Behind the VFX of Too Many Beasts: Laurent Creusot
Talent
October 9, 2026
For Sarah Arnold’s Too Many Beasts, The Mill brought 35 VFX shots to life, from multiplying real wild boars to creating fully CG animals and seamlessly introducing rain into the film’s world.
At the helm of the project, VFX Supervisor Laurent Creusot worked closely with Arnold and cinematographer Noé to find the right balance between practical footage, compositing and digital artistry, always with the same goal: to make the VFX feel like an organic part of the filmmaking.
In this conversation, Laurent takes us behind the scenes of the project, sharing how the team approached the film’s most challenging animal sequences, how they created convincing moments without ever putting an animal at risk, and why the best VFX are often the ones an audience never notices. He also reflects on his collaboration with Sarah Arnold and the importance of translating a director’s instincts and emotions into a language that a VFX team can bring to life.
On Too Many Beasts, The Mill created 35 VFX shots. How did you approach the project from the outset, and what was your guiding principle in making sure the effects always remained in service of Sarah Arnold’s direction?
We were brought onto the project very early on, which gave us the time to explore all the possible technical approaches with Sarah and Noé Bach, the cinematographer, and ultimately find the solutions that best suited the film. The result was a clever combination of real wild boars, filmed on set and then multiplied in compositing, alongside fully CG animals.
The film relies heavily on the presence of the wild boars. How did you find the right balance between live-action footage, 2D compositing and fully CG animals?
It really came down to finding the right balance between those different techniques, depending on what each shot required. We wanted to make the most of the animals we were able to film, while using CG whenever it offered us greater freedom or control. Having been involved from such an early stage meant we could work closely with Sarah and Noé to determine the most appropriate solution for each situation.
Some scenes involved potentially dangerous situations for the animals, including a wild boar being hit by a car. How did VFX allow you to tell those moments without ever putting an animal at risk?
There was, of course, never any question of injuring an animal, or even taking the slightest risk of doing so. For the car impact, we therefore filmed a stand-in dummy, so that we could achieve a physically coherent interaction with the vehicle. We then refined and digitally altered the dummy in post-production to make the shot feel as realistic as possible.
You also created CG wild boars for some more… let’s say, extraordinary situations, without giving too much away. What made you decide to move from live action to full CG for those shots?
It’s quite difficult to answer that without giving too much away… Let’s just say that it simply wouldn’t have been possible to shoot those extraordinary situations with real animals, which is why we turned to CG.
Rain and FX also play an important role in the film. How did you work with those elements to make them feel natural while reinforcing the atmosphere and drama?
The question of rain came up at a later stage, once the edit was already underway. For continuity and dramatic reasons, Sarah wanted rain in certain shots that had originally been filmed dry. That’s when the magic of visual effects came into play, and we added the rain in post-production to footage that had been shot without it.
There’s a real sense of collaboration between the VFX team and Sarah Arnold. What made that relationship so special, and how did Sarah guide you through the VFX decisions?
It was genuinely a pleasure to work with Sarah because she was discovering a whole new world through VFX. What was great was how eager she was to understand everything, so that she could better grasp the challenges we were facing, while always keeping sight of the film she had in her head.
My role was therefore to guide her through a world that we know inside out on our side. That meant working with her before the shoot, throughout the preparation and the process of choosing the techniques, then on set, and finally throughout the entire VFX production.
Sarah was extremely attentive and particularly sensitive to animation. It was important to her that the images we created retained a sense of animality and life. We talked about that a great deal, and I tried to act as an interpreter between her instincts and sensations on the one hand, and the more technical and artistic language we needed to communicate to our teams on the other.
Of the film’s 35 VFX shots, which was the most exciting or challenging shot for you?
Without a doubt, the shots we can’t talk about without giving away too much of the story ;)
We discovered the film with an audience in Cannes. What was it like to watch a room react to VFX work that, most of the time, no one even realizes is there?
It’s no secret that, in our line of work, we always prefer audiences to react to the story and the performances rather than to our effects. That’s a sign that we’ve done our job properly and that the audience has been completely fooled by the illusion.
It’s a bit like cooking: if you can taste the salt in a dish, it means something has gone wrong with the recipe. Salt is, of course, essential to bringing out the flavours, but it shouldn’t draw attention to itself.