Etienne Proulx, a Canadian tabletop director, takes us behind the scenes of his career. Describing how his experience with: props, rigs and styling, has helped him film food. The conversation was led by Rob Payton – a passionate film director with 20 years of experience… and hungry for more.
R: To start I guess, one of the things that’s unique to you is the fact that you came into directing from styling?
E: Yeah, I was actually a prop master for many years, for feature films. When I got my American work permit I started working in New York as a rigger and a beer stylist. It became a big and busy business. After a while, I got sick of traveling the world and always shooting the same shots. I would travel for two days and shoot the same stuff I shot last week. That’s how I started becoming a director and shooting my own films.
At the same time I owned my Montreal workshop where I was doing all my testing. During this testing era, an agency creative said “we’re gonna shoot at your place”. And I said ‘oh, ok, that’s interesting. I have a little clean up to do! ’. We shot that beer job at my workshop and it became my studio. I started buying equipment and I always did my own lighting – the studio became quite famous. I decided to close it this year (2022) actually, since I’m enjoying traveling a bit more and working with other crews in different studios.
via www.etienneproulx.com
R: Was it frustrating working for other directors as a stylist – did you feel you could add more than them?
E: Well, at one point I was really into ‘call me if you have a pitch, I’m gonna find you 5 original shots’. I was very generous (with other directors) until 1 day I said ‘ok, I gotta keep my own ideas’. Sometimes I would ask the directors what they wanted to shoot and they wouldn’t know. That’s when I saw the opportunity of directing.
I think tabletop is growing, but it has been misdirected by live-action directors. It’s the part of the shoot they don’t really want to do.
R: Was it that you’d end up with completely dissociated shots that had no context within the body of the commercial?
E: Mixing the live-action together with tabletop is a tricky part. I actually enjoy shooting live-action now. In the beginning you look at shots – individual shots. Then, when you grow as a director you look at the whole film. It becomes natural to shoot the live-action part because it all goes together.
R: Liquid and Food stylists can be so secretive. They come here to Cape Town to shoot and they have a local assistant, but they don’t want to tell the local assistant what they’re doing. It seems almost like a dark art, a ‘magic circle’ of filmmakers…
E: I enjoy showing ‘behind the scenes’. I always do, even if I’m working with the agency people and with the creatives, I always show my tests and I always show my BTS. For some, they couldn’t imagine that it was that complicated or that simple, or even how we made it happen.
My take on this is that you still have to be able to capture that perfect image. That’s the hardest part of the job. There’s a lot of BTS stuff on Instagram and there are a lot of beginners that are looking at it and they go “oh, this is how you do it!”. Yet, you still gotta light it, you still need to find the right lens, you still gotta have the right camera move and shoot the right plate for the post. I think you can view whatever you want on social media, but there’s a very limited pool of people that can produce it and do it.
