CULTURAMA is the new destination for discoverers defending the best of Art, Architecture and Design in order to reinvent your contemporary lifestyle. As a bilingual webmagazine and audiovisual broadcaster with CULTURAMA STUDIO, CULTURAMA explores the trends of 21st century Art and Design, with its exclusive interviews, documentaries, articles, and mini-series. Hundreds of renowned artists have already participated in this adventure. CULTURAMA builds bridges between creators and executives, and as such, it becomes essential.

The Dress | Film expérimental de mode avec la participation de Gwendoline Christie | Réalisateur : Barnaby Roper | Creative Director et VFX : Sylvery Bolotte | Productrice exécutive : Elisabeth Fabri ©

From tricks to magic

The word “trick” carries in it a dose of suspicion with the idea of forgery and deception, and no one likes to be tricked. The outcome becomes quite different when one makes a conscious decision to believe in what is happening.

When one voluntarily submits to the illusion, the trick becomes a technical process and an opening to the world of magic. Then, we believe it with the astonishment of the public witnessing a rabbit popping out of a hat.

In the digital age, special effects are often used in film and video creation. CULTURAMA introduces you to one of these new magicians. Without a wand or hat, but equipped with high-tech digital tools, Sylvery Bolotte shifts our reality between hyperrealism and expressionism, observation and imagination. His aesthetic approach takes into account the innate forces of Nature to enhance or transform his subjects. The result takes us to unique worlds where the white rabbit is now wearing a waistcoat and a pocket watch; worlds that challenge the boundaries of perception.

The Dress | Film expérimental de mode avec la participation de Gwendoline Christie | Réalisateur : Barnaby Roper | Creative Director et VFX : Sylvery Bolotte | Productrice exécutive : Elisabeth Fabri ©

I follow a human trickery
that aspires to become a man without trickeries

       The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, Mathias Malzieu, 2007.

SYLVERY BOLOTTE

Eric of Culturama: Creative director and special effects supervisor, you work on the line between real and virtual, combining camera shots with computer graphics developed in 3D image processing software, such as 3DSMax, Maya, Houdini, Nukestudio, and FTrack. Those two aspects are difficult to synthesize. So, how do you manage to create such a homogeneous videographic aesthetic?

Sylvery Bolotte: This border does not seem so obvious. For me, it’s like an exploration through a prism every time, whether it be a camera or a computer tool.

I approach each project as a scientific study: I use the appropriate tool to achieve the desired result. However, it is true that digitally processed images and special effects have been a bit rigid and limited compared to films. Combining both does not seem obvious, especially if you’re trying to trigger emotions in your audience. That’s why I spend a lot of time with my graphic design teams to create the unpredictable, to master even the most random outcome. Thanks to the new 3D tools, which react to real parameters such as lens exposure, water pressure or material plasticity, this borderline is getting blurrier.

Eric: You build singular worlds and imaginary situations for cinema, advertising and animation. Among the technological obstacles encountered on your journey, which one seemed insurmountable?

SB: I do remember some of the shots of Barnaby Roper’s “The Dress” (2016) featuring Gwendoline Christie. Her body comes alive and her skin turns into the armor-clothing by designer Iris Van Herpen. These shots were very complicated to elaborate because this skin-dress had to smoothly wrap around the actress’s body while following dance moves and body convolutions in real-time. To achieve this, we set up and generated liquid on her body using Houdini software.

Our director wanted a very innovative choreographic body-garment approach. We did not have a reference which pushed us to experiment out of the box. We get this kind of unexpected situations very often in our line of work.

Götterdämmerung | Rock ‘n’ roll film starring Iggy Pop | VFX & Creative director: Sylvery Bolotte | VFX editor: Jean-Philippe Mure | VFX producer: Aurélie Lobin© /p>

Eric: Where did the inspiration for the fluid animation in “Ventoline” come from?

SB: After a lot of research and internal developments, which was a long and laborious process, “Ventoline” (2016) began to take the shape that I had envisioned. I wanted to transfigure the material of this almost Christ-like blood, I needed a carnal relationship with this film. So I decided to shoot it entirely. During the production stage, I focused on this carnal relationship, made it the main thread of the story. Then, my producer at the time introduced me to a young slow-motion animation specialist and a hi-speed animation professional.

The only thing left to do was to figure out how to create the emerging-from-the-fluid figures. For the butterfly wings, a lot of tests were done to get the right material. Among other things, we pre-cut about 300 celluloid leaf wings because the liquid, once mixed with a thickener, melted the wings. The day of the shooting was tough: from the synchronization of the slow-motion camera to the calibration of the robot and the celluloid puppets immersed in a liquid and sprayed with compressed air, the whole creative process was really tricky. Once all the elements were set up, behind the control panel, I lived the moment of grace which I had waited for so long. Big red sheaves gave birth to winged animals. I became a contemplative spectator.

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