For Arev Manoukian, capturing the live action for his elegant short film Nuit Blanche

The Actors

“Our lead actors, Megan Lindley and Michael Coughlan, were shot separately and only met on the last day,” Manoukian says. “We also had about six background actors. We shot them as separate layers so we could place them wherever we wanted. If you look carefully, you can see one of the actors appear three times in the same shot!”

The Green Screen

“The green-screen space was too small for the width of the first establishing street shot so we had to shoot some of our background pedestrians walking on a treadmill,” says Manoukian. “We then tracked and animated them walking across the whole width of the screen.”

The shooting schedule was carefully segmented, he adds. “We spent one day for physical elements like the puddle, wine glass and smoke/dirt particles for the car crash; one day for the Woman’s cafe side of the film; another day for the Man’s side of the street; and one last day for the background actors.”

The Virtual Set

“All the street environments and sets were created digitally in post‐production from still photographs that I took in Paris, Toronto and Ottawa,” Manoukian says. “Visual effects artists Marc-Andre Gray