Lancôme unveils sensational new Idole perfume campaign, starring Zendaya and enhanced by The Mill Paris

“For this film we collaborated with the VFX supervisor James Allen from The Mill Los Angeles, who supervised the shoot with the Phantasm production.
We then took the lead in Paris for the VFX part, managing the relationship with the Publicis Luxe agency with whom we had recently worked on the Audemars Piguet 'Seek Beyond' campaign. It was great to work again with creative director David Soussan & Marie-Eve Schoetti and creative Fanny Buratto.
For the VFX part, we mainly worked on the flame and Nuke to redo the compositing environments with sky integration, retouching and of course the creation of the 3D canyon asset. With CG Supervisor Marouan El Bekri, we put together a team of both seniors and juniors and they worked really well together. I like putting together mixed teams because we all inspire each other. We were also lucky enough to work with Gowri Sankar Velusamy D, our colleague from The Mill Bangalore, who came up with some great artistic ideas. His help was invaluable, and he integrated really well into the team. I love this campaign, with all its distinct settings and beautiful images, not forgetting Zendaya, the muse who embodies modern values. With this new muse and the different effects to be created, I enjoyed working on this project and I'm delighted to be able to highlight Zendaya and what she represents.”

“The Mill’s Parisian and Indian team made creative direction of the epic movie, using their imagination to transport us into a real Chilean landscape. We created a huge canyon and a lot of matte paintings for create different environments in Chili.
First of all, the most important was the canyon and the multiple skies. In addition to setting the mood board and creating a universe, we worked with the team on the narrative with the collaboration with Yann Malcor and began to create a huge canyon.
This canyon enabled us to establish a solid working base from a creative, artistic and technical point of view. It was a real pleasure to accept this challenge as creative studio. It is quite complex to make a realistic canyon and especially when Zendaya has to jump above. We rise to the challenge brilliantly. It enabled us to interact directly with the client, to approve or reject modifications and to move forward more efficiently during the production and also afterwards for the VFX step.
It was a great collaboration with Marouan and Damien, they are both great perfectionists and do not just create a set, every detail counts. It is extremely satisfying to work with such concerned people. A big well done to the whole team, who did a great job and were very positive throughout the production. We are all very proud of ourselves.
This was my first time working with Lancôme at the Mill, and first time for me to work with in pairs as a vfx producer, with Ghalia Chammat, which was a real pleasure and I couldn’t have wished for anything better.I was impatient to be able to continue working with Publicis Luxe and Lancôme. The collaboration was perfect with Publicis agency creatives Fanny Burrato, Marie-Eve Schoettl and David Soussan, who wrote a great script.I am very satisfied with the final result, the in-house team was very committed and attentive to every detail. The working atmosphere remained very positive, and I think that really shows in the final result. You could say it was a pleasure project because the final images are brilliant, and the collaboration was perfect, with a lot of mutual trust and respect.
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“On the CG side, we had to make a realistic canyon, which is present in different types of shots: wide, top and closeup. We chose to work on the shot to have maximum control over it and to be able to respond quickly to the demands of the creative team and clients. For the wide shot, we set up the canyon as a semi-procedural, allowing us to change the look and shape of the canyon fairly quickly without altering its natural appearance.
After several propals and in close collaboration with the creative team, we were able to validate the look and feel of the canyon.

Our FX team also had to make snow and smoke, while the compositing team had to integrate the CG and the various skies designed by the DMPs.
We were supported by The Mill Bangalore team for the track and the tricky rotoscoping, which required the hair to be precisely cropped. We were also able to work with Gowri "sup dmp bangalore", (who was in Paris for a few weeks) and we really enjoyed working with him, he's a very talented person.
It was a pleasant project, and the relationship with the clients was fluid and efficient. I'd like to thank everyone who worked on the project. Well done and thank you all!
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