A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD (AND US IN IT) 🌍💥
It’s 2016, Mad Max: Fury Road just swept the Oscars 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆, and everyone is still talking about it like they’ve just come out of a two-hour, sandstorm-induced hallucination 🌪️😵. Enter Jac & Johan, two brilliant, slightly insane directors 🎥 who decide to dive headfirst into the madness. Their goal? Not just to retrace the influence and impact of the Mad Max franchise but to use it as a mirror 🪞 to reflect humanity’s own trajectory—our greed 💰, our violence 🔫, our desperate attempt to rebuild civilization 🏗️ after tearing it apart.
And they didn’t come unarmed. 🔥💣 They spoke to the greats: Noam Chomsky 🧠, Guillermo del Toro 🎭, Hideo Kojima 🎮, Mamoru Oshii 🐕, Pacôme Thiellement 📖, and, of course, George Miller himself 🚗💨. The result? A two-part documentary—Destruction ☠️ and Civilization 🏛️—that doesn’t just break down Mad Max as a film series, but as a prophecy, a warning, and, somehow, a love letter 💌 to the chaos of our world.
But here’s the thing: Mad Max is more than just its narrative. It’s a visual beast 👀, an explosive cinematic language 💥 that hits you harder than a War Rig at full speed 🚚💨. So how do you translate that kind of energy, movement, and visceral intensity into a documentary?
That’s where we came in.
BUILDING A FURY ROAD IN ANIMATION 🎨🔥
My animation studio, Fauns 🦌, was brought in as co-producer 🎬 to craft the animated sequences—because if you’re going to tell the story of Mad Max, you don’t just need facts, you need art that punches you in the face 👊💥.
We built a distinct, raw, and aggressive art direction 🎨⚡, led by our senior art director, Daniel Balage 🖌️, while channeling the bold graphic style of Rockyrama magazine 📰—because when your subject matter is this wild, your visuals need to match the madness.
And then, because we believe in assembling the most talented, potentially unhinged artists possible, we teamed up with Thibault Petitpas and Guillaume Dousse ✏️🎞️, two insanely gifted animators who would go on to co-found Sun Creature Studio in Copenhagen—a multi-award-winning powerhouse 🏆🎥 in the animation world today. No surprise there.
I personally handled all the storyboards for the animated sequences (yes, every single frame—no shortcuts when you’re dealing with Mad Max) 📜🖍️, while César Chevalier and an all-star team of background artists brought the world to life with stunning, desolate landscapes and chaotic energy. 🌅⚠️
And then came the real madness:
One month.
That’s how long we had to produce every animation. One month. ⏳ Under the meticulous (and occasionally terrifying) control of Flore Poinsard 🦸♀️, our managing director, who now leads productions at Folimage—one of the most respected international 2D animation studios 🏆✏️. She made sure we didn’t just survive the production schedule but actually delivered something we were proud of.
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM THE APOCALYPSE 💀🎞️
Mad Max: Burning Universe was more than just a production for us. It was a crash course in high-pressure, high-reward filmmaking 🚀, a project that forced us to refine our pipeline, navigate studio politics, and, most importantly, double down on our respect for artists.
We learned that when you put together a team of insanely talented people 🧠✨ and give them the right space to thrive, you don’t just create great work—you build something bigger than the project itself. Many of the artists we worked with have gone on to create incredible, original stories, and that’s what matters most.
The documentary premiered in May 2016 📅 on Canal+ Cinéma, in two electrifying parts—Destruction ☠️ and Civilization 🏛️—bringing the full weight of the Mad Max legacy crashing down on audiences. And if the visuals weren’t enough, the score by 2080 🎵 was the cherry on top 🍒—still absolutely outstanding, still rattling around in my brain years later.
Was it exhausting? Yes. 😵
Did it absolutely rule? Also yes. 🔥💯
And every single frame? Worth it. 🎬💀🚗💨
As Producer of Animated Sequences, I designed and storyboarded all custom 2D animation, collaborating with directors & artists to match the raw energy of the Mad Max universe. 🚗🔥🎞️