WEBVTT

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I made a film that was impossible to make,

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but I didn't know it was impossible,

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and that's how I was able to do it.

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"Mars et Avril" is a science fiction film.

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It's set in Montreal some 50 years in the future.

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No one had done that kind of movie in Quebec before

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because it's expensive, it's set in the future,

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and it's got tons of visual effects,

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and it's shot on green screen.

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Yet this is the kind of movie that I wanted to make

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ever since I was a kid, really,

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back when I was reading some comic books

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and dreaming about what the future might be.

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When American producers see my film,

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they think that I had a big budget to do it,

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like 23 million.

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But in fact I had 10 percent of that budget.

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I did "Mars et Avril" for only 2.3 million.

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So you might wonder, what's the deal here?

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How did I do this?

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Well, it's two things. First, it's time.

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When you don't have money, you must take time,

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and it took me seven years to do "Mars et Avril."

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The second aspect is love.

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I got tons and tons of generosity from everyone involved.

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And it seems like every department had nothing,

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so they had to rely on our creativity

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and turn every problem into an opportunity.

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And that brings me to the point of my talk, actually,

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how constraints, big creative constraints, can boost creativity.

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But let me go back in time a bit.

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In my early 20s, I did some graphic novels,

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but they weren't your usual graphic novels.

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They were books telling a science fiction story

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through images and text,

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and most of the actors who are now starring

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in the movie adaptation, they were already involved

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in these books portraying characters

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into a sort of experimental, theatrical, simplistic way.

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And one of these actors is the great stage director

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and actor Robert Lepage.

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And I just love this guy.

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I've been in love with this guy since I was a kid.

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His career I admire a lot.

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And I wanted this guy to be involved in my crazy project,

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and he was kind enough to lend his image

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to the character of Eugène Spaak,

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who is a cosmologist and artist who seeks relation

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in between time, space, love, music and women.

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And he was a perfect fit for the part,

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and Robert is actually the one who gave me my first chance.

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He was the one who believed in me

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and encouraged me to do an adaptation of my books

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into a film, and to write, direct,

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and produce the film myself.

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And Robert is actually the very first example

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of how constraints can boost creativity.

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Because this guy is the busiest man on the planet.

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I mean, his agenda is booked until 2042,

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and he's really hard to get,

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and I wanted him to be in the movie,

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to reprise his role in the movie.

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But the thing is, had I waited

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for him until 2042, my film wouldn't be

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a futuristic film anymore, so I just couldn't do that. Right?

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But that's kind of a big problem.

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How do you get somebody who is too busy

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to star in a movie?

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Well, I said as a joke in a production meeting --

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and this is a true story, by the way —

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I said, "Why don't we turn this guy into a hologram?

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Because, you know, he is everywhere

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and nowhere on the planet at the same time,

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and he's an illuminated being in my mind,

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and he's in between reality and virtual reality,

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so it would make perfect sense

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to turn this guy into a hologram."

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Everybody around the table laughed,

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but the joke was kind of a good solution,

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so that's what we ended up doing.

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Here's how we did it. We shot Robert with six cameras.

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He was dressed in green and he was like

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in a green aquarium.

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Each camera was covering 60 degrees of his head,

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so that in post-production we could use

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pretty much any angle we needed,

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and we shot only his head.

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Six months later there was a guy on set,

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a mime portraying the body,

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the vehicle for the head.

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And he was wearing a green hood

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so that we could erase the green hood in postproduction

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and replace it with Robert Lepage's head.

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So he became like a renaissance man,

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and here's what it looks like in the movie.

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(Music)

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(Video) Robert Lepage: [As usual, Arthur's drawing

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didn't account for the technical challenges.

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I welded the breech, but the valve is still gaping.

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I tried to lift the pallets to lower the pressure in the sound box,

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but I might have hit a heartstring.

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It still sounds too low.]

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Jacques Languirand: [That's normal.

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The instrument always ends up resembling its model.]

