Spotlight on Arnaud Fouquet, VFX Supervisor

The strength of our studio lies in the complementarity between our film, series, and advertising teams. Advertising brings agility, innovation, and fast execution, while film and series reinforce our narrative standards and our ability to develop ambitious, long term projects. This dynamic continuously enriches all of our work. Our teams, their craft, and the creative ambition that have shaped the projects from MPC Paris and Liège remain fully engaged. At its core, our mission remains unchanged: to bring the best of our expertise to the stories we help bring to life.

 

What was your path to becoming a VFX Supervisor?

After graduating with a degree in audio-visuals, I started working for a company called Excalibur.

We brought “old-fashioned” effects directly into shooting like overhead projections, motion-control, matte-painting on glass, building models, and so on.

Then in 1994, the company set up a small digital department. At that time, computers had just arrived at Excalibur and were not yet being used for production. I requested permission to teach myself how to use these computers and was given the go-ahead. I grabbed the manual and for a month I learned to work on EDDY, which was among the very first compositing software. Following this, the first round of production began, and being the only one trained on EDDY software, I was entrusted with my first VFX shot. From then on, I went straight from one production to another as a graphic designer for Excalibur for several years.

Then from 1997 to 2010, I worked at L’E.S.T (L’Etude et la Supervision des Trucages), which specialises in all the visual effects for film, producing part in-house and subcontracting the other part to other companies.

At the time, this was a completely pioneering approach in France. I worked there as a graphic designer and went on to become a VFX supervisor.

Next, I joined MPC Paris (formerly Mikros VFX) in November 2010, which has since evolved into The Mill. In 13 years at MPC Paris and now The Mill, I have worked on more than 90 films and have also been nominated for a César award for best visual effects.

 

What does your job cover and what is your typical day like?

Being a visual effects supervisor means you start each project by reading a script, then by a first VFX analysis when the film is still at the research stage with producers and has not been green-lit yet. We then refine the research and provide a cost estimate through discussions with the director and producer. I then handle the supervision of the effects on set. Finally, I supervise and work with a team of artists. In the end, my job is to provide the director with the shots they have come up with while staying within the producer’s budget.

A typical day moves between script reading, client meetings, reviews, briefs with my teams, on-set supervision, and production tracking.

More recently, the scope has also evolved with larger international collaborations, such as Sous la Seine (2024), where I acted as overall VFX Supervisor across multiple vendors and managed complex sequences involving large-scale water simulations and heavy digital integration. On Nero (2025), the work extended into a highly serialised structure with a large volume of shots, requiring tight coordination between several teams and a very consistent visual approach across episodes.

What is your proudest VFX supervisor project?

It is always difficult to choose one. I have been lucky to work on many exciting films and series.

If I had to mention a few, Lost Illusions remains a very important milestone for me in terms of craft and collaboration.

More recently, Sous la Seine was also a very strong experience because of its scale and the level of coordination required between studios. I would also mention Nero, which was a demanding but very rewarding project due to its narrative ambition and the complexity of its VFX work.

Each project brings something different, and what I value most is when the VFX fully support the story without ever taking over it.

What would you say to a teenager who wanted to do the same job as you?

Don’t rush. Learn, watch, observe.

From the outside, supervising looks appealing because of the shoot and the creative discussions, but there are trade-offs that you must accept in this line of work.

It is a job where relationships are essential, in a high pressure environment that requires a lot of attention, patience, and consistency over time.

 

What is your favourite part of your job?

I really enjoy the research stage, when you are finding and offering solutions so that directors can see on screen what they imagined. That moment where an idea becomes visual is still what drives me.

 

What is the highlight of your career today?

There is always a “current project” feeling in this job.

Right now, I am working on Bunker, directed by Florian Zeller, which is a very exciting new challenge. It is still in production, so I cannot say too much, but it is a project where VFX are deeply integrated into the storytelling and visual construction of the film.

 

What was the most ‘challenging’ shot in your career?

In this business, you are on edge so often that you end up collecting sleepless nights more than individual shots.

One good example remains the Parisian boulevard sequence in Lost Illusions. The methodology for this kind of effect is to build the environment on set at ground level and extend it digitally so that actors can interact with real light and physical space.

In that case, it was not possible for budget reasons to reconstruct the full boulevard on set, so after many discussions and location scouting, we shot in the gardens of the Palace of Fontainebleau. It gave us a ground surface close enough to a street environment, but it meant digitally removing and replacing a huge amount of foreground action, including extras and carriages, to transform the location into a 19th century Parisian boulevard.

The main constraint was the weather. The sequence required overcast conditions to avoid direct sunlight breaking the continuity of the digital extension. We had scheduled the shoot months in advance, with hundreds of extras, and it was impossible to move the date. Fortunately, everything aligned on the day.

Who inspires you and why?

Christian Guillon is definitely someone I would mention. He is one of the pioneers of digital visual effects in France. I was lucky to work with him for many years and learned a lot from that collaboration.