Principal photography on this $2 million film took place in Marseilles from December 1995 to January 1996. The city's proximity to the Mediterranean border, and the sun's low position on the horizon during the winter, provided a golden luminosity during clear daytime skies. Godard maximized this warm aura with Kodak's 5245 stock, which she pushed one or two stops — for saturated colors and greater contrast — depending upon weather conditions and the requirements of the scene.
Despite Marseille's brilliant ambiance, the filmmakers opted against any panoramas of the metropolitan skyline, save for a scene that occurs after a rifle-toting Boni swipes Nénette's newborn from a local hospital. Denis, who has shot every one of her films on location, explicates, "Marseilles is a city I really like to photograph, but because I was so into Boni there was no space for it in the film. I told Agnès that we were not going to illustrate Marseille at the expense of Nénette and Boni's story." Godard concurs, adding succinctly that "the main landscapes were the faces of the actors, and these were infinite landscapes."
Almost all night exteriors were shot with practicals, namely sodium vapor street lamps (ranging from 1 to 3K in power) which emanated an orange glow. Denis desired a darkness highlighted only by a sodium/neon haze so that "Nénette and Boni would be like two children lost in the darkness." Godard, who photographed these scenes on 93 pushed one stop, reports that "this omnipresent sodium is very strange. At night, the entire city seems to be layered with a yellow cloud, and Claire really wanted to capture that in the film. We chose each location in regard to its natural light, and any sodium lights that I added from our lighting equipment would fall naturally [to mimic the glow cast by the streetlamps].
"In the beginning of the film, when Boni and his gang are stealing [merchandise] to put in the pizza truck, there was maybe 20K [worth of sodium vapor lights] around the area. I used a different cocktail of gels — yellow, orange and green — in front of normal lights to work off of the sodium. How I found this sodium color depended upon the lights we were using; the sodium lights of French cities can read very green, but sometimes I wanted a more brownish golden tone, so I would just add orange or green gels."
Despite having known one another for nearly 20 years, both Denis and Godard remain excited by the prospect of working together. The pair plan to team up again this winter on an as-yet-untitled feature regarding a legionnaire soldier; the film is to be shot on location in the East African nation of Djibouti, a former French colony. Says the cinematographer, "In working with Claire, I've learned to have confidence in my intuition. That's very important, because when I arrive at a location, I always look around and try to understand why it has been chosen and what the proper ambiance will be. I always work from reality, so when I see lighting in a movie that's perfectly right [for the scene], I'm very happy, because then cinema is truly there for me."
