This is one of the most wide-ranging campaigns I’ve worked on. We shot a selection of stills, internet films, cinemagraphs and GIFs, involving landscapes, CGI, still life, children, adults, 3 species of birds, both chicks and fully-grown, in studio and in indoor and outdoor locations.
We filmed everything in 4K, lighting with a mixture of HMI and LED panels, and shot the stills with a high end Hasselblad medium format back, lit with flash.
The creatives were Hélène Level, Julien Delarasse, Pierre-André Cuny and Lise De Bettignies.
Retouching was by Asile and Sparklink, with CG / 3D by Asile and Antoine Mairot.
Motion post-production was by SWAO.
Casting by the lovely Sophy Mirti, styling by the ever-resourceful Sébastien Goepfert, hair and makeup by Julie Camus.
None of this would have happened without the amazing art buyer, Dorothée Dauger, a wonderful producer, Anne-Sophie Laucher, and of course my Paris agent, Barbara Soulié.
While some of the models were created in CGI, we also worked with the multi-talented Alain Roussel, a model-maker who can make almost anything you ask of him.
This image was particularly challenging: we were filming and photographing on an extremely hot day with a group of rather confused baby ducklings. Amazingly they performed well and obligingly walked across the pedestrian crossing repeatedly, although at one point the mother duck decided she had had enough of the shoot and made a bid for freedom. Cue an hour of searching through the neighbours' gardens, and all hail Dorothée, the art buyer, who finally cornered our errant model.