How The Mill Paris Crafted the Impressive Landscape Work for Audemars Piguet’s Latest Spot

Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet celebrates its creative freedom in a dreamy film directed by Neels Castillon. Filmed in its native region of the Vallée de Joux (Joux Valley), Audemars Piguet presents its ancestral know-how with poetry. A tribute to its history and the path it has taken, with impressive VFX work from The Mill Paris.

“I have a very intuitive approach regarding light and camera movements, sometimes it complicates the work of the VFX team. But with the Publicis Luxe and the Mill Paris teams, I found partners who shared my vision. Creating this invisible route for Audemars Piguet was quite a challenge. Matching our heroes running across the sky with the drone shots of the Vallée de Joux in Switzerland was something, it had to be the same camera movements and the same light. Of course, in a natural landscape, you can't control everything, so Franck Lambertz and the team at Mill did a very precise CGI tracking visualisation from what we shot and then on the cliff with the drone team, we were able to make almost like a giant motion control. I loved this mix between pure sensation and precise technique, it opens so many doors. Honestly, after this experience, I'll probably get crazier with my requests.” said Neels Castillon, director. 

“It was a superb artistic and human adventure with The Mill Paris team and the director Neels Castillon, whom I have known for a long time. For this film, shot in the Vallée de Joux where the Audemars Piguet Museum is located, the main challenge was to succeed in marrying two sets that we had shot in two different environments without motion control while maintaining Neels' cinematographic style. The invisible road is the central element of the scenario, and we thought long and hard about its representation, its texture, its thickness, its transparency... we decided to adapt the characteristics of the invisible road to each shot to preserve the aesthetics of the film. From a technical point of view, the dancers were shot on ground platforms with a blue-sky background. We then analysed the drone's movement in 3D to be able to give indications on the aerial views and integrate the actors in the sets. Some landscapes were completely redone in 3D, especially the last shots in the sky where we kept the anamorphic shot and worked on the lighting. A very nice collaboration with Neels Castillon, the agency Publicis Luxe and its creative director David Soussan and the production Psycho.” said Franck Lambertz, VFX supervisor.