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The Hollywood Reporter's Patrick Brzeski sat down with Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume to discuss 'Emilia Pérez' in a THR Q&A powered by Vision Media.
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00:00Welcome to The Hollywood Reporter Presents. I'm here with Paul Guilhomme, the cinematographer
00:11behind Jacques Odiard's acclaimed genre-defying cartel musical, Amelia Perez. Thank you for being
00:17with us, Paul. Thank you for having me. So this film tells the story of a ruthless Mexican cartel
00:23boss who dreams of transitioning into a woman and hires a savvy lawyer played by Zoe Saldana
00:30to facilitate the details of her journey. The story was very loosely inspired by a single chapter in
00:37Boris Razon's 2018 novel, Ecoute. And I understand it went through a lot of changes during the
00:45development process. So could you take us back to the beginning as you first came to the project,
00:51the conversations you had? So I first heard of the project during the first COVID, actually. I
00:57remember having a shoot that was cancelled and reading very, very early versions of the film.
01:05And at this time, Jacques was already working on the music with Camille and Clément Ducol on an opera.
01:14It was a five-act opera on stage. And he was developing, on the same time, a realistic cartel movie with the
01:27exact same story, but not on an opera, in location in Mexico with a very gritty style already attached to
01:36it. And it took a lot of time to, to the two projects to merge together into one and make Emilia Perez.
01:46So he was originally envisioning it as two completely distinct projects.
01:50Yes. And I think I didn't even know myself which one would I be shooting both or was it one or the
01:58others? It was like the process. Maybe it was already, already there, what would happen this merge of the two
02:07projects. But at this time, it was like that.
02:11Wow. Amazing. And can you share a bit about your involvement, about how they came together? What did Jacques tell you about his visual intentions?
02:22So when we started to, to really build a team and, and, and imagine shooting dates and everything, we were supposed
02:31to shoot in Mexico. So we went there several times. I think I spent like four months there on several occasions. And we
02:41scouted a lot of sets and, and, and imagined a lot of possibilities for the film. And, uh, it was not clear how much
02:52the dance would, the choreography would be present or anything, but we were building it anyway, you know, and
03:00after what was supposed to be the last location scouting, I remember that was probably in June, July,
03:07the summer passed. And at the end of the summer, we received this message from Jacques addressed to all of the,
03:13the, all of his teams, uh, saying that the movie was getting in a direction that was probably too real or too
03:25serious or even, yeah, too seriously integrated in, in reality. And he wanted to get away from that
03:35and do that film. That's maybe talks about very serious things, but to add an element of lightness
03:43in the treatment and, and in the process of doing it. So the starting point from there was that, okay,
03:50let's forget everything we have now and let's do the film on the studio and let's use all of the location
03:57scoutings we've done to, to, to, to as a starting point, but in none of the aesthetic, in the aesthetic
04:05of the studio, probably with a lot of black backgrounds, but we didn't know yet for sure.
04:12So at one point, I remember it was extensive, uh, meetings at Jack's place. We had this idea of maybe
04:21built set around the actors, maybe let's say on a 10 meters perimeter, that would be ultra realistic.
04:29So let's say we do a pavement with cracks and, uh, and, uh, and little flowers in the cracks and,
04:35but as soon as it goes away from the center of the scene, it would just fade to black around them.
04:42We did some tests. I think the idea was beautiful. I was really loving this idea, but the,
04:49the tests actually were taking us so much away from the story and probably from the emotion of just
04:58seeing the story and fall in front of your eyes that suddenly it was not the, the, the,
05:05we realized it was, it was a mistake to do it so extremely, uh, strange.
05:12Mm-hmm. Detailed and realistic.
05:14Yes. No, I mean, the, the black background.
05:16With the fully black background.
05:17Yes. It was, it was creating something that was too extreme.
05:21Okay.
05:21And, and so we, we kept on that aesthetic, but make, made it involved, including now a
05:29lot of blue screens and much more construction than we should plan.
05:33And, and that actually created the, the final Emilia Perez look.
05:37Yeah. It's such a unique look. Um, could you share, did you have references or inspirations,
05:43touch points from, uh, art history, cinema, music videos, perhaps?
05:50Yes. Uh, so the film, it was strange because we don't, we didn't have a unique reference.
