MilleDollars - Dive x Arnaud Jerald

Client : Richard Mille x Arnaud Jerald

Role : Artistic Direction, Production, Post-production

Can an athletic performance also be art? This is the question we put to viewers in this film starring world champion freediver Arnaud Jerald. Plunging deep into the athlete’s psyche, we attempt to capture the experience of a seven-minute descent beneath the sea. It’s a journey into an uncharted world, a bold confrontation between the boundaries of body and mind.

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Rather than simply document Arnaud Jerald in his natural element, the sea, we creatively chose to curate his performance like an installation in an art gallery.

To achieve this contrast, the entire film was shot in a Paris studio, in a custom-built 15m³ aquarium capable of holding 15,000 litres of water and giving the diver room to manoeuvre with ease. Not only did it enable us to introduce a framing device that we could play with to develop the visual narrative, but thanks to a robotic arm equipped with a high-speed Phantom camera, we also achieved shots that would be impossible at sea.

The overall impression is a spell-binding ballet where the rules of gravity don’t apply. The viewer is given unprecedented intimacy with Arnaud and receives a profound lesson in control by observing his economy of movement. Solitude and calm reign throughout, recreating, for a few seconds at least, the sensation of holding one’s breath to the very limit.