Through Thomas Lapointe
Published on
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Native ofAulnay sous Bois and installed at Montreuil for fifteen years, Pierre-Olivier Persin is a pure product of Seine-Saint-Denis. This craftsman of cinema has golden hands as evidenced by the many creations installed in his workshop, halfway between the cabinet of curiosities and the museum of gore.
From Game of Thrones at A Happy Event
His specialty: non-digital special effects. The icy face of the white walkers of Game of Thrones, it’s him. Zombies sprinters World War Z too. Aging of the face (The forgotten prince), false bellies of pregnant women (A Happy Event), interior of a human body (The girl from Brest), realistic makeup (An illustrious stranger), with silicone and latex, “we can do everything”.
Severed heads, disfigured faces, animal corpses and monsters, the memories of the hundred feature films on which he worked, are striking realism and give goosebumps when walking around his den. “When I was 15, it was the fantastic that brought me to this, but when I started working in French cinema, I learned to do very realistic things. I love it, doing things you don’t notice ”.
New movie, The Cloud
His art will once again be honored with the French fantasy film The Cloud, which is released in theaters this Wednesday 16 June 2021. “I had already worked with the producers, when they contacted me to work on it, I found that the project was really out of the ordinary. The great intelligence of the film is that it is not a Z series, it is a deeply French film and a real fantastic film with the codes of the genre, it is a balance between the two, ”says Pierre- Olivier Persin.
The Cloud tells the story of a farmer who raises locusts with the help of her children and a neighbor. But everything will change as soon as the insects start to feed on… blood. Between drama and horror, this mixture of genres, rare in French cinema, has been hailed by critics, especially for its dazzling shots.
More than 300 locusts produced
Beyond the two main actors, Suliane Brahim and Sofian Khammes, the stars of this film by Just Philippot are insects, a real challenge. “We didn’t know how far we could go with real locusts and we had to use three kinds of locusts,” explains Pierre-Olivier Persin. For the close-ups, there are no digital effects, they are either real ones or the ones I made and digital special effects were used for swarms of locusts for example ”.
In total, the manufacture of 300 “second plan locusts” took up to three weeks of work with a 3D printer and a little more for the fifteen “star locusts”, which can be seen in the close-ups. “We sculpted them in resin and manually to have different scales. All have been hand painted and sculpted in pieces to have modular joints. The trainer had given us some real locusts to have models, they were our mascots, ”he smiles.
Different families of special effects
Real animals have indeed been used: 5,000 were present on the set. “They were super docile and vegetarians,” reassures the craftsman. Unlike the film. In one scene, a very real locust eats a wart on the finger of one of the characters.
But without the help of Pierre-Olivier Persin, impossible to achieve. “I made the wart and we filled it with apple for the locust to come and eat it. On a huge scale, the different families of special effects mix and work together, ”he adds.
For the film, the craftsman also made several corpses, including a goat which “welcomes” visitors to its workshop. A job that still fascinates the people of Montreuil, even after 23 years of practice. “I am self-taught, for my 15th birthday at Christmas I received plaster and latex, above all I am passionate”, he confides.
With AFP.
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