Guillaume Delouche, props manager in Hollywood, spent an hour with students from the Sainte-Marie institution, to tell them about his astonishing journey which took him from Désertines to Los Angeles.
For Nouria Chelda, the English teacher at the origin of this meeting, the arrival of one of her classmates from her high school years was an opportunity to combine business with pleasure. The inivity of the day spoke to high school students about his job as a props manager in the Mecca of cinema, Hollywood, all in English of course. “The goal was to offer students a conversation in English with a rare interlocutor who rubs shoulders with the big names in Hollywood cinema. »
Hollywood solicitations
Originally from Auvergne, Guillaume Delouche kindly participated in this informal meeting under the lime trees of the institution’s playground. “I crossed the Atlantic to land in Auvergne for a few days to get away from Hollywood solicitations. Because the phone keeps ringing,” he explains. A native of Désertines, in the Allier, he studied at Madame de Staël high school in Montluçon.
Guillaume Delouche, props manager in Hollywood
He was in class with Nouria Chelda whom he has known for thirty years. “I had taken the cinema option. In the wake of the baccalaureate, I went to a film school in Florida which then benefited from tax advantages facilitating filming. After a year, I got a permanent work permit and was hired as an interior designer to take care of sets and props. I thus belonged to the trade union of the ensembliers. And from small films to larger productions, I found myself in Los Angeles as a prop and gunsmith. I’m actually vice-president of the West Coast Gunsmiths Association. »
A passion contracted in adolescence
This passion for cinema, it was at the beginning of adolescence that Guillaume Delouche contracted it. He would then discover the “making of”, these reports made behind the scenes of the shootings, which were a kind of revelation. “I discovered behind the scenes of a film and it fascinated me so much that I finally made it my job thanks to the meeting of enthusiasts like Annie Aucoturier, film teacher at Madame de Staël high school, or Guy Bozat and Georges Bollon of the Clermont-Ferrand Court Festival”.
Guillaume Delouche, a Jurassic World props chief from Montluçon (June 2015)
Guillaume Delouche has since made his way and today he is an essential link in major Hollywood productions such as Transformers, Fast and Furious or Jurassic World. “The actors must have total confidence in me because they must handle real weapons that I transform into artistic props. »
Guillaume Delouche, props manager in Hollywood – on the set of Jurassic World, with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.
His interlocutors, sometimes colorful, are called Christopher Walken, Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), Vin Diesel, Tom Cruise or Christopher Nolan with whom he worked on Oppenheimer which will be released in a few weeks.
The students of the Sainte-Marie institution particularly appreciated this parenthesis at the end of the school year. Some seemed interested in this extraordinary universe. Sara would see herself as a costumer; Julien who would like to work in special effects. The dream is contagious.