Before Sunset - Production

Production

After Before Sunrise, Linklater, Hawke and Delpy had spent time considering the possibility of a sequel. Linklater described an early version as being more like a traditional romantic comedy, filmed in four locations and with a much larger budget, but when they failed to secure funding, the ideas for the movie were scaled back. In a 2010 interview Hawke revealed that the three of them had worked on several potential scripts over the years following the first film, including one for a story that took place two years after Before Sunrise, but as time went on and the lack of funding meant that the film was not made immediately, parts of the earlier scripts were included in the final draft of Before Sunset instead. Linklater said that the process of creating the final version of the film was that "we sat in a room and worked together in about a two- or three-day period, worked out a very detailed outline of the whole film in this sort of real-time environment. And then, over the next year or so, we just started e-mailing each other and faxing. I was sort of a conduit – they would send me monologues and dialogues and scenes and ideas, and I was editing, compiling and writing. And that's how we came up with a script." Hawke commented on the reason for making the film:

The movie was filmed entirely on location in Paris. It opens inside the Shakespeare and Company bookstore on the Left Bank, and after following Jesse and Celine walking along the streets outside the bookstore and in the Marais district of the 4th arrondissement, the other locations are the Le Pure Café in the 11th arrondissement, the Promenade Plantée park in the 12th arrondissement, on board a bateau mouche from Quai de la Tournelle to Quai Henri IV, the interior of a taxi, and finally "Celine's apartment", described in the film as located at 18 passage des Petites-Ecuries but actually filmed in Cour de l'Étoile d'Or off rue du Faubourg St-Antoine.

The movie was filmed in just 15 days, on a budget of about US$2 million. The film is noted for its use of the Steadicam for tracking shots and its use of long takes, with the longest of the Steadicam takes at about 11 minutes. The summer was one of the hottest on record, and the cast and crew suffered along with the citizens of Paris as temperatures exceeded 100 degrees F (38 °C) for most of the production. Noteworthy too is that the film takes place essentially in real time, i.e. the time elapsed in the story is also the run time of the film. In the fast changing temperate Paris climate, this created challenges for the cinematographer Lee Daniel to match the color and intensity of the skies and ambient light from scene to scene. Adding to the difficulty, the scenes were mostly shot in sequence as the screenplay was still being developed as the film was shot. Producer Anne Walker-McBay worked with less time and less money than she had on Before Sunrise, and struggled to bring the film in on time and on budget, which she was ultimately able to do. The sequel was released nine years after Before Sunrise, the same amount of time that has lapsed in the plot since the events of the first movie.

The film appeared in the wake of Hawke's divorce from Uma Thurman, and some commentators drew parallels between Hawke's own life and the character of Jesse in the film. Additional comment has noted that both Hawke and Delpy incorporated elements of their own lives into the screenplay, such as the fact that Delpy lived for several years in New York City. Delpy also wrote two songs featured in the film. A third was included in the closing credits and movie soundtrack.