The Substance was an
international co-production between
France, the
United Kingdom and the
United States.
Coralie Fargeat was director and producer alongside
Working Title Films co-producers
Eric Fellner and
Tim Bevan, and Blacksmith, a Paris-based production company created by Fargeat that same year. Filming began on May 9, 2022, and wrapped in October 2022, spanning 108 shooting days. The film's budget was $17.5-18 million. However, the prospect of a studio film did not appeal to her, as she would not receive
final cut privilege. she became a producer to maintain creative control. Eric Fellner, who co-produced the film, traveled to Paris several times for lunch with Fargeat after seeing
Revenge in 2017 to persuade her to choose Working Title for her next project. The screenplay was developed over two years, loosely inspired by her short
Reality+ (2014). but with English-speaking audiences in mind. Fargeat aimed to continue the
feminist themes developed in
Revenge, exploring the pressures and expectations placed on women. During the period when she began writing the film, she was in her 40s and was confronting negative thoughts about her relevance and appearance. "I really started to think and [have] these voices in my head like, 'Now your life is over. No one is going to care about you.'" She described the process of making the film as a way to confront and release this internalized violence, using the
body horror genre as a "weapon of expression". Fargeat crafted the 146-page script with a scant 29 pages dedicated to dialogue. She has described her writing style as like writing a novel. She wrote in extensive detail; and sometimes even specified close-ups were written in the script. was given her namesake to subconsciously evoke
Lolita and
Marilyn Monroe, "baby-doll"-like
iconography, and enduring beauty standards. It was the first that she wrote, and in her view, "the most important scene of the film". She recalls, "I didn't even know who my character would be. It's the first one that really came to my mind, and it holds the core DNA of the movie as a true visceral experience with no words, making you feel what the characters are going to feel". Fargeat also listened to hypersexualized music to influence the in-universe
Pump It Up show. a real-life icon. Eventually, with nothing to lose, Moore was sent the script. At her agent's insistence, Moore read the script before knowing specific details, later speculating that this was due to the film's sensitive subject of aging. She was impressed by the script and its subject matter, though she was unfamiliar with the body horror genre. the film's extensive prep work, prosthetics, meager resources, shooting location and the level of nudity, which she felt was foundational to the story. She recognized that the characters were deeply important to Fargeat, and saw them as stand-ins for the director herself: Elisabeth represents Fargeat, while Qualley's Sue is the girl from the '90s that Fargeat always felt pitted against. Moore would later reflect positively on her role, saying, "What I love is this was a rich, complex, demanding role that gave me an opportunity to really push myself outside of my comfort zone, and in the end to feel like I explored and grew not only as an actor, but as a person". While talking to Moore, Fargeat thought about potential pairings; later, when she met with
Margaret Qualley, she felt they had a common energy. Fargeat liked that Qualley had a background as a dancer. Qualley spent a lot of time walking around her apartment practicing her character, "freaking my husband out".
Ray Liotta was originally cast as Harvey, but died in May 2022. Three months into filming, Liotta was replaced by
Dennis Quaid. On set, Fargeat read the dialogue for the Substance Voice to provide a
temporary track. After a lengthy casting process, she chose American actor Yann Bean, who was living in Paris, to voice it. Fargeat wanted a voice with devil-like, tempting, and powerful qualities.
