Montreuil (AFP)

Sometimes eclipsed by digital effects, latex and silicone continue to do wonders for special cinema effects, like the larger-than-life carnivorous locusts created for the ambitious French fantasy film "La Nués".

It is from the expert hands of Pierre-Olivier Persin, one of the silversmiths of non-digital special effects in France, that the horrific insects that inhabit this film by Just Philippot came out, in theaters on Wednesday.

A family of farmers (interpreted in particular by Suliane Brahim and Sofian Khammes) who raises locusts will see their destiny change when these insects start to feed on blood, animal and human.

"I haven't had nightmares for a long time!" Jokes this 47-year-old special effects make-up artist in his studio in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), a museum of horrors where an ultra-realistic corpse's head rubs shoulders with one another, a bloody arm detached from his body and galactic watches.

- Sorcerer's apprentice -

For "The Cloud", this craftsman to whom we owe "white walkers" with the striated face of Games of Thrones, bloody zombies for "World War Z" but also the aged face of Omar Sy in "The Prince Forgotten ", for the first time looked at the anatomy of insects.

Weeks of work to reproduce at different scales, from the size of a finger to that of an arm, the locusts which fall on the characters of "The Cloud".

This profession cannot be learned in books, but as an apprentice sorcerer, little by little refining its mixtures and tools to best reproduce natural textures.

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"There are those who liked to play football, me, a teenager, I had plaster and latex at Christmas!", Laughs Pierre-Olivier Persin, in his "stinky room", the one where he develops fake skins and prostheses and smelling fresh plastic.

Before the cinema, this craftsman with a juvenile face as sweet as his creations can be "gore", began by making false prehistoric men for museums, and kept a concern for realism.

For "La fille de Brest", film on the pharmaceutical scandal of the Mediator, he had to reproduce the inside of a heart for a scene of surgery, and the advice of a "very good friend forensic doctor" was invaluable to him.

For "The Cloud", he observed the locusts and asked a trainer about their natural behavior.

- Dumpling -

Pierre-Olivier Persin will devote up to three weeks of work to his larger-than-life insects - more for "star locusts", dedicated to close-ups than for "background locusts", less detailed.

Because if digital technology was essential to many shots of "The Cloud", the "old-fashioned" special effects have pride of place in the film.

"The locust is there, live on the set, we are not shooting on a green background and that changes everything for the interaction with the actors", adds the craftsman.

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"Traditional and digital special effects must dialogue" in the films, the priority remaining to the former, which cost "less, are more effective and oblige to think" about technical solutions, pleads Thierry Lounas, co-producer of "La Nués" .

For him, who participates with his company Capricci in the renewal of genre films in France, Pierre-Olivier Persin is a "rare pearl", a "little Hollywood craftsman" with precious know-how.

A craftsman who is not immune to a dumpling, as when he carefully prepared a false nose for one of the actors with whom he worked the most, Matthieu Kassovitz.

"The work" was intended for the shooting of "Sparring", a boxing film ... "At the first punch in the face", the precious nose fell and crashed to the ground, "like an old jellyfish! ", smiles Mr. Persin.

© 2021 AFP