Jeunet: Auteur of Collaborative Works

a deliberately nightmarish feel, overall, his quirks only add edge to the imaginative environments he imagines.

The City of Lost Children utilizes wide angled lenses to distort human features and sets, making it a prime example. According to source Two, these camera lenses have a wider than normal angle of view and produce foreshortened images in the center that increasingly become distorted towards the outer edges. This effect catches the attention of the audience at the start of the City of Lost Children clip. Additionally, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet created his own camera called the 'snorrie cam' that attaches to actors and actresses, giving the audience a direct and personal experience by expressing each movement. This camera is most prominently used in Delicatessen and differs from a steadicam, which absorbs all movement.

Show a clip from Delicatessen featuring the use of snorriecam and an extreme close up of the face. The technical skills of Jeunet were acknowledged at the 2002 Oscars where Amelie, a movie directed by him, was a nominee for five accolades. According to Delbonnel, Jeunet described the film as a happy one during their initial conversation and wanted the viewers to feel uplifted while watching it. He envisioned a fairy tale-like appearance for the film.

During preproduction, Jean-Pierre and the team discussed the desired outcome for the images. He wanted dark blacks and saturated colors while maintaining other areas of the frame. When Duboi introduced a new service for achieving this effect digitally, Jean-Pierre knew he wanted real blues, greens, and golden yellows. Delbonnel shares an example of a scene filmed on a rainy day in Paris that they wanted to enhance.

In the background of

the shot, the sky had an almost white appearance while a building wall was quite dark. The colorist was instructed to use four or five Power Windows to adjust the colors of various elements in the frame. This included fine-tuning the colors of the sky and building wall, enhancing rain droplets on the ground, and deepening the greenish and reddish hues of a grocery store facade. Jeunet's distinct style is easily identifiable, with 75% of surveyed individuals able to distinguish it from other contemporary French films during primary research.

Jeunet's work has attracted both fans who are familiar with his style, as well as newcomers. His films are distinguished by their use of vivid colors, unconventional camera angles, creative editing, meticulous attention to detail, complex devices, and a pervasive otherworldly, fantastical atmosphere. At the heart of all Jeunet's movies is a single recurring theme: dreams. A comparison of clips from Delicatessen and A Very Long Engagement illustrates this theme. Jeunet recognizes his unique style and attributes his success to it. In an interview (SOURCE 1), he remarked, "I think I am the only director in the French language whose films are released everywhere in the world... Maybe I am lucky."

"Perhaps it is due to my films' emphasis on visuals," Jeunet suggests, as his whimsical storylines have garnered global appeal.