At 38, he has just won his second Oscar! Guillaume Rocheron, special effects supervisor for "1917", is the only Frenchman awarded on February 9, for his work on the film by Sam Mendes which he shared with his colleagues Greg Butler and Dominic Tuohy. A second trophy after having already won a statuette in 2013 for "The Odyssey of Pi".
Installed in Los Angeles on behalf of the MPC studio, Guillaume has worked with the greatest - Ang Lee, Christopher Nolan, James Gray, David Fincher - on films like "Ad Astra", "Batman Begins" or "Man of steel" . Meeting with a gifted person.
A second Oscar at 38, what does it do?
GUILLAUME ROCHERON. It always surprises, it's very flattering and a bit surreal, but it shows that the work done contributes to telling a story like that of "1917". Above all, it comes here to reward my team of 600 people.
Does it also reward French excellence in your field?
Absolutely. I worked in France in the early 2000s, I saw a lot of talent at work, and all over the world, French people work in the cinema. With us, training is based more on the artistic than on the technical. French people who create digital special effects have a sensitivity that differentiates them
How would you define your job?
My job is to find the solution for everything that is impossible to film. I am an architect, who designs the windows, the walls, and then each expert intervenes to, for example, build the picture window that has never been done before. So here the effect that was never designed before.
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For example ?
In "1917", the hero evolves in front of a church in ruins and on fire ... It was impossible to turn into a real church that should have been destroyed! In the studio, we built a system of very powerful lights on five floors, programmed with software so that they vary according to different intensities and colors, in order to simulate the clarity of the flames. This place, this church does not exist, finally if, in Caen, we scanned them for the film!
"1917". Before special effects
"1917". After special effects
Are you proud that your Oscar has come to reward "1917"?
Yes, because it was very special. Succeeding the special effects on this film means arriving at the fact that nobody is supposed to guess that there are, unlike other big productions where you create fantastic creatures… "1917", it is a work in all subtlety, we had to create reality, knowing that there are 1h40 of effects on 2 hours of film! In addition, it was necessary to give the illusion of a single sequence shot, while the shooting lasted three months. This ties in with the notion of "old-fashioned" special effects, which were not used to perform but to create a magic trick.
You are now based in Los Angeles, but how did you get there?
I went through the Georges-Méliès school in Orly ( Editor's note: specializing in arts training, with animated and digital images ), then I worked at BUF (Editor's note : one of the main French companies in special effects ), before leaving for MPC, London, Vancouver and now Los Angeles where I supervise the special effects of the films upstream, directly with the directors. We often think it's just post-production. But no, it starts right away: we think from the description of the scenes how we will create them.