A dramatic and visual short film, “Nuit Blanche” explores an experience many of us have had before—a fleeting yet powerful bond with a perfect stranger. Set in a dark cobblestone street in the 1950s, a man catches the gaze of a woman in a cafe across the street. This split-second moment becomes suspended in time, as the two gravitate towards each other in a hyper-real fantasy where nothing can hold them back.
An unforgettable moment with a stranger happens to everyone, especially in a large metropolitan city. It lasts for a split second and then things get awkward so we turn away. I wanted to take that moment of attraction and stretch it in a hyper-real fantasy where things unfold like slow- motion photography. I wanted to create something beautiful within the cliché. It is a daydream recorded on film that turned out exactly how we imagined it.
The actors in “Nuit Blanche” were shot in a greenscreen studio in Toronto. All the street environments and sets were created digitally in post-production with matte paintings of still photographs taken in Paris and Toronto. Pre-production took a few months of part-time work as we created an animated pre-viz and did numerous visual effects tests.
The challenging part was that we had to create almost everything. There was a huge volume of assets to make, from wet streets to 3D leaves and cars. But the hardest was trying to figure out what the main effects should look like. After breaking real glass at over 2000 frames per second on set, we realized that it would never look the way we wanted. We had to create and animate the glass in 3D. The visual effects took about eight months of work with Marc-Andre Gray as the main visual effects artist. It was a grueling process but it was a pleasure to do because we were very passionate about the project.
For 3D we used Maya and Mental Ray, 3ds Max and Vray. For compositing we used After Effects. The matte paintings were done in Photoshop and mapped in 3D. Editing was very simple as we only had about 24 shots. We used Adobe Premiere as it integrates very well with After Effects. Our computer was a first generation dual-core Athlon running windows XP. It is now considered an antique but we still use it!

Directed by: Arev Manoukian; Produced by: Stephanie Swedlove & Arev Manoukian; VFX by: Marc-Andre Gray; Music by: Samuel Bisson; Starring: Michael Coughlan & Megan Lindley; Cinematographer: Arev Manoukian; Casting: Jeff Marshall; Assistant Director: Andrew Cividino; Production Designer: Arev Manoukian & Marc-Andre Gray; Art Director / Costumes: Dan Levy; Camera Operator: Jay Pavao; Camera Assistant: Max Armstrong; Gaffer: Alan Poon; Editor: Arev Manoukian; Compositor / Animator: Marc-Andre Gray; Effects Supervisors: Marc-Andre Gray & Arev
Manoukian; Additional Compositing: Arev Manoukian; Matte Painter: Pat Lau; Colorist: Andre Chlebak. Nuit Blanche is a Stellar Scene Pictures film produced in Canada.

Arev Manoukian (CA). Raised in a family of artists and engineers in Montreal, Arev Manoukian plays with art and technology to tell stories in ways that challenge his imagination. He recently turned one of his day dreams into a short film, the stunning hyper-real fantasy „Nuit Blanche“. After studying film in Toronto, Arev soon began directing music videos for local bands which went to air on Much Music. Recently he has directed interactive jobs for clients such as Mazda, Axe, Wrigley Gum, 20th Century Fox and the NFL. Arev directed Nokia’s interactive commercial „The Passenger“, a Cannes Cyber Lions and One Show finalist.