What was the hardest scene to film?
Nothing.
No? Everything was easy?
Yeah, it's not too complicated to shoot and the crew was great and she was amazing, so ... Yeah, maybe to have the sarcophagus coming out of the Nile, in the middle of the Nile. That was kind of difficult to shoot because we were on the Nile [laughs] and the current is strong and the thing has to come from underwater and there's crocodiles, so we have to be careful. It was kind of tough to do.
Can you tell me something about the special effects? Did you do a mixture of live-action effects and CGI?
Usually the mummies are actors, they're all actors and you'd erase the actor and put the mummy, for the gestures and the expressions. But it's very interesting because, to make a good mummy, in fact, you need to have a really good actor. And that's the secret. The secret is not so much the technique, because after that you can find a bunch of engineers and talented guys to turn it into a real mummy, but I think the key is to have an actor who can really play the breakdance and act a little like a mummy. And that's a hard job to do. You don't have so many models [laughs] to watch.
And the pterodactyl effects?
So, yeah, the pterodactyl was more difficult for Louise because she has nothing to play with. She basically had a piece of wood in blue and that's it.
So you weren't tempted to mix digital pterodactyls with real life scale-models?
No, no, no. It's always a real size. We have this engine where she's sitting on it and you can move it every way like this [mimes]. That was kind of tough. It's like a crazy horse, you know? And all in blue ...
I think the key is to have an actor who can really breakdance and act a little like a mummy...
My French isn't that great but I noticed there were a lot of phrases and sayings that didn't get translated word for word in the subtitles, for example, Adele says “Minute, papillon” a lot and the subtitles didn't translate it as “Wait a minute, butterfly ...”
It's a French expression, you know? Very old-fashioned. Very, very old-fashioned.
So how much of the dialogue was language that was specific to the film as opposed to actual French expressions?
Yeah, in fact I used a lot of old-fashioned ways of saying things. “Minute, papillon” is a very famous expression, because a papillon, a butterfly, is always moving, so you say, 'Hold on, butterfly ...' like, 'Don't play the butterfly, just land.’ [Claps] And just in French, to have a mummy and say 'Minute, papillon', to call the mummy “butterfly”, it's just funny. So there's a lot of little things like that. Especially the first time she sees the pterodactyl and she puts the feather boa round its neck. Because there is this French song, very well known, [sings] 'Mon truc en plumes' - 'My thing with feathers' that's the translation, but the song is very funny. And she says 'Mon truc en plumes, plumes de z'oiseaux, de z'animeaux', which is exactly what happens, you know? It's difficult to translate in English, but it works in French.