The Mill Paris | A full CG ship and an FX sea for Jean Paul Gaultier
Sailing under a golden sky, the Jean Paul Gaultier ship and its crew invite us to discover the fashion house’s new perfume “Le Male Elixir”. With its iconic bottle embracing the amber stripes of a sailor’s jacket (“marinière” in french), Jean Paul Gaultier and the director François Rousselet welcome us inside a sensual marine universe where ochre and gold tones dominate.
After previous collaborations with Jean Paul Gaultier on films such as “Le Male”, “Scandal” and “The Factory”, our Parisian studio was once again called upon to create the entire introductory shot. The ship was inspired by 20th century liners such as the Titanic in terms of style, but with proportions closer to those of the Lydia. It was very well choreographed and required a great deal of stylistic research to respect the poetry of the story. Once the references were validated, our CG team built the ship piece by piece before putting it to sea on FX. Creating realistic water requires special attention to detail so that it matches the shape of the hull and interacts with the CG asset. Technical and artistic challenges met by our team transporting the viewer into a visual adventure where sensuality is the key word.
“We were on the shoot with Stéphane to make the usual location scouting, but we also brought a powerful Unreal machine to the set to validate the movement and framing of the first full CG shot in real-time with the agency, the client, the director and the DOP. By tackling this subject together on the shoot, we saved a lot of time when finalizing the asset in the studio.
The Jean Paul Gauthier boat required a lot of work to find references because it is very well-chartered. The director François Rousselet provided us with numerous references. He was invested in the project with clear creative intentions and a good quality of listening. We also created the sky in DMP, Nathan Lucas and Olivier PuerchBerty did a great job reproducing the colorimetric atmosphere requested by the client. Per usual, a great team at The Mill who worked seamlessly throughout the production. Listening, sharing, and of course, some very cool effects to do artistically and technically. Well done to all of you!”
“I loved this project in every way. We worked with a small team of long-time colleagues, we had a blast. Added to this perfect team, I really enjoy doing FX water, it's my favorite element. Each time it's a challenge, you don't know where you're going, you work on it touch by touch to bring realism in the movement and textures. It's quite a complex effect to achieve because it requires you to create large simulations on Houdini. We started by creating procedural water to give size, scale and direction to the waves. Then we added the CG boat and applied the procedural set up to "guide" the ocean and make the water move in rhythm and collide with the boat. At each additional stage, we increased the realism with eddies, splashes, foam... In 17 years at The Mill Paris, this project is one of my favorites.”
“First opus of the new Jean Paul Gaultier campaign. Is it a pleasure to craft a film when the design, set, lighting and direction all come together to create this little gem of an edit. More than that, a great team on the FX/CG side integrated an introduction shot where the only element shot is a panel of sailors filmed on a blue background. More to come soon ... without giving too much away, there will be some big VFX!
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Discover our previous collaborations with Jean Paul Gauthier here and get in touch with our team on our contact page.