05:56Sometimes, very often when you make a film, you're like, okay, it's, uh, I don't know,
06:00uh, a sicario, but with, it was not the, the case here. It was so different with the music,
06:06the choreography, the, the kind of, the genre of the film that was not even really
06:13something we could say, this is this genre of film.
06:16Mm-hmm.
06:16But the, we had references, uh, for each of the aspects of the film.
06:22Okay.
06:22So it was more like a combination of references and backgrounds from all of us that, that combined.
06:29I know as a cinematographer, before every project, I, I look at No Country for Old Men,
06:34for example. It's like the, the movie I see on the day before the shoot, just to have a reminder of
06:41what is, what is in a way, uh, perfect to my eyes. But the film is not that. It's not No Country for
06:49Old Men. It's like, uh, Jacques has an aesthetic of, of movement. He uses a lot of long lenses, but not only.
06:57There is something that comes from my collaborations with him because now it's three projects we did
07:03together. It's, yeah, for, for him, the, he, he has visual ideas, very strong ones, but it always
07:12has to be in a motion somehow. So it can be either a hand in front of the lens or a light that changes
07:19during the take. That would be temporal change. And, or, or it would be a camera movement if the
07:25scene is too fixed. For example, he would always film city people handheld and maybe the opposite,
07:32walking people with a long lens, uh, on, on a tripod. So he always tries to bring movement and, and to
07:38keep the film in, in a kind of, of motion. And that's really in this way, uh, the etymology of
07:45cinematography, it's like, uh, telling a story through movement. And that's really what he does.
07:50It's, and, and this is continued in the editing. There is something with Juliette's cut that
07:59very subtly just make your eyes travel from one part of the frame to the other,
08:04and then take your attention point back in the cut to another place. But it's always like a smooth
08:09movement that she creates. And it creates this kind of energy of continuous movement and something
08:18unfolding in front of you. That's, that's very fluid actually. So, so that's, I think it's hard to
08:24define Jacques's style maybe, but to me, that's the key. Interesting. The aesthetic of movement.
08:31As you were describing that, I began picturing the first, uh, song sequence. Um, there's so much
08:39going on in that scene. Yeah. Yeah. And it really announces the film as something you've never seen
08:46before. Um, can you talk a little bit about the creation of that first piece? Yes. So that sequence,
08:52we wanted to have Rita, uh, played by Zoe Saldana in her everyday life, where you can realize that
09:01she has a very demanding job. She, she does, she did a lot of studies. She's, she's brilliant, but
09:06she didn't get the, the, she's not appreciated for that enough. She, she doesn't have the lifestyle she
09:15would deserve and, and, and she, but she's fighting. But so in this scene, she's writing the plea for her
09:23boss that he will just appropriate on the next scene. And she's just starting to build something
09:30in her head. And the idea was, uh, okay, we, we have to be in the motion of the, the, the process of
09:36imagining things. And we knew we wanted her to start in an empty street with the world, with the, uh,
09:45actual people from the city arriving around her and, and kind of, uh, bringing a layer of, of politics
09:52maybe to, to, to what she does. So the, the, the street, the street starts empty and then suddenly
09:58the people arrive and a market is building itself around her. All the market stores were on wheels
10:05and we had, we had to shoot this film first thing on the shoot. It was one of the most complicated,
10:11but it was a schedule thing with the studios. So it was the only time the big studio was available.