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(Music)

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Martin Villeneuve: Now these musical instruments

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that you see in this excerpt,

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they're my second example of how

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constraints can boost creativity,

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because I desperately needed these objects in my movie.

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They are objects of desire.

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They are imaginary musical instruments.

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And they carry a nice story with them.

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Actually, I knew what these things would look like

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in my mind for many, many years.

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But my problem was, I didn't have the money

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to pay for them. I couldn't afford them.

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So that's kind of a big problem too.

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How do you get something that you can't afford?

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And, you know, I woke up one morning with a pretty good idea.

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I said, "What if I have somebody else pay for them?"

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(Laughter)

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But who on Earth would be interested

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by seven not-yet-built musical instruments

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inspired by women's bodies?

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And I thought of Cirque du Soleil in Montreal,

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because who better to understand the kind of

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crazy poetry that I wanted to put on screen?

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So I found my way to Guy Laliberté, Cirque du Soleil's CEO,

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and I presented my crazy idea to him

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with sketches like this and visual references,

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and something pretty amazing happened.

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Guy was interested by this idea

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not because I was asking for his money,

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but because I came to him with a good idea

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in which everybody was happy.

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It was kind of a perfect triangle

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in which the art buyer was happy

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because he got the instruments at a cheaper price,

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because they weren't even made.

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He took a leap of faith.

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And the artist, Dominique Engel, brilliant guy,

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he was happy too because he had a dream project

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to work on for a year.

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And obviously I was happy because I got the instruments

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in my film for free, which was kind of what I tried to do.

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So here they are.

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And my last example of how constraints

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can boost creativity

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comes from the green,

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because this is a weird color, a crazy color,

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and you need to replace the green screens eventually

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and you must figure that out sooner rather than later.

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And I had, again, pretty much, ideas in my mind

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as to what the world would be,

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but then again I turned to my childhood imagination

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and went to the work of Belgian comic book master

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François Schuiten in Belgium.

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And this guy is another guy I admire a lot,

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and I wanted him to be involved in the movie

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as a production designer.

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But people told me, you know, Martin, it's impossible,

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the guy is too busy and he will say no.

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Well, I said, you know what, instead of mimicking his style,

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I might as well call the real guy and ask him,

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and I sent him my books,

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and he answered that he was interested

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in working on the film with me

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because he could be a big fish in a small aquarium.

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In other words, there was space for him to dream with me.

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So here I was with one of my childhood heroes,

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drawing every single frame that's in the film

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to turn that into Montreal in the future.

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And it was an amazing collaboration

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to work with this great artist whom I admire.

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But then, you know, eventually you have to turn

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all these drawings into reality.

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So, again, my solution was to aim

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for the best possible artist that I could think of.

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And there's this guy in Montreal, another Quebecois

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called Carlos Monzon, and he's a very good VFX artist.

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This guy had been lead compositor on such films

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as "Avatar" and "Star Trek" and "Transformers,"

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and other unknown projects like this,

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and I knew he was the perfect fit for the job,

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and I had to convince him,

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and, instead of working on the next Spielberg movie,

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he accepted to work on mine.

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Why? Because I offered him a space to dream.

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So if you don't have money to offer to people,

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you must strike their imagination with something

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as nice as you can think of.

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So this is what happened on this movie,

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and that's how it got made,

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and we went to this very nice postproduction company

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in Montreal called Vision Globale,

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and they lent their 60 artists to work full time

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for six months to do this crazy film.

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So I want to tell you that, if you have some crazy ideas

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in your mind, and that people tell you

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that it's impossible to make,

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well, that's an even better reason to want to do it,

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because people have a tendency

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to see the problems rather than the final result,

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whereas if you start to deal with problems

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as being your allies rather than your opponents,

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life will start to dance with you

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in the most amazing way.

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I have experienced it.

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And you might end up doing some crazy projects,

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and who knows, you might even end up

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going to Mars.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)