January 16th, 2024 
Jackson Murphy 
BOOM, about birds reacting to an erupting volcano (and hoping to stay alive and protect their eggs), has already won a Student Academy Award. Now it’s on the 96th Oscars shortlist for Best Animated Short Film. Find out how these five directors — Romain Augier, Charles Di Cicco, Gabriel Augerai, Yannick Jacquin and Laurie Pereira de Figueiredo — created BOOM in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This email interview was edited for length and clarity.)
Q: Congrats on the Student Academy Award win! How does it feel to have this honor?
A: Thank you very much! It is a huge accomplishment for us because it rewards our hard work on the short film, and getting a recognition from one of the most prestigious institutions in our field is a great addition to our curriculum.
Q: What do you think is so interesting about how birds act and move around in nature?
A: Birds are very interesting creatures because they can move in two different ways: either walking, or flying. And when designing our characters, we have been thinking a lot about the acting possibilities it offered, and how they could help spark comic situations. Our birds ended up being very human in their behavior, but still limited by their physical capabilities (too big to fly, but they still can use their wings to carry the eggs). The birds were not in the original idea Romain came up with. The first concept was an egg, with paws, running from a volcano explosion (it ended up being a shot of the film); and the idea of having parents around came later.
Q: What were the challenges of using sound and creating strong sound effects?
A: For the sound effects, the main challenge was the birds. We wanted to have a cry that was both comical and also realistic, so Yannick came up with the original idea of mixing cries from different existing animals, along some human vocals, and it ended up working well. The second challenge was the sound of the volcano, as it represents a menace throughout the whole film. We relied a lot on sound effects to reinforce its presence throughout the different sequences. Then, for the different explosions, the sound is key because it gives more power to the images as it helps adding a sense of scale to what we see on the screen.
Q: Did you study volcanic eruptions?
A: Romain did a lot of research to be as close to a natural volcano as possible. Many elements needed to be studied: lava, rocks, smoke, meteors. He used a lot of references from blockbuster movies, along with some real world references from footage he could find online, to get the feeling he wanted. The multiple volcano explosions demanded a lot of iterations in order to be impressive and believable.
Q: Five directors for this short. How would you describe this experience as a team effort?
A: It was a very interesting experience for us all. We all have our strengths and fields we master more than others so it was easy to dispatch the work to everyone. Even though we all were working on our different tasks, everyone was making feedback so we could improve the quality of our work, as sometimes we can become blinded because we lack perspective on what we’re doing. All this feedback was sane in the sense that it was aimed at helping and improving the whole project, rather than trying to disturb the egos of everyone involved. We also had a lot of fun, made tons of jokes, and we all had a good time despite the sleepless nights and the huge amount of work we had to deliver. Everyone was involved 100% in the project and, in difficult times, we were trying to reassure each other and keep pushing forward.
Q: Some of the shots have SO MANY birds. Were they some of the more difficult moments?
A: Romain, the technical director, took care of all the difficult technical issues we could possibly have on the film, such that everything was prepared when we had to work on those shots, which required a lot of resources to compute. Yannick was in charge of the crowd animation. He learned Golaem (the software used to animate the crowd) on the fly, during the production, and with the help of the Golaem team he has been able to deliver a high quality crowd animation in a small amount of time, thus once the system was working for one shot, it was easy to transfer it to all the other shorts that were including crowds.
To be honest, the most challenging part of this project was the storytelling. We had a hard time finding funny gags, assembling them together to get them working, along with the catastrophe sequences. It was all about balance between those two aspects of the film, and in the end we think that it turned out to be working well!
Q: What would being a 2024 Oscar nominee mean to you?
A: It would be an enormous, unbelievable event for all of us. First, it states that our work stands against the work of big studios (Pixar, Disney…) and this is a tremendous achievement for all of us, that technically and creatively, five students can rival Hollywood’s biggest studios. Secondly, it would be the fulfillment of a dream all people working in our industry had one day, and, moreover, making it there with our student short film, makes it even more dreamy. And lastly, it would bring a lot of opportunities and visibility to our team and work, and maybe we could all work together again in the future.
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