Synopsis
Albert, a modest employee who has lost everything, and Edouard, a flamboyant artist who has become a “broken face”, have miraculously survived the carnage of the Great War. Quickly realizing that their country no longer wants them and condemned to exclusion, the two men that fate has brought together then imagine a swindle of unprecedented audacity.
In 2013, the teams at MPC, formerly Mikros Image, produced over 500 VFX shots for the film by Albert Dupontel, one of France’s favourite directors.
Extract from the very interesting Art of VFX article:
The war in the trenches is really intense. How did you work with the SFX and stunt teams?
Cédric Fayolle – VFX Supervisor: It’s really what I like most about my job, it’s when you have to work with all the different departments. In this battle scene there are a lot of real explosions, it was really impressive to work under these explosions. The VFX work is only there to enhance what we have in the foreground. So we added the same explosions in the background, extended the No man’s land, added explosions in the sky (shrapnels)… add soldiers in the background. But what gives the true feeling of the action is that the actors were really in the middle of the explosions… we must also emphasize the work of the sound that is crazy.
The movie then moves to a Paris period. Can you explain in details about the design and creation of Paris?
It is first the work of the Production Designer, the Costume Designer and Albert Dupontel himself. They used all possible photos, paintings… there was the beginnings of the color photography, which is what inspired the particular look of the film. The autochromes of Albert Kahn give a brilliant impression of this period. Then in VFX, we tried to stay the most faithful to the research already done. For the Place Blanche for example, we found postcards of the Moulin Rouge at the time and it was precious.
Can you tell us more about the creation of the Old Moulin Rouge and its environment?
For this sequence we shot on a parking lot on which we had only cobblestones. Then it’s a great combination of multi-pass of many extras. Regarding the set, we built a 3D base of the Mill and the buildings. A simple texture, and then all the patina was made in Matte Painting to bring more a natural aspect. And at the end, we added digital crowd on sidewalks and terraces to get the popular life of this neighborhood.
Which locations in Paris was the most complicated to recreate?
The most complicated in Paris is without a doubt the Champs-Elysées. The largest and best known of the Parisian avenues. Even if we filmed on the real locations, we didn’t block the Champs-Elysees. We had a big green screen that was at the end of the sidewalk, so we had to rebuild everything. The roads, the fountains, the flower beds, the buildings, the crowd, the trees, the traffic… it was a real headache especially since there are many shots of various light conditions and with two seasons (autumn and summer).
