Mill Paris | “Towards a Dream in Chile” by Louis Vuitton

“From the first discussions with the agency, the production and the director, we knew that our collaboration would be fruitful. The dialogue was open and all our artistic proposals were taken into account. The director gave us his trust, allowing us to make artistic and technical proposals. For example, the fireflies. These are nocturnal insects that we are not used to seeing in daylight. So, we had to find the right balance of colour and effects to make them visible and legible despite their light colour. For their animation, we had to find the right balance between realism and enchantment, to give movement and personality to their movements without proposing a cartoon style, by defining a lead firefly leading the rest of the colony.
There were also several sets to be cleaned up and enhanced with compositing and matte painting. We reworked some of the skies and added snow in several shots, especially in the trees. In addition to the environments work, the animation and the look dev, some 3D elements were added like the flying saucer and the first spheres that appear in the introduction. Apart from the CG and matte painting, the compositing and VFX (fireflies) were handled by the motion graphics team with Franck Maillet as lead.
It's a know-how that we have been maintaining for a long time at The Mill in addition to all the known motion skills (design, animation, graphics, etc.)
It's a chance to have a flexible culture at The Mill Paris, where many artists can take on different missions. I am very satisfied with this experience which went perfectly well both on the human and technical aspects. It is always rewarding as a VFX supervisor to be able to satisfy both our client and our teams.”

“On this project, I mainly worked on the creation, animation and integration of the fireflies in team with the motion designer Maxime Orsini. We each proposed our own method of creation to obtain beautiful fireflies. In a second phase, I was in charge of compositing to add snow to certain shots. I took the lead on the compositing part to help my graphic designer and matte painter colleagues to homogenise the overall film and to obtain a beautiful and coherent result.
It's always exciting to follow the evolution of a shot, from the 'raw' rush to the final compositing result. It was a great experience to collaborate and exchange with the compositing team, to find the best method of fabrication and to deliver an atmosphere linked to the film storytelling.
With Vincent and Maxime, we chose to work on these fireflies with Trapcode Particular on After Effects for the fluidity of the workflow and also for the speed of visualization of the particles to be integrated in the shot. With this method, it was also easier to update the shots to respect our client requests.
For the particles, the challenge was twofold.  On the one hand, for their look, we had to be realistic and believable and find the right tones and light/flicker. On the other hand, for the animation part, we had to find the right rhythm for the fireflies' movement while keeping their 'organic' aspect in their erratic movements. This glowing cloud had to be alive.
Once this creative part was on track, the challenge was to integrate the fireflies into the snowy and luminous sets. We worked a lot on the fireflies' colours and the grading of the shots in order to obtain a visible, coherent result that matched to the aesthetic desired by Louis Vuitton. I found the firefly work interesting and fun because we had a certain creative freedom. For each artistic proposal, we received constructive feedback from the director, our team and the client alike. It was exciting to all have the same direction and mindset. It's totally the kind of project we love, especially with a team like The Mill Paris one and the trust placed in us by our client. Many thanks to all the team. ”