Mill Paris | Heightening the environment through compositing in film for all-electric Nissan Ariya

“After the New Peugeot 308, "The Way" for Deutsche Bahn and "Outwit the city" for the Peugeot 2008, it was a pleasure to work Jan Wentz once again. We thought a lot in prep about the best way to shoot and produce the part that takes place in Tokyo. We also had to deal with some unforeseen circumstances, such as an orange sandstorm that occurred during the shooting of the snowy environment, forcing us to recreate the snow instead of just cleaning the landscape. At the same time, as VFX supervisor, I had to manage the progress of the other three films for Nissan in parallel with the shooting. ”

“As CG Supervisor, the main challenge of the project was to create the environment and manage several teams simultaneously on different projects. In the mountain, we were initially going to do a clean-up job but unforeseen weather conditions duplicated the amount of effects to be achieved. We recreated a lot of the snow, raised the ocean level and created 3D extensions of the whole city of Tokyo at night. Once again it was a pleasure to work with my colleagues at The Mill Paris. ”

“I had already worked on advertisements for Nissan in the past and like the previous times the collaboration went very well. From the beginning we had a clear artistic direction with a strong graphic identity which allowed us, with Victoria Léger, to create the desired environment thanks to a very pronounced artistic will. Most of the CGI work was focused on the environment and in particular the appearance of Tokyo because the scene was shot on set, at a crossroads where you could only see the ground floor and the first floor of the buildings. As the shots were lacking in depth, we made extensions to the set while respecting the realistic style of the images shot and the reference of the book "TO:KY:OO" by Liam Wong given by the director. The process required the creation of various buildings typical of Tokyo's architecture, neon lights and signs to dress them, as well as the asphalt and sky. Equally technical, the scene in the snow also required the extension of sets in both 2D and 3D. The different camera tracking allowed us to appropriate the filmed images and recreate the environments in 3D, so that we could make our set extensions, replace certain roads and clean up certain parts of the image; mainly the snow that had been dirtied by a storm a few days before the shoot. As the director had set a framework, with the whole team we were able to easily visualize and create a coherent environment that serves the brand message. ”