Filming camera used by cinematographer
Benjamin Kračun Principal photography took place entirely in France, with an all-French
film crew except for cinematographer
Benjamin Kračun and composer
Raffertie (both from the United Kingdom). Studio scenes were filmed at
Epinay Studios in
Seine-Saint-Denis, Île-de-France near Paris—the historic studio where
Jean Cocteau shot
Beauty and the Beast (1946). Exterior scenes doubling for Los Angeles were filmed on the
Côte d'Azur, Palm trees were filmed in
Cannes with additional scenes shot in
Nice, Carros and Saint-Laurent-du-Var. Fargeat
storyboarded all the prosthetics and birth sections before production began, focusing on the birth scene first during pre-production. This helped estimate financial costs for the prosthetic dummies, how many to build, and the extent of their body details. The birth sequence took 15 days to film. Fargeat even went so far as to perform an actual syringe injection of the activator on her own arm, doubling for Demi Moore in the shot. she explained that "that specific kind of sexuality doesn't lend itself to [me]" and that she'd "never [do it] again". Qualley began the rehearsal with Fargeat present but left the set to go to the bathroom and cry. Fargeat decided to leave the rehearsal as well; Qualley instead chose to learn the moves in a private lesson, allowing her to practice in her hotel room and build confidence as she felt deeply ashamed by the whole series of events. Initially, Fargeat and Kračun considered
LED-screen technology from Darkmatters for the window's scenic Los Angeles cityscape, but Kračun determined it was costly and technically challenging, involving nine technicians to operate. He additionally felt that LEDs could not achieve Fargeat's vision of
hard sunlight for Los Angeles. Instead, they opted for a 115 ft x 42 ft Rosco SoftDrop
backdrop, evoking a romantic,
Hitchcockian quality; Kračun described the overall look of the film as "pink noir". Fargeat expressed great satisfaction seeing the practical set for the first time as she had anticipated shooting it on
greenscreen. Fargeat wanted the bathroom set to function as a metaphorical "cocoon" and envisioned it as a mental space that felt abstract, stylized, and empty. She pushed back against the
production designer who wanted a more realistic look and who asked: "Are you sure you don't want any furniture in the bathroom at all?" She drew inspiration from fashion photos and the poster for the film
Queen Margot, in particular for the Monstro finale. Sue's wardrobe emphasized femininity, exposing her body, focusing on clichés associated with the
male gaze, including pink metallic colors, black
Louboutin boots and a tennis skirt. Sue's clothing becomes darker as the film progresses and was designed thematically to represent danger The film was
edited by Jérôme Eltabet, Fargeat, and Valentin Feron. Eltabet had previously collaborated with Fargeat on
Revenge and taught her editing while working her children's show
Les Fées Cloches He began editing midway through the shoot, approximately three months in and independently created the film's initial 3.5 hour
rough cut, which did not include many of the inserts or closeups. After filming wrapped, Eltabet and Fargeat collaborated over six months bringing the runtime to 4.5 hours. Eltabet and Fargeat collaborated by editing separate sequences in different rooms using
Adobe Premiere Pro, then swapping the sequences between each other for further refinement. Due to the film's numerous iterations with some sequences having between 150 and 200 different versions, Feron was later brought in to give a new, outside perspective to the film. Several scenes with Elisabeth's agent were shot but ultimately not included as they were not deemed compelling according to Eltabet. He found the theater climax the most difficult to cut, as he had to edit around prosthetics that didn't always look convincing. For the sound design, Fargeat placed sound effects and notes in the editing software timeline for sound designers and editors Valérie Deloof and Victor Fleurant. The team was tasked with finding the right textures, effects, and tone for each scene, using exaggerated or realistic sounds to explore deeper meanings. For example, a chainsaw was used for the
electric mixer in Elisabeth Sparkle's cooking scene, and pistol handling sounds were used for the triggering of the capsule during injection shots. For the
first person view shots in the birth sequence, Fargeat wanted Sue's movements to sound as if immersed in
amniotic fluid. To achieve this, the sound team placed microphone capsules in the actors' ears to capture breathing through cranial resonance. Simultaneously, a
boom mic and a high-frequency mic captured audio to allow for further edits or to switch to an external viewpoint. For scenes with Harvey, the team wanted to emphasize his larger-than-life character. Before entering a scene like the bathroom or restaurant, sounds were mixed realistically. Once on screen, they became heightened; for example, for the restaurant, sounds were layered emphasizing his eating and the juiciness of the shrimp. Ambient sounds and music in the restaurant were muted at this point. When Harvey enters his office, the sound team emphasized the "blinged-out heaviness" of his boots. The team created soundscapes to enhance the film's visuals and themes. When Elisabeth leaves to retrieve the substance, the sound design shifts from a noisy street to deserted suburbs with dogs, police sirens, and crows used to foreshadow danger. Inside the storage facility, sounds were shaped musically with metallic materials and sustained notes to give a feeling of discomfort, and then drawn back to only a low and clinical neon light. For the low-angle shot of "Gollum" banging on the bathroom door, visual effects were used to combine Moore's prosthetics with the prosthetics on the thinner body double. When projected for Kračun, the film appeared too sharp, so it was downscaled to
2K and then
upscaled to
4K to retain the softness he found on the set. When Sue is on the TV show, the footage was kept at the original pre-processed 4K for a sharper look. ==Music==