Finanziare le produzioni a basso budget
di CARTOON (European Association of Animation Film)
- Eric Jacquot ha illustrato le compatibilità tra le coperture fiscali belga e francese. Blue Spirit ha uno staff ridotto con base in Francia e in Belgio, ma è in grado di finanziare le serie a basso budget riunendo emittenti, fondi pubblici nazionali, sussidi regionali, coperture fiscali e garanzie minime per le vendite internazionali e su supporto video.
Questo articolo è disponibile in inglese.
Eric Jacquot began his career at TOTAL where
he was responsible for the audiovisual service.
In 1990, he created TEVA, a subsidiary of
TOTAL dealing with corporate production
and post-production and was its managing
director until 2004. During this time, he also
created the company Toon’s Factory in 1995 as
TEVA’s animation subsidiary, which specialised
in animation services for Hanna Barbera,
Ellipse, Nelvana, Carrere, and Elma. In 1999, he
became President of Toon Factory (production
and animation services).
In 2004, he left TOTAL
and founded Spirit Productions of which he is
President and majority shareholder. There he
has developed the production and servicing of
animated series and both animated and live
action feature films.
What is the production strategy of Spirit
Production?
Spirit Production was founded in August 2004. Spirit is a subsidiary of the French group Telfrance,
the second largest producer of fiction in France,
which wished to diversify into animation.
The Spirit Production development strategy is
articulated around two poles of activities: the first
is the service activity, thanks to the creation of two
studios in Angoulême and Brussels; the second
activity is production.
Three years ago, we decided to produce from
within our company. We thought about projects
that could be financed and produced quite rapidly. Therefore, we envisaged productions that would
enable us to work in a reduced and very close
team. All our productions must be made in our
studios. Hence, there is a very large writing task to
format the episodes with few scenes and few new
characters. In the Grabouillon series, for example,
we had six characters and a dozen decors. The
producer and the writing director validate all the
scenarios to ensure the economy of characters and
scenes is respected.
We try to limit interventions by having few coproducers
and few broadcasters. In general, we
work with a single distributor to avoid having to
bring several distributors into agreement, which
takes up a great deal of time. To have a minimum
of interlocutors allows us to reduce the production
costs.
The limitation of this strategy is that up to now
we have worked on half-formats, without going
beyond 50 episodes of 6.5 minutes. We limit ourselves
to the production of one series per year and
budgets of around €2.7 million.
We develop series that are internationally saleable. The key to the rapid financing of series produced by Spirit is the distribution’s Guaranteed Minimum. We try to ensure sizeable GMs, which is not always easy.
What is your assessment after three years
of production?
We produced Grabouillon for France 5, made in
18 months. We aim to maximise the rights. For the
Grabouillon series, for instance, France 5 holds
20% and S pirit holds 80%.
We started work a few months ago on the second
Grabouillon series in the same format.
Can you give us some examples
of production budget?
Two typical cases are Grabouillon, financed by
France 5, and Pahé, which is a Franco-Belgian
project.
Grabouillon could be financed within a large
country like France. T he broadcaster is a key figure,
as we cannot unlock the national financial
supports without a TV distributor. Because all the
work was undertaken in France, we received a CNC
bonus of 20%. The video GM and international distribution
represent significant sums. We were able
to buckle the financing in 3 months. Production,
including writing, lasted 18 months.
Pahé is a more difficult case and exceeded our
means in single production. This is a series of 78
episodes of 7 minutes. We were unable to finance
the production completely within France and had
to turn to Belgium to be able to set up the project. France 3 is the series broadcaster.
The production constraints are linked to our strategy. We check that the entire range of pre-production elements (number of characters, number of decors), as well as the writing, is reduced, and that no element can interrupt the production. This requires a great effort in production follow-up.
Cartoon Master Munich, Germany, June 2008
Ti è piaciuto questo articolo? Iscriviti alla nostra newsletter per ricevere altri articoli direttamente nella tua casella di posta.