Did you see the small coffee shop across the street? Well, 10 years ago it was a video game store. And 20 years ago, something else. Small businesses are always evolving with time, and entrepreneurs are the ones who shape our cities. The Store, the new film Renault for utility vehicles tells one of these stories. Starting in 1912 with Pierre & Rose and a Renault Fourgon Postal, we will follow a small business passing through a family across generations. Each member of this family will transform this store and evolve with it, keeping this precious heritage alive. And Renault Utility vehicles were, are, and will always be there to help every professional to evolve. Because they make us evolve too.
From a production design view alone, this was a big challenge. The director’s vision was to not only stay outside the store where the Renault Vehicles park decade after decade, but to also go into the store. This means every detail had to perfectly match the period we are representing both inside and outside. Attention to every detail to recreate the atmosphere of a certain period. Fitting and props were carefully chosen. From the design of the stores to little details like logos, vinyl and DVD covers, posters, pinball machine… Everything was created for the shoot in order to create several rich universes. Because as the director said: “The “store” itself is the main character of this film.
The cinematography was as important as production design when travelling through time. We needed to feel the realness of the different situations, but we also assumed we had sort of theatre-ish/staged scenes.
So instead of emphasizing each era with tricks like vintage grain, textures, or film burns, we preferred to add an overall feeling with strong light bias (at the beginning with vivid, vibrant colors, also when the store closed), which makes it more consistent. The shoot had the complexity of the full puzzle. The constant transformation of the shop through the years allied to the 360 nature of the constant camera movement meant that every actor, and every prop had to be utilized and choreographed to work like a cog in a Swiss watch. Total precision.
