Almost 36 million views in three months, trends on TikTok… The animated series by Arte Samuelwhich narrates with humor and poetry the emotions of a 10-year-old boy, achieved “dizzying” success for its young director Emilie Tronche, interested in making “people happy.”
At only 28 years old, the designer, author and performer of this black and white series of 21 five-minute episodes continues the interviews to return to a phenomenon that she “did not expect,” as she explained to AFP.
Born “in 2020, just before confinement”, due to the desire to “return to childhood”, his character Samuel evolves in the 2000s, confiding in his diary his love for Grande Julie or his anxieties, from CM2 to high school .
This journey through time is enhanced by songs and period or timeless references (MSN instant messaging, Diddl paper style with the image of a mouse) well known to “millennials”, born in the 1980s and 1990s.
If it touches their hearts, it appeals far beyond their generation, particularly on social media.
The series, which has accumulated more than 9 million views since its premiere in March on arte.tv and YouTube, has 11.7 million on Instagram and more than 13 million on TikTok, where young people stage or draw themselves including excerpts.
“Happy melancholy”
“It’s quite dizzying to think about it,” says the young woman who lives in Angoulême since her animation studies but who grew up, like Samuel, in Sucy-en-Brie, in the suburbs of Paris.
“If you have to keep a cool head,” she is delighted with the numerous messages received from people who identify with her character or who tell her that the series “brings joy to their lives.” “She makes people happy,” she notes. “It’s crazy to think (…) that a small animated series, which doesn’t necessarily shine with this simple feature, can generate a little joy” and “a kind of happy melancholy.”
The main value of his creation is the accuracy of his representation of childhood: the director relied on his memories to create a “character who looks a little like (him)” and who takes his name from a “good” boy who He met. , in a “friendly” way, during an evening after high school.
Emilie Tronche accompanied her mother’s class, institutrice en CM2, visited the château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, and organized a partie d’épervier mise en scène dans the Serie. “It was exactly as I had imagined, everyone is crazy, it seems like they are playing with their lives.”
Format for TikTok
The series, which can be enjoyed or watched in one sitting, also benefits from a format adapted to the spirit of the times. Its producers and Arte went even further by offering other shorter episodes designed specifically for TikTok in order to “reach a younger audience.”
“I didn’t know at all how I was going to be received,” says the woman who does not have an account on this network, which she saw as “an evening to which you are not invited.”
The pills published there are “more focused on moments in life or choreographies” than the classic series, where dance is already very present. Emilie Tronche, who loved to write and wanted to be a choreographer when she was “younger”, filmed herself to draw certain sequences.
It was in his last year that he devoted himself to animation, after having “discovered the short films of the Gobelins students” and “rediscovered all the films” of the Japanese studio Ghibli.
The director, influenced among other things by the comic “Lou!” by Julien Neel, is also inspired by the music he listens to while writing. “The search for music rights was a kind of saga in itself,” says the person who had to give up the Beatles’ “Because” title and a dedicated scene in “Samuel.”
Will we find his touching hero in a season 2, as his fans demand? “He’s on the table but we need ideas and then I’m going to take a little break,” says someone who imagines Samuel’s future in high school “for fun.”
Source: BFM TV
