In this seminar, I will review the actual capabilities at Institut Fresnel and more generally in the optical thin film community, to fabricate optical interference filters that can combine several tens to several hundreds of layers in order to produce more and more complex optical functions. In particular I will present actual state-of- the-art in multilayer structures modelling and design, Virtual Deposition Process, physical vapour deposition (evaporation and magnetron sputtering) and in-situ optical monitoring. I will illustrate these approaches on different kind of filters made of dielectric and metallic materials. Finally, I will present some recent developments in the structuring of thin film optical elements and focus on the use of thin chalcogenide layers for the production of volume diffractive optical elements.