Actor, writer, director and producer Nicolas Dozol studied cinema at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français (CLCF). He has since directed 10 short films, and released his debut feature Last Party (which he also wrote and produced) earlier this year at the Chelsea Film Festival. Victoria Luxford, who interviews him, describes Dozol’s latest creation as a film with “a lot of ambition, turning the high school/teen drama on its head”. Dozol also appeared on television series The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, playing various zombies.

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Victoria Luxford – What first inspired the project?

Nicolas Dozol – The first ideas started when I was a trainee at Swiss TV RTS. I was working on an issue about the impact and damage created by children and young adults who voluntarily expose their wealth on social networks. I then had the idea of a project to bring together four people from different social and cultural backgrounds who would find themselves locked in a single room. This idea was one of the starting points.

VL – The film has a rich and diverse cast of characters, how difficult was it to find the right cast?

ND – After several casting sessions using self-tape videos, we tested the main actors to see if they had the right chemistry. It was all about feelings. I think, what helped, was that they didn’t know each other and learned to discover each other’s characters directly on the set.

VL – What inspired the decision to present the film as one continuous take?

ND – I wanted to create the same temporality between the audience and the characters. They evolve and feel the same emotions at the same pace. For me, the best way to create this emotion is to use long takes, creating the illusion of a single long take.

VL – What were the particular challenges of achieving that effect?

ND – The choreography between the camera and the actors’ actions has to be perfect and very precise, otherwise, the shot won’t work and won’t be usable. So a lot of rehearsal is needed. Then the transitions between shots should not be visible, to maintain the illusion of a single shot and continuity. To do this, the cinematographer and I shot a pre-shoot of the entire movie to test the transitions, and at the end of each night’s shooting, the different shots were edited to check that the transitions were working.

VL – Can you talk us through the process of creating the score with Niels Caron, which really amplifies the tone of the story?

ND – I had asked the composer Niels Caron to create some of the score before shooting the film, so I wanted to choreograph the characters’ actions and camera movements to music so that they would become one. Then in post-prod, the music was reworked and mixed with the sound design. And finally, it was given a place of its own.

VL – The film presents a deeper portrayal of the teenage experience. Is that something you feel is missing in many mainstream films about the high school/teenage experience?

ND – I think so, perhaps due to the fact that most of the time, these films are written and directed by people who have lived and have long memories of their teenage years. That’s why I wanted to work with young screenwriters like myself, who had just left that period and were going through the brutal transition of being a young adult.

VL – What inspired the decision to have the film’s ending interpretation?

ND – One of the artists and filmmakers who inspire me most is David Lynch. I find his philosophy and working methods captivating. The idea of proposing a point-of-view to be interpreted in a personal way is what I wanted to do. In everyday life, everyone experiences and deals with their emotions in a completely different way. I find it interesting to reflect this in an artistic work.

VL – Is there a message or feeling that you want audiences to come away with after seeing the film?

ND – Please, be respectful of each other because we never know what personal consequences our actions may have on each other’s feelings and experiences.

VL – Finally, do you have any projects lined up for the future that you can tell us about?

ND – I have several writing projects for films and series, including genre film projects. I’ve just done a rewrite of my second feature film, which I started writing four years ago, and I’m looking for a producer to accompany me on this new project. It’s a genre film, a slasher set during the Avoriaz Film Festival in 1985. Otherwise, I’m working on mainly American films and series shooting in France. I also have choreographic projects and continue to paint.

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Nicolas Dozol is pictured at the top of this interview. The other image is a still from Last Party.