After a rather flourishing decade, the beginning of
the '90s marked a net decline in the area of animated advertising. Only after
about five years did we see a certain infatuation with the genre reappear, thanks
to computer graphics and digital special effects. Today France has acquired
a certain international reputation on the basis of a handful of very high level
companies.
The First Wave Duran diversified into music videos, narratives, documentaries, video games
and Internet sites as well. In the past 15 years, Duran has edited and completed
special effects for nearly 1,500 advertising spots in a variety of different
styles ranging from creating the most realistic universe ("Levis"
by Michel Gondry, produced by Midi-Minuit), to the most dreamlike ("Kenzo"
by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, produced by Bandits), to the most deliriously comic
("Red Orangina" by Joan Kamitz, produced by Molotov). As for short
clips, some 1,200 have proven the talents of Marc Caro, Olivier Kuntzel and
Florence Deygas, or Florent Siri, to name only a few. At the same time, the
crew has contributed to the making of numerous television broadcasts, including
documentaries and magazine shows, game shows and talk shows, of which the first,
Tele Liberation, was commissioned by Canal+. Since then it is rare to find a
channel that has not used their services for interstitials. Quite recently the
people who created Skinner Box teamed up with them to create some new video
games and the software programs on which to run them.
The pioneers of the genre are the Duran and Buf companies.
The first was created in 1983, and the second a year later. Buf Compagnie emerged
from Buffin Seydoux Computer Animation, whose original objectives were to create
a complete 3D program (modeler, animation, rendering) and produce computer generated
films for television and advertising. It was renamed Buf Compagnie in 1990.
The two companies developed and diversified bit by bit as they both introduced
departments dedicated to special effects for feature films.
For their part, Buf Compagnie has chosen to limit its activities to the three
areas of advertising, special effects for feature movies and television interstitials.
Thanks to the teaming up of graphic artists and engineers, the company has applied
itself to adapting technology to the artistic desires of directors. To these
ends, all the programs necessary for the creation of a film, from rendering
to shading, through modeling, motion and 2D painting, were developed without
forgetting the necessary interfaces between 3D tools and Softimage. The public and professional success of the feature City of Lost Children by
Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro led John Dykstra, supervisor of special effects
for Batman and Robin to contact the company. For the first time a French business
contributed 56 effects sequences to an American production, among them the love
powder, magic grains and freezing of the town sequences. This experience incited
Buf to open a unit in Los Angeles, which since then has worked on various local
projects for advertising and feature films.
A New Breed Z.A. Productions, an independent company, originally received recognition for
producing The Quarks, one of the first television series produced using 3D computer
graphics, 35mm film and High Definition Video. Since then the company has enlarged
to include projects for special events and the application of virtual reality
technology to the fine arts field. In this area, they have been involved with
preparing Maurice Benayoun's art installations, notably Is God Flat? Is the
Devil Curved? and Tunnel Beneath the Atlantic (a tele-virtual event connecting
the Centre Pompidou in Paris with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal
for five days in September, 1995), then for The Paris-New Dehli Tunnel (connecting
the NINR Exposition of the City of Sciences to the Virtual Gallery in India
in January, 1998). In the area of advertising, some of their best credits stem
from Japanese commissions, such as a spot for the launching of DVD, "Panasonic
DVD Dream," for Matsushita which was based on Kurosawa's film Dream. However,
the great majority of their time is devoted to creating their own production
tools, in particular real-time programs and motion-capture.
Between 1987 and 1989, three other production companies saw
the light of day, namely MacGuff Ligne, Z.A. Productions, and Ex Machina. MacGuff
Ligne owes its name to the celebrated director Alfred Hitchcock, who cited the
MacGuffin, the thing which propels the plot, but which is ultimately not very
important, as the origin of each of his suspense films. MacGuff's areas of expertise
include advertising, special effects for features, music videos, CD-Roms, rides
and virtual installations. Their most recent credits are an advertising spot
for "Evian" directed by Jean-Pierre Roux, and the feature film Dobermann
by Jan Kounen. The "Evian" spot was inspired by the aquatic ballets
in American 1940s films, and pictures a swarm of jolly babies with hilarious
realism. As for the feature, it scares one stiff! Five months of work yielded
107 scenes, divided into 19 sequences, utilizing a dozen specialists to make
multiple, seamless special effects.
