Thibaut Duverneix, Gentilhomme

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When Terminal C was opened at Orlando's sprawling main airport, I was intrigued from a distance by the experiential digital features integrated into the new space. They got my attention because they were genuinely interesting, but also because they were put together by a company completely unfamiliar to me - Gentilhomme, from Montreal. In the time since that project went live, and won numerous awards, Gentilhomme (which is French for Gentleman) has also delivered experiential work for Nashville's airport. And the team is in the middle of a job for Houston's airport, and another airport on the US east coast that's NDA'd for now. I've been trying to organize a podcast chat with founder Thibaut Duverneix for a while now, and we finally got it together recently. We spoke about signature projects, and the ideation and design process. But we also get into the background of the company, which has roots in things like rock band tours, and has some direct ties to a couple of very well-known Montreal companies that are also all about experience - Cirque du Soleil and Moment Factory. NOTE - This interview was recorded before ISE, where the company picked up an armload of trophies at the global Digital Signage Awards. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Thibaut, thank you for joining me. You describe Gentilhomme as an Earth-based multimedia studio. What does that encompass? Because you guys are into a whole bunch of things.  Thibaut Duverneix: Hey David, It's a really good question. The idea is that the studio was built around my own practice as an artist and as a multimedia director at first, and I come from fine arts and computer science, so I like to do all things that are very different and, it's been very hard to describe what the studio does because the studio was built using that philosophy, and most of the time people would ask you, don't you want to specialize in anything, like video content and I was like, no, I don't, we like to do a lot of different things and they go from interactive sculpture or inflatables to building placemaking for airports and content for rock shows.  So I guess the best description was, around that, we want to create experiences, and the medium doesn't really matter.  So when people come into the office, they never quite know what they're coming into, right?  Thibaut Duverneix: Pretty much, but luckily, the casting at the studio is very broad, and everybody's like a Swiss Army knife.  How and why did it get started? Thibaut Duverneix: This is my second studio. I had another one before, and we were doing a lot of the first experiential work on the web in Flash at the time.  I had forgotten about Flash, for a good reason.  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, exactly. But I was also doing music videos and rock shows, and eventually, I wanted to focus more on directing and doing things in real life with people. So I went my own way, and I built Gentilhomme more like my holding company in a way for what I was doing, and one-day Cirque du Soleil called me, and they had this show in France they wanted to do it for a theme park, which was a multimedia show while heavily relying on multimedia and I thought I was just going to direct it. but then they were like, no, we have five weeks, and we need turnkey. Can you also just make it happen? So I built a pop-up studio to do that, and then they said, Hey, do you want to do our next big top tour? And I said, yeah, and then I had a choice of do I keep doing my director work or do I build a studio with the people that I want, and do it the way I want it because it's never a one-man show, you need a team to do that, and that's what I did because I wanted to capitalize on my knowledge.  And Cirque is in Montreal as you are.  Thibaut Duverneix: Exactly. We're all children of Cirque du Soleil in Montreal.  Yeah. I was going to ask about that later, but we might as well get into