Two weeks of filming in the box!
It is 9:16 p.m. on Sunday evening and we continuously for 48 hours, until the beginning of the second week of filming, with another director and another crew. We are Gruissan, about ten kilometers from Narbonne, on the Roussillon coast. A small Best Western hotel chain comfortable enough for a couple of tired looking calm and tranquility, two good nights rest, a gray but fortunately dry after a week of rain and the warmth of a small 22 ° during the day , along the Mediterranean. The maid did not have permission to enter work for two days! We want peace! ...
We have done our small market yesterday morning in the village of Gruissan and we had the pleasure of a picnic on our small garden, lagoon front. Tonight we pushed to the famous self Gruissan, those in the film 37.2 ° le Matin, and we have enjoyed a nice plate of oysters fresh. This man literally devoured!
We arrived Friday night after a five-day journey that led us to Lyon Saint-Nectaire, then back to Lyon and then falling into the gorges of Ardeche for two days. Seven hundred and fifty miles in five days at the wheel of a 4 x 4 hire that man had the pleasure of testing on gravel roads to steep, much to my fright, I confess! It is crazy but he controls the machine, no doubt!
We will not keep an unforgettable memory of this trip in the Auvergne: honestly, as a region is damaged! We are off-season, obviously, and all shops are closed. Cities are cultural or architectural interest, the people are nice, but almost absent from the streets (where are they hiding?), We thought we discover good restaurants but we had the disappointment of not eating in all places we have received. But earlier in another shooting in the year, we feasted.
Did you know that Saint-Nectaire, located southwest of Lyon, no account is that 500 people? "... I imagined a great city, but no, this is a large village which extends from north to south along the flank of an ancient volcano and a cross departmental, winding. Former city water, the baths were closed last year because of financial mismanagement. Since then, the casino does what he can to retain the few tourists scattered but the city feels the elephant graveyard ...
At Saint-Nectaire we stayed in a Mercure hotel, the only hotel that showed more than 2 *: Believe it if you want, but I was cold all night! ... Okay, I confess that we spent the day turning outside in the rain and my pants, my socks and even my parka and the sleeves of my sweatshirt had to twist! I emptied the water from my shoes arrived at the hotel. But they do not heat this property only 19 ° and the corridors were warmer than the bedrooms. Amazing! At the restaurant, we met an unlikely group of Japanese women in a spree ... I do not know if they were to bake something called a truffade, hybrid raclette and tartiflette in Saint-Nectaire melted of course. Man has prefaced this with a foie gras duck very nice but I contented myself (I thought ...) with a plate Auvergne input. And I saw get a huge plate of lettuce, covered with large slices of ham ... So I take a aligot, this delicate mousseline potatoes drowned in melted cheese and garlic-flavored ... Man this time made the wrong choice: a leg of duck confit that had forgotten to brown and was a nameless sorrow, filed simply too few slices of potatoes fried evil.
Then to bed! I extended all the wet clothes in the room to dry, but in vain: the day after everything was still wet. And the rain was still falling ...
Man plunged to a few miles away in Lake Pavin, a former volcanic crater where the water is crystal clear that the Volvic. He was interviewing the "president" of the diving club Clermont-Ferrand who had proudly made the trip and was thoroughly embarrassed at the prospect of diving with man. They plunged into the water at 10 °, in the pouring rain, while standing waiting, monitoring large bubbles going up on the surface of the lake where my diver to snag a man could under water, need change the DVD of the tape underwater camera or simply a failure of the light.
You understand now why I was also soaked a cloth!
The next day, shooting in the salt marshes, a stunning area, bordering Saint-Nectaire: when I saw the field from afar, I decided to stay safely in the car and spent Loved son necessary to reserve hotels in the next few nights! Although I! Pants while my spouse was found dirty, within a few minutes. I've won, stupidly, that two pairs of pants for four weeks of filming and one of the two were still wet!
Then we shot inside a factory cameos, statuettes and all kinds of small carved frames molded through the calcification of the water channel on plastic molds. An original process, and unique. Between you and me, the craft that emerges serves as a souvenir for Grandma, real nests that are suspended dust in the lobby on a wall next to the giant thermometer is supposed said barometric pressure and you prevent a hurricane, one day, break forth!
For lunch, we went back to Lyon to interview the regional director of the Compagnie Nationale du Rhone, the powerful CNR, which controls all the dams and flow of the river of the same name. In other words it is a controversial topic, of course: between environment and industry, we try to preserve the "lônes" (= the backwaters of the Rhone) and maintain its natural forests to protect birds nesting there, but it also promotes the development of large dams and nuclear power Pierrelatte few kilometers below. It allowed me to admire, with binoculars loaned by a biologist from the corner, a pair of gray heron that was kicking his heels (!), Away from humans. And I learned that the RNC has completed the drilling of more than 1000 meters deep in the bed of the Rhone, which means that the river was originally a canyon giant ...
