Why full employment on movie sets complicates film shoots

In the spring, when the director Antoine Garceau is called by France 2 to shoot an adaptation of Elementary particles by Michel Houellebecq, two technicians catch the Covid-19, a machinist and a camera assistant. Surprise: where, a few years ago, for this filming in Brittany, two phone calls would have been enough to replace them, now it will take the production dozens of calls to find a recruit.

It’s crazy what’s going on, the director is surprised from Athens, where he shoots alongside Cédric Klapisch and Lola Doillon, the fourth part – in the form of a series – of The Spanish inn. But this anecdote, anyone can tell it to you. Claire Denis is shooting Tea Stars at Noon in Panama and struggling to find a post-production director; it is Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano who, in the middle of the second season,In therapy, in the spring, have trouble finding technicians but also equipment and cameras: We even found ourselves in a shortage of batteries, which are made in China.

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There would be no more tracking rails in Paris, rumor has it. Will we have enough cable left? asks a manager … Panic in Hollywood-sur-Seine. It is the great paradox that agitates the profession: while the public has still not returned en masse to the dark rooms, the environment has never known such euphoria. Paradoxically, it is full employment , explained, in the middle of a confinement that was believed to be an assassin for the seventh art, a dumbfounded Eric Toledano.

Boiling pot

The equation is however simple: multiplication of pipes (platforms – Netflix, OCS, Amazon, Apple TV, Mubi…) means multiplication of requests for content, equal multiplication of shoots. Add to that the triumph of series on the small screen – which engage many more people over much longer periods of time, some 100 days in a row for 8-10 fifty-two minute episodes – and you’ve got your pot boiling. .

“Gone are the days when film workers struggled to make ends meet”, says Sandrine Paquot, production manager

Gone are the days when film workers struggled to make ends meet ”, remarks Sandrine Paquot, who has just finished filming the Asterix by Guillaume Canet, as production manager. Supported by the manager for logistics, the production administrator for the accounts, and the assistant director for the artistic, the production manager is on the front line in this crisis.

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