10:19So we built the street. We knew that for the length of the scene, we would have to go four times back
10:25and forth in the street with different combinations of the, of the market. And the, and so we, and we knew
10:33also, and that's part of Jacques style. We didn't want you to look maybe to studio or to like a musical
10:41in bright and shiny way. So we decided, and that was very scary for us, but to, to, to light only
10:49with practical lights. So actually all of the lights come either from a street lamp, uh, or, and, and, and
10:59mainly from the market stores, little lights, low energy lights or, or, or neon lights or fluorescent
11:06lightings. And all of these market stores was controlled by wifi and, and, and auto-alimented,
11:13the auto powered by a battery and controlled on a console. So the camera could do 360s around her,
11:21go into the crowd and the lights behind the camera would just switch off for a moment and go back on
11:27as the camera was turning around her. So it was like, but we had the, the chance for this scene
11:32to have a very precise choreography and to have almost a proposition of what scale of shots and
11:41from where approximately to be from the choreographer who, who we discussed it. We, we did tests,
11:47we filmed with the actress and, and extras and dancers. Weeks before the shoot, we actually pre-edited
11:54the sequence. Okay. But without all the elements of the lighting, obviously, or the set, but just
12:00the, the, the bones of the sequence were already edited when we started that. And was there any room
12:06left for improvisation or is it so complex that everything had to be? So, yes. On this scene,
12:11you have this main steady cam movements that are mostly planned in advance. And there is also all
12:17of the life moments where she is, uh, eating at this small, uh, restaurant in the market,
12:24she's talking to her friend or, or she, uh, also is interacting with people around her. That, that's,
12:32that's something we shot handheld on a much more gritty way. And, and we, we wanted the camera to be
12:38kind of immersed in the, in the, in the world as soon, as much as we could. Yes. Amazing. Um,
12:48so I'd love to hear a bit about the, the color and the lighting and how it relates thematically
12:53to Amelia's journey. Because at the beginning of the film, it's all very dark and murky, although
12:58there's some kind of electronic elements threaded through the look. And then obviously after she
13:05transitions, um, the light emerges. Um, so yeah, what you say is, is almost included in the script.
13:15So it was kind of, uh, the, the, the, the natural travel in, in, in the making of the, the history.
13:25Do you start at night in a very urban night with, or at least when it's not urban, when it's a desert,
13:30you have this, yeah, uh, light from the cars or light from small fixtures or from LEDs or screens
13:38in the background. There's always something very, uh, um, yeah, it's, it's only practicals and it's
13:46modern practicals and, and it creates, when you have the practicals in the shot, it creates an image
13:52that's naturally very shiny. If you add some highlights in the frame, suddenly the, the blacks
14:00around the highlights seem much more black and it creates something that Jacques actually really
14:07likes. He, he wants a shiny image. And, and it's very rare as a cinematographer to read the script
14:14and the first act is all happening by night. It's, it's, it's, it's a blessing because Jacques was
14:20really happy to go deep into the darkness of the first act because it would only make more impactful
14:30the moment where the light arrives. So that's, that's something as soon as we could just see
14:37the shape of the face or it was okay. We didn't have to, to, to, yeah, we, we could be very extreme
14:44in that first act. Then you have this much more, let's say happy, uh, intermed in the middle of the
14:53story. And then there's a last act of the film that's happening by night again, but that's, uh,
15:00an extremely different light. Uh, it's a, it's, it's a night, uh, that's much more matte as opposed to
15:07shiny and, and, and, and contrasty. And that's a night that, uh, maybe would resemble the, the ones
15:14from, uh, probably zero dark 30 or even the nights that we saw recently on Nope. It's a night where you
15:20don't have any highlights. You're exploring the bottom 20% of the signal. And this, the feeling
15:27is very different. It's much more grayish. It's, it's like, you have to, to scrutinize just to, to,
15:33to be sure that you saw something. So the, the real question in the grading for this last act,
15:40where in the desert, you don't have any highlights anymore was okay. How, how dark do we go? How can
15:46we avoid to be gray? Because if you look at, uh, especially a cinema screen for a long time,
15:53even if it's a black screen after 30 seconds, you, you perceive it gray and not black anymore.
15:58Hmm. So the only way to perceive it black anymore is either to have the highlights inside the frame
16:04or to have the highlights in between the frames. And, and the, the strategy there was to rhythm
16:10this sequence where you don't have any highlights anymore in the frame with explosions, night vision
16:17Googles, or sometimes when you have a practical, just integrated in the frame, just to reset the eye.
16:23Okay. And, and, and, and you can go back, you, you, you, you fill the tank for another 30 seconds of,
16:29of almost pure darkness. Interesting. And thematically, um, what's your interpretation of
16:37what that light means about that stage and Amelia's journey? So that's, that's really the last moment.
