Le Queyras comes to Lyon: three 3D bubbles, over 600,000 views on Instagram
To make people in Lyon want to come and walk its forests in the fall, the Guillestrois-Queyras tourist office made three giant bubbles appear in the squares of Lyon. They only ever existed on screen. Seven weeks after the first teaser, their posts have passed 600,000 views on Instagram.
The Queyras, in the French Alps between Guillestre and Monte Viso, is a land of high-altitude forests: larches, Swiss stone pines, trees several centuries old. Its tourist office wanted to bring city dwellers there in the fall, when the larches turn orange and the mountains grow quiet again. The audience: urban adults without children or free of family commitments, under 35 or over 55.
The project grew out of a public tender on promoting the area's forests, which we answered together with Territoires Avenir. From the start, the tourist office set three conditions: the destination had to be recognizable, the film had to travel on social media on its own, and it had to move people through its human side.
From the first workshop to the chosen concept
In April 2024, we opened things up with creative directions meant to be challenged: film ideas, street marketing, campaigns with content creators. In June, four developed concepts. On June 26, the tourist office chose the first one: “The forest takes over the city”.
The script then matured with the tourist office. In December 2024, one version showed the trick on screen: a director called cut and revealed the green screen. The tourist office felt the attention drifted toward the shoot and away from the people of the Queyras, who had to stay at the heart of the film. We went back to the concept, and the bubble script was approved on January 22, 2025.
Three squares, three landscapes, three encounters
Each bubble has its own setting and its own local. On Place Antoinette-Fouque, a district of offices and shops, the intersection is lined with larches and leads to a mountain hut, home to a wood sculptor. On Place des Terreaux, a mountain lake opens up in the middle of the square: Lac Miroir, and the mountain guide who knows it. On Place Bellecour, the red ground becomes a dense forest, the forest of a forager.
The placement file from March 2025 set all of this before a single shot in Lyon: where each bubble stands, and a 360° view of each square with the forest, the lake and the peaks drawn over it by hand. The 3D then followed that drawing.
A shoot across two seasons
The locals were filmed first, at home, in late October and early November 2024, when the larches are at their most orange: at Clot de l'Henry, at Lac Miroir, in the Mikeou forest. Each scene was shot with a standard camera and in 360°, with a tree stump on the ground, the same one you find inside the bubble. The aerial shots were filmed by drone, with a drone operator on site.
In Lyon, the three squares were photographed in 360° in February 2025. Then one day, May 16, 2025: the Indie studio in Villeurbanne for the inside of the bubbles, with three actors, and the three squares for the passersby and the entrances into the bubble.
The stump, from the green screen to Place des Terreaux
The inside of the bubble is the trickiest part. The actor performs alone on a green screen, next to a real tree stump, with markers taped to the fabric to track every camera move. On screen, he ends up in the square filmed in 360°, then in the middle of the Queyras forest, and the light of the scenery has to fall on him as if he were there.
The bubble itself is entirely 3D: its dome, its reflections, its shadow on the ground. Camera tracking and light integration follow a protocol we developed ourselves, already used for the Huiles Berliet FOOH.
In June 2025, the tourist office asked us to introduce the locals better and to stay longer in the encounter: their trades now appear on screen, and the encounter takes its time. The film was delivered in October 2025, with a hook cut for social media.
A campaign in three stages
The film waited for the following fall, and the tourist office chose to keep the destination secret. In late August 2026, the bubbles circulated without a name: a content creator set the date on August 31, and Le Bonbon Lyon posted its teaser on September 8.
On September 11, the launch party at Le Groom in Lyon lifted the veil in front of content creators and Le Bonbon. Ten days later, a content creator who attended wrote that he now mostly wants to go there for real.
On October 7, the tourist office posted the full film on its Instagram account. On October 20, Le Bonbon revealed the destination.
Over 600,000 views in seven weeks
As of October 23, 2026, seven weeks after the first teaser, the bubble posts have passed 600,000 views on Instagram. The teasing did its job: an image that intrigues, an audience that comments and shares to find out where it comes from, then a long-awaited reveal.
Le Bonbon Lyon's teaser alone is close to 300,000 views, nearly three times the outlet's usual reel audience. Over 8,500 likes and over 130 shares: a 3% engagement rate, the mark of a video its audience passes along.
On the tourist office's account, the film has passed 230,000 views, nearly twelve times its follower count and fourteen times the audience of its other reels. That is the virality the campaign was after: a video that broke out of the Queyras community to reach people who did not follow it yet.
The relays rounded out the reach: over 65,000 views for Le Bonbon's reveal, over 16,000 and over 12,000 for the campaign's two content creators.
FOOH in Lyon
The Huiles Berliet oil drums crossed Lyon's landmarks the same way: a 3D object integrated into real footage of the city.
