Full Interview of Laurent Mercier by Delphine Boyer

Delphine Boyer
John Lee Hooker Jr., Cake, Arrested Development, and recently Brian Setzer. How does Callicore to have the opportunity to work with such prestigious artists?
Laurent Mercier
It’s not a question of opportunity. We are fans of the artists we are working with. We generally contact them directly when we would like to work with them.
Delphine B.
Do you always have positive answers?
Laurent M.
Collaborations are going well most of the time. But it happens sometimes that we stop a project when it becomes too complicated. We like to be free in what we do. I remember that we decided a few time ago not to release a work that we were on for 2 months because we were in discordance with the final direction of the video.
Callicore is an artistic entity, self-ruling and independent without any compromise based on the freedom of speech. We think that Callicore is an alternative to the cultural dictatorship of medias. So yes, we may be in discordance with collaborators.
Delphine B.
Callicore conveys a certain image through his musical choices and his own iconography.
Laurent M.
We are rebellious. Let’s lay cards on the table!
Delphine B.
Could you tell us more about your different activities, in particular Studio Mercier?
Laurent
Studio Mercier is a training center specialized in computer generated images. We received a hundred of persons each year who come from very different environments. They all are young pirates with atypical profiles as we love it. We make them things rough but at the end they appears as the best 3d CG artists on the market.
Delphine B.
Is it the same team than Callicore’s one who trains Studio Mercier’s pirates?
Laurent M.
Yes, but we also have some outside trainers as Lucas Van Rossum who worked at Mac Guff Studio on projects as “Despicable me”, or recently Yoshimishi Tamura who worked on “The princess and the Frog” “Tarzan 2” “Shark Tale”, etc…
Linda, Xavier and I are in charge of all.
Delphine B.
Do you have time to manage everything?
Laurent M.
It’s a question of organization. We must also know how to delegate sometimes…
Delphine B.
You also have long-term collaborations: John Lee Hooker, Jr., Carbon Silicon the Meteors... During an interview with John Mc Crea from the band CAKE you announced that there will be a sequel, what about this?
Laurent M.
It’s better to let some suspense until the end… We received a lot of mails telling us a sequel for the two main characters of « Long Time ». It’s quite funny.
Delphine B.
Will there be sequels with Arrested Development or other artists ?
Laurent M.
All is a question of planning!
Delphine B.
What are Callicore’s projects?
Laurent M.
Maybe a dinner with Ennio Morricone…