Two important figures in Quebec television denounce the conditions in which our television series are filmed, whose production has been hit hard by inflation and falling budgets.
“At the moment I'm working on series projects. From this point on, 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, the locations or the sets …,” denounced Daniel Thibault recently Facebook to: an author and screenwriter from Quebec who has worked on series such as Un Guy, Une Fille and Mirador.
In an interview with the Journal, Mr. Thibault shared the specific impact of this budget shortfall on the writing of the historical series Disobey: the choice of Chantale Daigle, available on Crave.
Author and screenwriter Daniel Thibault. Archive photo, Eric Carriere
“We had to film court hearings and three screenings, but we had to cut everywhere so we could only fit in one screening,” he remembers. “We would also have liked to walk through the Parc des Laurentides to show the splendor of our province, but moving the team would have been too expensive. Spit has been going on for a long time and we have to do more and more with fewer resources,” complains Mr. Thibault.
“We have to worry more about it”
According to Mr. Thibault, a budget of $1 million per hour-long episode was common for Quebec series in the late 1990s and the turn of the 2000s. These days, production crews are lucky to get paid $700,000 for the same amount of airtime.
“Our budgets are not based on the cost of living, so we are heavily affected by rising prices for gasoline, food and materials,” notes Josée Vallée, a producer involved in, among other things, detective series 19-2. “We need to brainstorm more and sit down together to see what stories we can tell and produce with the money we have,” she explains.
Producer Josée Vallee. Archive photo, Chantal Poirier
She refers to the filming of the second season of the series “Everything's Easy”, which required travel to the region. To stay within budget, the team had to reduce the number of scenes, eliminate camera shots, or remove actors from certain segments to save time.
“I'm very proud of what we achieved, but if we had had a little more time and money I could have refined the final product a little more.”
The strength of our province
Mr. Thibault and Ms. Vallée agree: one of the strengths of Quebec's cultural sector is its ability to create high-quality content with few resources.
“We still manage to produce super interesting series with our ingenuity and talent. We just have to choose them better,” says the producer.
“To protect our language, we should inspire this pride through positive gestures, such as injecting more money and encouraging our creators,” the author adds.