“We can make an Avatar-style film at home”: Unit Image, the French studio conquering Hollywood

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The name ofUnit Image may not mean anything to you, but you have definitely seen his creations. The French studio has collaborated on the largest video game licenses, God of War has League of Legends passing through Elden Ring And Baldur's Gate IIIand signed episodes of Love, Death & Robots (Netflix) and the next series Secret Level (in December on Prime Video).

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These behind-the-scenes technicians and artists have created the most innovative commercials, cinematics and images in recent years. At the dawn of their fifteenth year of existence, they display renewed ambitions.

Four boys in the wind

Founded in 2010 by a quartet of friends (Léon Bérelle, Maxime Luère, Rémi Kozyra and Dominique Boidin), Unit Image began with advertisements created by eight hands for Oasis, Canal+, Disney and Michelin, with the desire to push cursors. “With a budget of €200,000, we made something that looked like a €400,000 film. And then, suddenly, we had projects worth €400,000”remembers one of them.

With this logic in mind, Unit Image moves from advertising to video game trailers. In 2013, the one on The Crew creates the sensation and makes them change dimension: “For The Crew, we didn't just want to film a car in the street. We thought about this tire and the vehicle that is built around it. We didn’t get crazy rich, but the investment was the demo tape and our reputation”says one of the founders.

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Watch the trailer for The Crew :

“Pushing the envelope”

With these new video game horizons at your fingertips and always this desire to “push the envelope”Unit Image decides to invest in new tools, including dozens of cameras to build a “cage” to scan facial expressions with precision.

Via its subsidiary Scan Enginethe studio thus creates digital doubles for games The Division, Far Cry 6 or even Death Stranding. High-quality projects which allow Unit Image to perfect its reputation and reach other worlds, notably that of series.

In 2018, the company was chosen by Tim Miller's Blur Studio (Dead Pool, Terminator: Dark Fate) to produce episodes of the anthology Love, Death & Robots of Netflix. “Our thing with trailers is that we make something that looks like Hollywood or Marvel, but in a lot less time. That’s what interested them”explains Léon Bérelle. “We almost design the database for a feature film, but for two minutesadds Maxime Luère. It's frustrating, because we create a lot of characters, but we see them very little. That’s why we really liked working on longer format series.”

Watch the making-of Love, Death & Robots :

Today, Unit Image employs between 100 and 150 people depending on the projects and collaborates with video game players as well as those in advertising and cinema. The studio notably worked on the digital doubles of Demi Moore and Margareth Qualley for the film The Substance by Coralie Fargeat, acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival.

The 7th art, future Unit Image sandbox? Its co-founders Léon Bérelle and Maxime Luère do not hide their ambitions.

Interview with Léon Bérelle and Maxime Luère

How would you define the Unit Image spirit? What is at the heart of your DNA?

Maxime Luère: We always try to find a little something extra than in “live” films, and we're not interested in doing something that we can just film. I think that’s a bit of our DNA.

Léon Berelle: We always have five or six simultaneous projects: advertising, cinematics, trailers… This is a big particularity of our studio compared to others. You talked about the “Unit spirit”, the fact of being multi-project and having manufacturing tools that can be used on all formats. It's not always what other studios do.

Fortiche, Illumination, Mikros, Unit Image… How can we explain this French excellence in animation?

Maxime: We have exceptional schools, the best in the world. Rémi did Gobelins, Léon did Esra, Dominique did Supinfocom and I am self-taught.

Leon: Good schools are above all those which recruit the right people from the base, but it is also because there is a culture. When you are a student in a 3D school, you make a film from A to Z, so you are a jack of all trades, a hyper generalist. Our way of working at certain stages is more general than some big studios like Framestore and ILM, where it is very industrial.

Maxime: Perhaps it is also the fact that when we were kids, we were fed the Dorothée club, American cartoons, Dragon Ball Z… That is truly anchored in French culture and has inevitably created vocations.

There is a shift in AI which is enormous, so it must be negotiated carefully.

Léon Bérelle, co-founder of Unit Image

What do you think will be the next revolution in your profession?

Leon: The next big development will inevitably be related to artificial intelligence.

Maxime: There are still major legal concerns regarding artificial intelligence. We see that there are companies that are starting to attack copyright, and some of our clients are forbidding us, for example, from using generative AI.

Leon: But that will just slow down how quickly it happens. There is a shift in AI to negotiate which is enormous, so it must be negotiated well.

Do you actually use AI in your productions?

Maxime: Almost not, once again for legal reasons.

Leon: But we are also thinking about the technology of deepfakewhich allows you to insert a real face on a 3D model to possibly add details. This is precisely the step we are currently taking. Our manufacturing pipeline is granular and our teams are very tech-savvy; it is therefore natural for us to use the best tools in the best place from one project to another.

The trailer for Star Wars: Eclipse produced by Unit Image:

Can you tell us more about the series? Secret Level ? How did your integration into the project go?

Maxime: These were the same producers as Love, Death & Robots and they called us.

Leon: At the start of the project, there was even a demo reel bringing together films from the five or six studios specializing in trailers, which worked on the series. It was great to see this collection of studios making a project together, led by Blur.

Maxime: We designed two episodes, at the rate of one episode per year, in this case those on New World And Dungeons & Dragons.

We spend weeks on a direction of gaze, a reflection of an eye, an expression, a wrinkle…

Maxime Luère, co-founder of Unit Image

How are these episodes of animated series special projects for you?

Maxime: The biggest challenge is to have the most empathetic characters possible, the best controlled, and not to fall into the uncanny valley (Or uncanny valleyEditor’s note). There is always a major issue regarding technique, and that is also what is particularly interesting. We have to get attached to the characters, and for that, it has to be really good. These are details, but we spend weeks on a direction of gaze, a reflection of an eye, an expression, a wrinkle… Weeks of back and forth to find the right thing that people don't see.

Leon: With Love, Death & Robotswe created the technology. On Secret Levelwe really wanted to push the cursors of the story and the scenario.

What are Unit Image’s future ambitions?

Leon: The next logical step is the feature film. We are always looking to move towards more storytelling in order to have the possibility of delivering messages. Especially since at the moment, the fashion is to make films with video game intellectual properties: Fallout, The Witcher, Mario, The Last of Usetc.

Maxime: We are truly at the crossroads of the world of cinema and that of video games. And we are being so realistic that it becomes, we think, undetectable. Suddenly, there is the door to Marvel films opening and the possibility of no longer being in the “animation” category, but in that of live actionlike the recent remake of Lion King which is 100% in 3D. Adapting video games into feature films is therefore really a goal for us in the coming years. We can completely make a film “à la Avatar” at home.