Ex Machina has mainly been active in the fields of advertising, rides (dynamic
cinema), and some other big projects, like for example stereoscopic films. Recognized
for the quality of their digital 3D images, the company can claim a special
expertise in animating characters. "For almost three years, we have turned
out ad after ad. That has permitted our animators and graphic designers to master
the array of tools better and better for the creation of advertising films:
storyboard, shooting, animation and post-production," declares Lionel Fages.
"For this reason, we are frequently commissioned to direct the entire production,
rather than just be involved with effects or post-production at the end. Pierre
Coffin has over time nurtured a graphic style all of his own, which has led
little by little toward the making of film in which the character animation
is predominant. Today he directs not only ads like that for Vichy lozenges,
or most recently Electrolux for the British agency BBH, but also some series,
like Pings, which Canal + is quite interested in." Pascal Vuong, Herve
Loizeau, Dominique Pochat and Tanguy de Kermel are also artists who follow the
same path making commercials for products like Seat (Lara Croft), Vahine, Yoco
and MacDonald's.
"In 90% of cases, it is the production companies to whom we have regularly
sent our demo reels that contact us to offer us the artistic direction of films,
or the creation and animation of characters. In the other 10% of cases, the
agency bypasses an intermediary and orders a spot made entirely in 3D directly
from us. Thanks to our acquired experience, we always start with an animatic
without going through a storyboard stage, which saves us considerable time and
gives us consequently an ease in producing the final animations."
The Newcomers
The two most recent companies are Medialab [6]
and Sparx, both created at the beginning of the 1990s ('92 and '94 respectively).
The reputation of Medialab is built around animation in real-time and motion-capture.
That is why they have found a choice place in the creation of characters for
television spots, and series such as their first series, Chipie and Clyde. But
as far as advertising goes, aside from Donkey Kong commercials, the technique
is little used. To this end, Medialab was one of the first to make use of the
flame* for compositing. The income from advertising constitutes a quarter of
the company's business, though special effects work, especially for television
films, is in constant growth. "This growth can be explained by a saturation
of American enterprises monopolized by ambitious projects with feature films.
Furthermore, for them, we're a little like the Third World, because we're cheaper...
Then there's also directors like Roland Joffe who prefer to work in France,
even if it's for the English!" explains Pierre-Jean Joulia, director of
communications.
For Sparx, a subsidiary of the Humanoids Group, special effects like the new
flame* technology attract clients. More than a dozen different spots pass through
the hands of their post-production and special effects workers each month. Half
of the projects are commercials which need special effects techniques added,
while the other half are for more artistic films. "When we set up Sparx,
there were seven of us. After modest beginnings, we have experienced a sharp
rise in output that has led us to enlarge our staff to 60 people, and little
by little build up a studio in Vietnam which today also employs 60 people. It
is the spread of low-budget special effects and the rise of digital special
effects that have led to this," declares Guillaume Hellouin, co-president
with Jean-Christophe Bernard. Title sequences (Crying Freeman won a prize at Imagina in 1996), series, TV
specials, and soon, feature films (Funny Little Chick by Serge Elissalde), have
been the principal forces in the creation of 3D digital images. Thanks to the
efforts of these companies, digital techniques, so berated until now, seem finally
to have found their place. But much still remains to be done to convince some
in power that digital effects are at the center of the world of the image and
communication of tomorrow. Originally a screenwriter, Valerie Hamon-Rivoallon has worked in journalism
since 1988. On the editorial staff of BREF, a magazine devoted to the short
film, she has specialized in animation since 1993, preparing special reports
on such topics as the state of animation in Slovakia and Belgium. As a member
of AFCA (The French Association of Animation), she has organized the monthly
programs of the Animatheque since September 1997, and has been involved with
reorganizing the National Festival of Animation on Theater Screens.
Translated from French by William Moritz.
Links:
[1] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/4267
[2] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/4268
[3] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/4269
[4] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/4270
[5] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/4271
[6] http://www.awn.com/../../issue2.11/2.11pages/2.11kenyonmedialab.html
[7] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/4272
