Céline Mornet, Productrice Innovation at Moment Factory

Céline Mornet, a graduate of the Concepteur Réalisateur Multimédia program (class of 2006), has been living and working in Canada for nearly 14 years. She is Director of Innovation for Moment Factory, the leading multimedia entertainment studio in the field of innovative events.

I started out working in the web industry in Annecy for two years to build up my skills, then emigrated to Montreal. I started out working in an advertising agency, then a web agency, before finally setting up on my own as a creative Flash developer (yes, yes...).

I quickly left the web to concentrate on the experimental, immersive aspect, and worked for digital arts festivals, music festivals, museums... I discovered the potential of web tools in the entertainment industry and in interactive installations.

Then I went on a long trip to Chile, and by the time I got back to Montreal, Flash had become obsolete and I didn't have many contracts left. As a sign of fate, it was precisely during this week that I received a job offer from Moment Factory as a Multimedia Application Developer.

At the time, the interactive team was very small and focused on innovation. Our projects, mostly pre-rendered and linear, began to include more and more real-time and/or interactive components, and the team started to grow fast.

I went from being a multimedia developer to an interactive designer, then moved into management, with a position as Innovation Product Manager. I took part in the growth and construction of this team, which went from 5 to 60 people in 5 years.

My mission is threefold: to develop strategic innovation partnerships, to manage the development of in-house innovation activity, and to support innovative customer projects. On our customers' projects, my role is to work with each team to understand their needs and identify the most appropriate technique for their project. I also get them to use new processes and tools.

Internally, I have to encourage employees to test the latest technologiesthrough workshops, demos and prototypes. We showcase our innovations in front of the teams to test immersive experiences on an audience before proposing them to our customers, and thus validate the feasibility, relevance and originality of the ideas.

Moment Factory doesn't have a dedicated innovation team; it's spread across every sector of the company, so I'm involved in a very cross-functional way.

At Moment Factory, we bring people together. Our shows and destinations reinvent entertainment by offering the world new experiences. Whether it's a concert, a flagship store or an urban space, our goal is toinstill a sense of collective wonder and connection.

We're at the intersection of many industries. We can design concertsand shows as well as outdoor routes and events....We recently worked on the Billie Eilish tour, doing set design, lighting, content production, real-time content and pre-rendering.

Among other things, we design immersive tours called Lumina (in Canada, France, Japan and Singapore). Visitors are invited to wander through an immersive nocturnal journey, using scenography, sound, light and projections.... We've completely moved away from the screen to explode the interface into the real world , by making surfaces tactile, detecting bodies and objects moving in space, and bringing visuals to life according to the presence of users.

We also do a lot of video mapping on monuments and complex surfaces, such as the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Reims and the Saint-Remi Basilica in France.

Last but not least, we create a lot of interactive games, again off-screen, such as our augmented games in which users have to move their whole body to control the elements. There are no joysticks, no screens, no keyboards; the player is in real time with the content.

At Moment Factory, every project is different, and the demand is never the same. That's the beauty of our job, but also its main challenge.

After 4 years in Annecy, I'd pretty much had my fill of what I could do in the web industry and wanted to discover something new. At the time, work-study permits made immigration easy. I emigrated with my partner at the time, also a Gobelins alumnus. When we arrived, we had a huge number of job opportunities, with positive responses everywhere, to the point where we chose where we wanted to work.

The professional mentality is very different in Canada. Companies are more interested in skills than diplomas. As long as you're competent and reliable, your professional network develops very quickly. Careers evolve much more quickly and the relationship with the hierarchy is much friendlier.

I fell in love with the Montreal mentality, so 14 years later, I'm still here, and so are the people I came with. Apart from winter, Quebec is wonderful !

When I joined Moment Factory, all my training took on a whole new meaning, and I went back to the design files I'd done at school. I looked at the structure and the type of information I had to fill in, and it was exactly what I was asked to do in the company.

For me, the Gobelins program is really designed to train professionals for the multimedia entertainment industry. Multimedia immersion has developed enormously in recent years, with the appearance of large immersive rooms like the Atelier des Lumières. I encourage students to seek out these companies for their work-study placements, and not confine themselves solely to the web.

The course is still very useful for me in terms of technology watch and innovation management. The school was always pushing us to look for innovative concepts, to look at the latest sites and technologies. It's a habit I've kept.

Moment Factory - Billie Eilish concert

Moment Factory - Oceana Lumina, Arsenal de Rochefort

The directors who creatively direct the projects come mainly from cinema or linear production backgrounds, and don't necessarily understand technology and real time. When I look at the profiles we're looking for today, it seems to me that Gobelins' training provides all the skills needed to embody the role of multimedia director. That's why I'm trying to foster closer ties between Moment Factory and the school. It's a perfect ecosystem, and we already have a lot of alumni who come through us.

What's more, in Montreal, multimedia training is of lesser quality, so we often go to France to find game engine developers or creative developers. You can really see the difference in training. The young interactive designers coming out of Gobelins are fantastic, so it's very important to keep that network going.

In Montreal, we're a big community, and over the past ten years we've set up annual Gobelins apéros to exchange tips, job opportunities and welcome newcomers. Many of us hold senior positions in advertising, the web, video games and at Moment Factory. Alumni often visit each of our companies. The Gobelins network is well established in Montreal.

Canada still favors selective immigration. The interactive market is booming, and in even greater demand for technological skills after the health crisis.

Come and discover Quebec, if only for a year. It's easy, and we need you!

Interview by Sophie Jean