Then, towards the Ardèche. And my man wakes ... The Ardeche is his playground!
Before arriving on site, at Vallon Pont d'Arc, he was keen to show me two of the sources from which he dived there about twenty years, which again is called "a first", c that is to say an initial exploration to go back in the source and try to find out where it originated. These two sources are located in Bourg-Saint Andeol at the foot of a magnificent Roman wash beautifully restored (a little too well perhaps elsewhere ...): two cavities shaped basin, crystal blue water and mouth entrance of the gallery. The man explained to me that in order to enter the gallery, taking off his diving gear, dip ahead without releasing its regulator provided, enter then twisting to get the body strapped in the combination Waterproof and recapeler a little further (that is to say put the bottles on the back). After a few hundred meters of gallery, a siphon dips vertically to 97 meters. He did it with the mixture of air time, and then act highly unlikely that all amateurs have hastened to doubt as the feat was unprecedented. But they have to bow when he relapsed a few days later, in the second source, down to 84 meters deep and more than a mile from the entrance to the gallery. When I tell you that this man is crazy!
In short, the Ardeche, he has explored almost every corner, all sources, caves, meandering. To see a gallery buried deep in a dry cave that he first had to climb to carry the bottles on their backs a little creature completely unknown until now: the spheromides raymond, small crustacean contemporary cave dinosaurs, that is to say, a creature that is 65 million years! We did find distant cousins in the deep ocean beyond 10,000 feet deep, it has survived without any damage glaciations and is only found in freshwater cave in the Ardeche. Still a nice media coup in the 1990s ...
In Ardèche, therefore, man wakes up, shows me his "corner", its playgrounds, and I learn that "there", he set up his tent, "there" he was cooking sausages on the barbecue, and " there, "he crossed the sculptural Dutchwomen topless as they belonged to a nudist camp on the corner and he passed by canoe! ... I doubt he has repeatedly ...
A small hotel hosts us: not too many choices with regard to the hotel anyway. The reception is nice, the wild boar stew with boletus basis but again it does not heat the rooms in this hole! And I appreciate that evening is called The Meeting to cover countries with a good meter and eighty-seven and still not tired of me as a hot water bottle! The room was outdated but the bed is a giant fog on the windows shows how it is wet inside and cold outside, there is no soap and no shampoo in the bathroom and I will get to home the same evening to connect to their online bank card authorization to access my e-mails ... A little folk, but nice. The second night, tired, we will go for a picnic ham boar terrine in bed, duly accompanied by pickles, bread and bacon. Not exactly diet food but a bit of privacy (and speed!) After a day's work along with the crew ...
The gorges of Ardeche are superb, real canyons limestone cliffs overlooking the river flow sometimes impetuous. For one of its plates, man descend the course of the river, and we will be filming from the other boat, in another, he will explain the formation of "pots", small cavities in rocks on the shore via pebbles reeling under the effect of currents. Then it will describe the composition of rocks, river pebbles, sand ... He showed me the fossils of oysters on the rocks, but yes, I found a beautiful fossil shells of conical shape, the spiral beautifully preserved. That proves that the sea was there a few million years. It may seem uninteresting to some, but when we photographed her man strapped into a nice white shirt, selected by me to send it later to webmasters of France 3 from each region that broadcast the show, they listen almost religiously and finally we learn a lot!
Since last week, my role has changed a little on these films: I am now also the makeup of my 'star' house. He does not love, constantly monitors its wick inevitably decamp to the camera, complaining of his wrinkles, his eyes, his nose, ... In short, he does not love. Before leaving last week, so I did buy a facial cream (men!) And a small elixir for the eyes and I toast before the shootings. He does not appreciate this treatment but also as he accepts that this is a necessary evil (or at least a placebo!). I even managed to brush with Terracotta, this loose powder from Guerlain whose pigments react with the skin to give a tan. And finally, I am very proud! It is beautiful! And he accepts himself a little better ...
Finally, we had this time with a good technical team, but dumb! ... The cameraman was a young aspiring filmmaker and therefore eager for the fine plan, the beautiful image and sequence appropriate. The "sound guys" (sound engineer) mastered his tools and fixed once and for all the microphones on Man without griping about polar creaking and folders that make noise. As for the electro, he was executed in silence, quickly, just once. The rest of the time he was there, listening to tapes or needs a battery. Very effective, but absolutely dumb! They opened their mouth at meals, but the last two days they began to ask questions at the man on the rocks, prehistoric whales, dolphins, ... This man is as it says in one of its directors "a fount of knowledge" ...
So ... 22:20, and I'll stop here for the story this week since we need to get up at 7:00 tomorrow to go back to Port-Leucate a third director and a new crew for a third week shooting. This week, the program: Sales Castle and floating marshes of Virgil, the Thau lagoon, and the gorges of the Tarn. Even the odometer ...
(October 2004)
