2023-12-16 00:30:00
Two important figures in Quebec television denounce the conditions in which our television series are filmed, the production of which has been hit hard by inflation and falling budgets.
“I’m working on series projects at the moment. From this stage, we are used to saying to ourselves: no scenes in cars, no crowds, no scenes too far from Montreal, we must not multiply the characters nor the places nor the sets…” denounced recently on Facebook Daniel Thibault, a Quebec author and screenwriter who has worked on series such asA boy a girl et Mirador.
In interview at JournalMr. Thibault shared the concrete impact of this lack of budget on the writing of the historical series Disobey: the choice of Chantale Daigle, available on Crave.
Author and screenwriter Daniel Thibault. Archive photo, Éric Carrière
“We had trials and three demonstrations to film, but we had to cut everywhere, so we might only put in one demonstration,” he remembers. “We would also have liked to go through the Parc des Laurentides, to show the splendor of our province, but it would have cost too much to move the team. It’s been going on for a long time with spit and we always have to do more with fewer resources,” laments Mr. Thibault.
“We have to rack our brains more”
According to Mr. Thibault, towards the end of the 1990s and at the turn of the 2000s, a budget of one million dollars per one-hour episode was common for Quebec series. Today, production teams consider themselves lucky to get $700,000 for the same amount of air time.
“Our budgets do not follow the cost of living, so we are hit hard by increases, such as the price of gasoline, the price of food and the price of materials,” notes Josée Vallée, a producer involved, among others, in the detective series 19-2. “We have to rack our brains more and sit down together to see what stories we can tell and produce, with the money we have,” she explains.
Producer Josée Vallée. Archive photo, Chantal Poirier
She cites the filming of the second season of the series One way ticket, which required regional travel. To stay within budget, the team had to reduce the number of scenes, eliminate camera shots or remove actors from certain segments in order to save time.
“I’m very proud of what we managed to do, but if we had had a little more time and money, I might have refined the final product a little more.”
The strength of our province
Mr. Thibault and Ms. Vallée agree: one of the strengths of the Quebec cultural sector lies in its ability to create quality content with few resources.
“We still manage, with our resourcefulness and our talent, to produce super interesting series. We just have to choose them better,” says the producer.
“To protect our language, we should inspire this pride through positive gestures, such as by injecting more money and encouraging our creators,” adds the author.
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