ORAGE was created in 2021 by former students of CinéCréatis and ESMA. Just a few years after graduating, they decided to get together to create this post-production studio. Since then, they have worked on a steady stream of commercials, music videos and short films. Here’s a look back at their personal experiences and the launch of the studio.
Can you introduce yourself?
The studio is made up of 5 people. Four come from CinéCréatis, and one from ESMA.
Lola Bellini graduated in 2020 with a major in production. She was unable to make her graduation film because of the pandemic that year. Louis de Rolland, who graduated in 2019, was in the post-production major, as was Flavio Fernandes, and both worked on the film Terre Ferme. Léo Metayer, also a post-production major, worked on Moustaco. Raphaël Audureau, who graduated from ESMA in 2022, has been with the studio since its inception but was finishing his final year in Nantes at the same time.
How did your job search go after you graduated?
There were a number of different routes. Lola did a placement with a production company in Paris. She then worked for a rental company before launching the studio. Louis started with an internship in a post-production studio in Montpellier, where he stayed for two and a half years. Flavio did a work placement in Paris, in a post-production studio for advertising and documentary projects. He then went freelance, working with other studios on big projects before launching ORAGE collectively. Léo worked for a VFX company on feature films and series. For Raphaël, it was a direct result of his degree.
How did you set up the studio? What stages did you go through?
It goes back a long way. Several of us were at lycée together, Léo, Flavio and Raphaël. Léo and Flavio went to CinéCréatis, specialising in special effects. Raphaël went to ESMA to train in 3D animation. Louis was in the same year as Léo and Flavio at the school, and Lola in the following year.
We started talking about it at school, and it’s a project that goes back a long way. A few years after graduating, we talked about it again and we launched it for good, once we’d gained a few years’ experience. Everyone was in Paris or wanted to live there, so geographically it worked.
We gave it a lot of thought and on1 September 2021 ORAGE was officially created.
What roles do you have within the studio?
Léo, Louis, Raphaël and Flavio are generalists. We each take the lead on a project, and then our personal specificities make the difference: 3D compositing, graphic designer, art director… We’re all post-production managers. Lola is in charge of production.
We also take on trainees, notably Julie Hervieu who has just graduated from CinéCréatis in Nantes and joins us as an Assistant Editor. And also Aymeric who comes from CinéCréatis in Lyon, who is also a trainee. We often take on trainees from CinéCréatis schools. It’s great, we have confidence in the training and it means we all have the same vocabulary.
How did you find your first projects?
Through our work placements and freelance experience, we already knew some companies and had already started to build up a network and a good address book. Then, by publicising the opening of the studio, we were able to find our first projects. We put out a showreel with our first projects (an advert for Bic in particular, directed by Flavio, on which Léo and Raphael did the 3D), and word of mouth and contacts did the rest. We work a lot in advertising, so the projects come thick and fast.
Has your working life been everything you imagined it would be?
What’s changed a lot are the deadlines. We have to meet much tighter deadlines than when we were at school. What’s more, we have to explain to our customers how we work, why we use a particular tool or technique, which we didn’t have to do at school when we were talking to teachers.
We’re all together, working on professional projects with each other, with friends. It’s a really pleasant and enjoyable job. But it’s also hard, and has its constraints: we work a lot to get the studio off to a good start and have a chance of it lasting over time.
It’s also changing the way we relate to each other: during the juries at school, we used to get feedback, sometimes negative, on our projects from the teachers. Now it’s constant, it’s part of the job. We come up with new ideas and work on them again, depending on the feedback we get from artists and studios. Training has made us humble. You have to please your customers.
Which project did you enjoy the most, and which made you the proudest?
For Lola, it was the Stone Island advert, which was shown in NewYork’s Times Square in October and November 2021. It was one of our first projects. We also worked on Lomepal’s latest video, for which Léo went to Barcelona to shoot with the artist and the whole team. It was a great experience.
We also shot a video clip with a lot of former students from the school. We’ve all kept in touch, in production, image and post-production. That’s another reason why we’re not afraid of taking on big projects, because we know who we can count on. We have confidence in the abilities of the school’s alumni and that makes it easy to call on them whenever there’s a major project, whether personal or professional. It’s always great to get together. For us, that’s the school’s greatest strength. For example, we shot an advert for Adidas a few weeks ago and the whole film crew was made up of alumni.
What do you hope for the future of the studio?
First of all, it would be to finish developing. It’s happening very quickly, and we’re already starting to do big projects with big brands. We have to keep going, we’re on the right track.
We’re curious to see how things develop. And as we go along, we’ll be contacted for our expertise, our ideas and to choose our projects. We also want to produce films, especially fiction and feature films. A lot of projects are coming up at Orage and we’re already looking forward to the next ones!
Orage website: ORAGE STUDIO