16:43I think it's, it's, it's almost, uh, the defeat of, of her hope at this time, the hope that she could
16:48live the life she wanted. And, and, and, and it's a very, it's a pretty dark, uh, ending. There,
16:55there is a scene just after this final act that just opens up again to, to hope. But this moment,
17:04I remember Jacques because there is a miracle in the film. I think it's something very subtle in the end
17:10now, but Amelia is woken up as she passed or died. Maybe it's a very short moment. It's not a spoiler,
17:18but at the moment, she, she's not there anymore anyway. And the smoke from the guns, uh, uh, attracted
17:26back inside the restaurant where she's held captive and, and, and, and goes to her nose and she wakes up
17:32again. And that's, uh, that's a moment, a whole moment, uh, even the scenes just before and after.
17:40Jacques wanted the light at this moment to come from nowhere. That was his world. Because as a
17:45cinematographer, you always need to, to have a story for a light you place. It's, it's, it's almost impossible
17:52to, to light a face if you are not having in your, in your, even in the back of your head, uh, maybe it's a
17:59small lantern, maybe it's a tiny window or a huge window. You have to have a, a scenario for the light
18:07always to be able to, to imagine something. And, and at this moment of the story for the first time
18:13of my life, the answer was no, no, the, there is no scenario of the light. The light comes from nowhere.
18:18Wow. And so what we did, uh, was that the, this restaurant has a lot of practicals for the first part of
18:28the scene before Jesse switches off the lights. And at one point the lights are switched off and
18:35there is an actually transparent ceiling that was built by our department for us to light it from
18:41above. Like it's almost a light from the stars or the moon, just putting a very soft and without any
18:51shadow, very low ambient lights to, to the, to the scene. And, and somehow it looks maybe like in 3d,
19:00uh, when you build a 3d world, you know, before you add the light sources, yeah, you have a kind of
19:04for, to work the, the, the 3d artists use a kind of light that comes from everywhere. Yeah. So that's
19:12maybe the answer to a light that comes from nowhere. It's, it was a light that comes from everywhere,
19:16but that's very, very dimmed down. Right. Yeah. It almost felt like everything was slightly glowing
19:20like an ember or something. Yeah. Fantastic. Um, so you have a background in music videos. Um,
19:29that's pretty recent. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, you shot videos, you know, for Kanye West and Rosalia,
19:36um, very high profile music videos. Um, was that a background that you could leverage for this project?
19:41It's natural. Yeah. I think it shot it. So we had been working together with Jacques, but I think,
19:46um, it's, it's videos that he mentioned very early, uh, in the process when he sent me the film,
19:52he wanted to, to do something that would maybe sometimes go a little off the tracks of cinema and,
20:00and off musical just to, but the, the answer is not, um, easy because there's not only one answer.
20:08In the film, you have musical moments that, uh, are treated like a normal moment of the story.
20:16Some scenes are very, it's, it's a kid recognizing the smell of, of a parent and, and that's just,
20:24you know, the camera is there. It's just there to, to see the face and the emotion of the actors.
20:29And some scenes are much more epic in the, in the filmmaking and, and the, and the camera work
20:36and the lighting work because suddenly it's moments where we know that we want to give a new
20:41impulsion to the story. So to, for this moment, I actually built, uh, a team
20:49that I, I, I, I worked with a steady cam operator, Sasha Masseri, which is, which was only shooting his
20:56second feature ever on this film, but he's like a superstar of music video. And, um, and there's a
21:03sequence, uh, at, uh, around the middle of the film where Zoe Saldana is singing on a charity gala.
21:11Yeah. And that sequence, we had the visual idea that was, it's, it's a gala. The walls are completely
21:21black. So that's one of the reminiscences of the early stages of what the film could have been.
21:27But, and, and she is followed by a very strong light, almost like on a, on a stage. And she's
21:35able to take control of that light and point it to the people that she talks about. And so,
21:41Zoe had to be able to just do a gesture and the light would follow and focus on someone. So for that,
21:47we called a company that's called Alien Studio. They are specialized on live event lightings.
21:54They built rigs and they had like a laser infrared cameras and in the ceiling just to be able to see
22:00in the dark and to point a place and of this, the light fixture would just follow whatever spot we
22:06would point in, in the frame, in the space. But for the camera work, it was much more different.
22:11We needed much more free. So it was a lot of work and anticipation, but we needed freedom for the
22:16camera. So that's the scene that's shot almost exclusively on Steadicam with a short lens. And we
22:22actually cut this scene in eight bits and we proceeded step by step, bits by bits with the camera
22:31finding the best position with Zoe and Damien and saying, okay, and now we do a 360 and, and, and, and,
22:40and it's a, it's something that we just built on the day actually. And that's, that wouldn't have been
22:48possible. I think without someone who has this experience in this video that Sasha had.
