with one light, all very minimalistic.
Armed with all this material, the directors turned to freelance colourist St phane Azouze. Azouze came to the Baselight seat via a very unusual route: as a camera operator and shading supervisor, also specialised in aerial photography. He first met Arthus-Bertrand when Yann needed helicopter shots for a feature project he was creating in 2006 - another two-year documentary project called Home - and became DIT.
For Human, the previous project from Mikova and Arthus-Bertrand, Azouze was colour and workflows supervisor, ensuring every operator stuck to the defined set-ups and protocols. He also worked on the dailies with colourist Gilles Granier at Technicolor. Gilles is fascinating by his ability to artistically respond to creators' demands, with great teaching skills, Azouze says. He gave me the bug. With my experimented shading operator's eye I understand colour and contrast, so I had a great foundation to work on.
Azouze then went on to establish himself as a colourist, not least on television projects for Arthus- Bertrand.
Woman was shot on a mixture of cameras: the Canon C300 was largely u
