Face to Face with... Luc Janin

Luc Janin grew up in France, honing his skills as a graffiti artist on the Parisian streets. He was rather good at it, but soon found his creative calling in directing. With a background in illustration, design and art, he has found an incredible knack of incorporating his assortment of talent into his film work.

A fine example of his diversity is demonstrated in his Laser Murials spot for Green Tomato Cars, which recently scooped a gold at the 41st Annual Creativity International Awards. Here, shots finds out more about the man behind the mask.

For those who don’t know, tell us about the Laser Murials for Green Tomato Cars...

That was a great job to work on. This technique was very new and had never been done in the UK - I always like a bit of a technical challenge. As a former graffiti artist, it was especially appealing to me. Back in the 90s, I painted one of the largest graffiti pieces in Europe, but with this project I think I broke my own record when (between 2 takes) I wrote my biggest tag ever on Battersea Power Station. It was great working with two other friends (Cecilie from Gilles and Cecilie, and Tizer) who are also artists and explore the best designs possible to communicate the green messages.

It’s a bit different from the graffiti you’re known for. Tell us about that side of things...

I started painting about 20 years ago and was very active on the Parisian graffiti scene during the 90s. I had quite a few encounters with the police back then, so I ended up painting a lot of shop shutters, bars and clubs to pay for my art school. I try to maintain my skills as an artist/illustrator in parallel to my directing career but having more focused on the directing side of things recently, I am not painting as much as I used to... unfortunately.

How important is it to show diversity in your work?

I love working on very different projects but I find it hard in this industry where people like to put a sticker on your face saying what genre you do. It might not be the best career strategy but that’s the best way for me to have fun doing what I do and experiment with various ways to make films.

You also like to be involved in every step of the creative process, how important is this to you?

I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to my work and I come from the DIY film school, so I’m used to being very hands on. I sometimes end up doing some of the post production myself. I guess this way I feel like my original vision is maintained through to the final piece and none of the essence gets lost along the way.

Tell us about the iRobot vacuum spot; it was quite a complex job in the end wasn’t it?

For me was all about the design, so I put together a little team of designers and animators who I knew were perfect for the job. Having all of us sitting in the same room meant we could constantly adjust the design according to the shots or the animation, without going through the classic laborious post production chain of command. We also had to think about building the animation in a way that would make the multiple versioning in all European languages easy-ish.

And the Gardaland spot was packed full of action. Tell us about shooting on location in a forest...

I love working on action pieces. It’s something still quite new for me but I’m looking forward to doing more. I like the challenge in the planning and choreography. This job was entirely done in camera with various rigs built between trees or on the rollercoaster.

The first shot of the day was the one where the big tree falls right in front of the lead actor running at full speed. We could only do one take and the timings were very hard to get right. If we hadn’t have got it right the shot would’ve been unusable but it went perfectly! It put all the crew on a high until the end.

You’ve done promos and commercials, so which do you prefer?

Well promos are great from a creative point of view but not so good on budgets anymore. As a promo director, it’s nice to write the idea and I love music so my heart will always be in music videos. That said, commercials offer the opportunity to do things ‘proper’, and the 30 second time restriction is an interesting challenge from the story telling point of view. I’d love to keep doing both really as they complement each other well.

Your work has quite an urban London feel to it, would you agree and does your background play a part in this?

I guess a lot of my work does have an urban feel because of where I come from, and living now in London, I get inspired by the city, but I don’t really see it as a style that describes every piece i do anymore.

You did the Cannes ident for shots a few years back, tell us about that...

Well first, that was a great opportunity to go to Cannes and party hard. Then it was also a great opportunity to shoot some explosions in extreme slow motion, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I love explosions! I was like a boy with a new toy on set - a lot of fun.

Is there anything you’re working on at the moment that you want to tell us about?

Well I’m actually enjoying my first few weeks off since last July, and I’m very happy about it.

I’m taking the opportunity to finally edit a short film that I shot in Thailand more than a year ago but never got the time to do anything with since. So watch this space!