22:52Mm-hmm yeah. Her choreography is really wild and elaborate. She's jumping on tables and spinning
22:57around. Interesting. And yeah, it occurred to me that, you know, we talked earlier about how the
23:03lighting follows Amelia's character journey, but it sounds like in that sequence, it's also kind of
23:09mirroring Zoe's character's journey. She's like taking power compared to the early.
23:15Yeah. She almost takes control of the form of the film.
23:18Yeah. Wow. How cool. Maybe we could talk about Selena Gomez's signature song.
23:24Oh yes.
23:25Me Camino or My Way. It's presented almost like a karaoke performance. And I guess that one probably
23:33felt the most like a music video to me. Yes. It was, so it's happening in, in a nightclub. We are
23:41starting the scene with, with Zoe and she's having a very boring meeting with, with a guy and she hears
23:48this familiar voice in the background. So she's, she, she picks an eye and then she sees Selena singing
23:57with her lover. And, and that's a scene. Yeah. That's embraces all of the codes of the, the pop music video.
24:06So, and so, and, but there was an idea that was very strong from Jacques and he wanted one of the
24:13walls or maybe two of the walls, or we didn't know yet at one point to be a screen in the background.
24:20So, and the question was what would be on the screen, but he had this intuition that it would
24:25almost look like a virtual production set or something like that. Okay.
24:29And what happened is that when we explored the possibilities, we, we started to, to realize
24:37that the video last and that's created when you put, it's like when you put two mirrors in front
24:42of each other, you can see the repetition, the endless repetition of, of the characters that are
24:47in front of, of one of the cameras. So we fed the signal of this, this practical camera, let's say,
24:57uh, in, in, in the screens. And, and, and there was, uh, two things that occurred when we were,
25:05we had, we had to choose and pick the screens. We had budget from the problems, obviously. And,
25:10and what I was constantly being told was like, you have two elements that costs a lot of money is to
25:18have a tiny pitch. So a good resolution in the, in the screens behind the actress and to have, uh,
25:25uh, a very small latency. So, uh, not too much delay between the image that you shoot over and the
25:33image that is repeated in the background. Okay.
25:35Yeah. And we realized actually that the less perfect it was, the more
25:43interesting was the result. The, the, the low resolution was creating this kind of pixelized
25:49face that we, we really loved. So we went for the lowest pitch we could ever find.
25:54Wow.
25:55And the latency was creating a delay between Selena's images. So when she moves, it's like a snake.
26:02You can see a delay between her and her images in the background. So, and, and we improved that
26:08latency also. So that, that was actually, uh, how we found the scene.
26:13Okay. And it adds to sort of like the karaoke parlor feeling of it.
26:18Um, it's a really sweet moment too. Um, there's another moment with, uh, Selena,
26:24a song called Bienvenida.
26:26Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
26:28So, so yes, the, uh, Bienvenida was, uh, so the, the, the, the idea was that Selena is always,
26:37Selena's character is always taken from one place to the other. She, she's been sent to Switzerland.
26:42And now she, she, she, it's, it's, it's, it's the end of the first act. And she has to come back,
26:49uh, to Mexico because she's just told to, and she's starting, starting to be pretty angry about
26:54that. And that's actually one of the motors of the, the story itself. And the, so she wakes up into
27:01this beautiful room and, and, and, and, and Jacques was saying that he wanted some dance here because
27:10she had dark ideas in her mind and he wanted to film the dark ideas. I see.
27:15So the question was, how do we connect this dark world that she's, uh, looping into and, and, and,
27:24beautiful sunlight that comes through the curtains on her beautiful shiny bed. And what we did is that
27:32we actually removed one walls, uh, from her room of the set and we built a huge black room on the
27:41background with black floor and, and black walls. And we replaced this wall by two very strong lasers
27:48that would just materialize the transition between those two worlds, her inner world and, and the real
27:55world, for example, so to say. And then, and the camera had to be able to track with her from one world
28:03to the other. And that's where the studio makes a lot of sense because you can actually switch off
28:10the sun and the sky when she crosses the, the, the, the, this, this wall. So if you look carefully,
28:17you can see, we shot a very long takes, but obviously the editing had other questions about
28:24rhythms and, and being with the character and everything, but it's, it, it was working on set
28:30and you can still see it in the film that as soon as she crosses this wall, the light of the room switch
28:37off. There's one light above the dark ideas that switches on and, and back and forth, she's able to
28:44switch from one world to the other. And each world is just switching on and off as she moves.
