INFORMATIONS

Ashes to Ashes is an unofficial short film shot in 13 days and postproduced in France between 2006 and 2008. This fan film is based on the Batman character created by Bob Kane and on the graphical universe of Franck Miller’s Sin City.  Original screenplay by Samuel Bodin and directed by Julien Mokrani & Samuel Bodin.


  
 
THE ADVENTURE

Right in the middle of the super-heroes’ fashion, and benefitting from Batman’s rehabilitation thanks to Christopher Nolan, the two young filmmakers Julien Mokrani and Samuel Bodin went through the challenging project of a short film immersing us right in the heart of Gotham City. « One day, Julien grabbed me outside my acting class » tells Samuel. « He wanted to know if among my screenplays, one was not standing out as crazier, kind of impossible, but that maybe we’d be fool enough to try to materialize ! As it happened, for several months, I had in my computer a fantasy project : a crime story taking place in Gotham in the 30’s


  
 

The script was almost composed of a 100 pages but Julien only wanted 20 pages. Cutting the script was heartbreak to me. But I did it.
« Our Batman is not human », Julien explained, « he’s a shadow, he wants revenge. His figure is very sharp, vampire-like and rough. The only thing you will recognize from Nolan’s Batman is his deep and rough voice. Miller’s work (Dark Knight, Sin City) and Dave McKean’s Batman : Arkham Asilum were inspiring to us. We also used the retro style of the Tim Sale’Joker. »


  
 

« He’s kinda like an enormous Nosferatu whom you just can’t define the contours », Samuel added, « a furious divinity if we could say so. And for this we used fishing thread and fabrics! Let’s say we are proud of the result. This happened thanks to the extraordinary work the postproduction team done. Postproduction was a huge part of the project since the major part of this short-film was shot with a green screen. On a visual point of view, we used R.Rodriguez’s work as a background but finally we would use as little 3D as possible and work with 2D solids to be as close as possible of comics universe.  300’s skies, Mignola’s Gotham by Gashlight and hundreds of photos of New-York under the 20ies and 40ies helped us create our Gotham : a city not yet out of the economic crisis in 1939.»


  
  R-One Chaffiot - Mad Movies Magazine