The creation of L'E.S.T. has been built on the willingness of a new approach to visual effects work, focusing on design and supervision.

At that time, we thought that, in any case, in Europe, no studio could claim both to control internally all the tools and talents, which were diversifying and specializing more and more, and the ability to frame them, the "project ownership".

We wanted the organization of our work to give us the freedom to seek, for each effect, maybe even for each shot, tools and talents that we felt were the most "relevant", wherever they were. This policy of VFX "engineering" has led us to "outsource" some of the manufacturing work, independently. Anyway, our in-house workshop allowed us to make some visual effects ourselves, to ensure consistency and technical arts, and coordinate the whole process.

Among the hundred of feature films on which we worked, many have offered us the opportunity to deploy the whole abilities and skills of the digital artists, supervisors, and of our entire team.

This was the case, for example, of "Crimson Rivers", with a sequence of avalanche, at the time still a reference, of "Le Boulet", with the sequence of the big wheel which is still credible, or of Andrew Niccol's film "Lord of War", on which we have made entirely in-house visual effects, including the opening titles sequence.

In 2005, we decided that L'E.S.T. should finally abandon its "workshop" to devote himself exclusively to the engineering part of its business. The team was tightened around Christian Guillon, who remained the principal architect of the will of reorientation.

"Asterix at the Olympic Games," directed by F. Forestier and T. Langmann, was the film that finally signed this new direction, as "Visual Effects Executive Producer". The VFX of this movie, completely designed and supervised by L'E.S.T. team, were subcontracted in three other French studios.

It was for L'E.S.T. the opportunity to impose and organize a closer relationship between these three companies to manufacture all the effects. Today, this successful collaborative effort, which nobody believed in, becomes the reference for numerous projects.

Thanks to the following films, carried out on the same model, as "Faubourg 36", directed by Christophe Barratier, or "Oceans", by Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, the scope of our new business is now clear. Our first market is more focused. Contributions, benefits, limitations and constraints of our interventions, relatively unusual in France, are now well understood by our subcontractors and our customers.

L'E.S.T. has always wanted to be part of a prospective logic, often showing the way for new methods and processes that have been taken over by the entire profession.

"The ADN Project", R&D study started in 2008, has logically lead in 2010 on a new service, for which we have created a dedicated subsidiary. This service, very innovative, will again show us as pioneers in a field that will grow in coming years: the virtual humans, the "Digital doubles".
It may help to breaking down barriers between production and post-production, barriers less and less relevant in the process of film making integrating modern tools.