28:50Wow. I can't wait to watch the film again after all this. And I'm assuming the, the final sequence
28:56in the desert was the, the section that you shot on location. Um, some of it at least, or what was
29:05shot on location? No, this sequence, this, this last act was maybe the more complicated in terms of
29:10of how do we do it. Um, and because we were shooting mainly in France, we knew we could shoot
29:19some things in Mexico. There, there was a, we shot 10, 15 days there. And, um, but for each shot of this
29:29sequence, there was a meeting almost like, how do we do this one? And, and in the end you have, uh,
29:36uh, shots that are shot on stage. That's the interior of the restaurant. Sometimes you can see
29:41that the front ground of, of, of Selena and, and, and Carla singing together is shot at normal speed,
29:5024 FPS. But the background, the battle and, and the men fighting in the same room is shot like 100 FPS.
29:58So we separated the space in two, put blue screens in the middle, did two takes to be able to separate
30:05the temporality of these two spaces. And, uh, you have the exteriors of the restaurant that are shot
30:13on a quarry. A quarry? Yeah. In Mexico? Uh, in, in France. In France. And so actually all of the,
30:23uh, the, so we built the facade of the restaurant. We, we brought a lot of decorations to the quarry
30:30to make it look like the desert. We, we loved when we were in Mexico and, and there were huge extensions
30:38then around this, uh, 300 meters perimeter, uh, VFX extensions to make it like the desert. And, and
30:45because we were surrounded by the walls actually in this big quarry. So that was the second, uh,
30:52kind of, uh, setup. And the first setup, the third setup is, uh, blue screens with cars where you have
31:01a lot of the riding moments that we shot on blue screen. And then you can see in the, in the sequence,
31:07there is like three shots, wide shots of the cars riding through the desert very fast. And that's a full
31:153d shot. That's a full 3d shot. So it's a, each shot was a combination of different techniques and,
31:21and with a lot of previsualizations and, and, and discussions with the VFX teams and, and decoration
31:28to say, okay, what is the best way to do this shot? Wow. I can appreciate the challenge of threading
31:34all that together. And yeah, and the problem is how to keep the consistency to the scene actually.
31:40Yeah. And do you have a favorite shot in the film, a personal favorite?
31:45I like very much. So it's the, one of the, it's maybe the beginning of this last act. It's, uh,
31:52Rita is building, uh, a team of soldiers. They are still in La Lucecita and you can see through the
31:59window, they are preparing, uh, the weapons for this war. And so there's a few shots in the beginning
32:06of the sequence, but then you have a long zoom in that covers most of the scene from the situation
32:12with the music, uh, concrete music from the, the clicks of the guns that create a reason.
32:19And, and, and you, and you zoom to Rita's face actually and isolate her in the space. So I like
32:26the feeling that, uh, this continuous zoom movement on a motor, uh, gives you that you cannot stop
32:33what's happening anymore. It's going to happen. Inevitability. Yes. Oh, wow. Very cool.
32:40Very cool. I guess so. I'm curious to hear how you view this film, uh, within the context of your
32:46career. Uh, do you see it as like another kind of stepping stone in your filmography or do you think
32:52the experience of making it will stick with you? And what's for sure is that I never had done anything
32:59like this. I had no references, but I think no one in the team had. So it was just experimenting
33:05together and, and knowing that we were trying to do something that we didn't know completely,
33:12uh, what it would be anyway. So, so sometimes it was pretty scary for all of us. I think for Jacques
33:19also, you know, you're, you're doing this thing and you're doing your best, but you have no idea
33:27where it will lead you in the end, you know, just hope it will be, you just hope you'll be proud of
33:34it in the end in the process. Yeah. I mean, that's what makes it so miraculous, um, for the viewer as
33:41well, uh, original it is truly original. Thank you so much for joining us today and congratulations on
33:47the film. Thank you. It was a pleasure.
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