the wave

   Gille was approached in 2014 to direct The Wave when the film's writer/producer saw what Gille did visually in his music videos. Initially designed to be a low-budget indie movie, Gille created a full length animatic and a wealth of VFX tests for some of the film's proposed sequences.

  On the strength of the script and the visual pitch materials, they were able to attract top-tier talent to the project. Aaron Grasso came on as cinematographer and worked with Gille to create some of the iconic camera shots and difficult long take sequences. 

   In post, Patrick Lawler and Gille worked tirelessly for months to invent novel image treatments that gave the film its unique and award-winning visual effects.

   The Wave premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2019 alongside Jojo Rabbit, Knives Out, and Parasite. Once the film landed a distribution deal, Tom Cole came on to cut the film's trailer which has been viewed millions of times.

   The team went a step further in taking on the creation of all the marketing materials. Batches of promotional videos for social media were created and monitored. Performance of each spot was tracked and new videos were created in line with what the data was showing to be most effective. This simple data driven approach led to new spots outperforming their previous iterations every time. The team's focus on informed marketing landed the film on discussion boards on the front page of Reddit multiple times, making a film with a minuscule marketing budget appear on carousels of multiple streamers.

   The Wave was well received critically and has gone on to garner an international fanbase, establishing itself as a dark comedy cult favorite. The film is available on most streaming platforms worldwide.