Series Mania is bigger than ever: Interview with Frederic Lavigne
In this exclusive interview, Frederic Lavigne, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Series Mania, tells us about this year's edition of the festival, dedicated exclusively to original drama series and taking place in Lille since last Friday, March 10. Mr. Lavigne also highlighted some of the main topics in the Series Mania Forum, dedicated to the professional delegates of the festival, which starts today. The festival executive also discussed some of the issues faced by the industry today and the most recent fiction trends the Series Mania team detected while preparing for this year's event.
Frederic Lavigne, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Series Mania
What will be the main highlights of the festival this year?
Well, it's difficult to say main highlights because we have so many of them. It's at the same time, a public event with 57 series selected with more than 30 world premieres and also a lot of guests: Brian Cox, Marcia Cross. We also do master classes, premieres, and at the same time, we also have the professional forum for three days during the event, which is another event within the event, with more than 3800 accredited delegates expected from more than 60 countries.
I would say, in the public festival, what we are really happy about is welcoming back some American talents after the pandemic. Last year, it was difficult to convince them to attend. They were really more attracted to local premieres in the US and staying there. So this year with Brian Cox, with the world premieres of Succession season four and The Power, and we have Marcia Cross coming, and Lisa Joy as the President of the jury, we have quite a few American participants and we are really happy about that.
How many online only delegates do you have this year?
I don't know about that yet. Because accreditations are still being bought. We have more people on site than online. Online is just complimentary when you cannot travel at that time. It's really great. We have all our series selected for the professional accredited online for two weeks and it gives a huge window of visibility for the professionals of what we select for the public. And in that sense, the platforms are really complementary with the onsite events.
Tell us more about the Series Mania Forum. What is planned for this year and how many projects will be presented?
There's a lot of projects in different categories. In the Co-Production Pitching Sessions, we have the same number of projects that we selected – fifteen, out of 400 applicants. We also have the Franco-Israeli pitching session. We have the African sessions. Now we have SERIESMAKERS, a creative initiative led by the Series Mania Forum and supported by European content powerhouse Beta Group. The new program is about directors coming from cinema and wanting to make series. There will be ten of them selected and presented. I would say there will be 60 or 80 projects that are pitched or presented during the festival. We also have a lot of sessions with exclusive first images from new series from Spain, Canada, different countries. So this is a lot of content that you can really hear about or see the first images or hear the pitch and watch the pitch sessions.
We have a baseline tagline called Where Series Begin, one with finished series in the public festival where we have world premieres and the second one where they are just an idea or pitch deck and producers want to find the money to do that internationally. So in both events, the sister events under the same umbrella, that makes the big difference compared to the classic markets, which were really built in the past based on selling finished series.
What topics will be discussed during the Conference program?
There are two big trends here. One, about the marketing, about the necessity to develop marketing tools and knowledge and know how to help the shows to be known from the beginning when they are really announced or produced in a world where the competition is highest as ever. There are so many titles that are announced every day, produced every day and launched every day, that you have to make the difference, because even the professionals cannot watch everything. Even the critics cannot do it, and even us festival people cannot really follow everything. So at some point, you need to be clever in the way you market the shows from the beginning until the end to reach the consumer. You need to brand something. You need to make it known that it's going to happen, because otherwise, when it's released, it's really going to be at the bottom of the pile. We heard some testimonies of creators that productions were destroyed because they spent two, three, four years battling for the shows and they thought it was a great success because they were produced by a platform, a US platform. So, the day they were released, they had to explain to their mother where to find the show in the platform, because there is tons of stuff at the same time. So there will be a lot of discussions about marketing. There's a new prize that will be given about the best marketing campaign of last year.
And the other important point is also the Woman of the Year prize that will be given to Nicola Shindler, who is a great British director. And we will screen a new show with Russell T. Davis Nolly in the public festival and she will be there to introduce the show.
And not to forget, we will also have the ecological discussions: how to produce with sustainability and also how to tell new stories in a different way to make the audience change their habits because we are all responsible for the dramatic changes. In the festival, we have at least four shows dealing with different topics. Obviously, we have a trend with ecological disaster stories but those are always told after the disaster happens, and it’s already too late. But there are other shows which are more explaining what is going on now – shows that make us reflect on our actions and help realize that we really have to change the way we live. This is also one of the main topics of the Lille Dialogues on the last day of the Forum where companies will talk about what is their vision of the future and what is the responsibility of storytellers to help change people’s behavior because series can be a very powerful tool in that respect.
Will you have some last-minute surprises for people attending the Festival?
In the public festival, we will have lots of actors who were not supposed to come but will be there. For example, during the closing ceremony, we will have the world premiere of the Netflix show of Anna Winger Transatlantic, and we will have three main U.S. stars coming which we didn’t expect. So, we will have more, good last-minute surprises like this.
Let’s talk about industry issues a bit. What are the main challenges when it comes to series development and co-productions? What does your experience show?
The question is how to make the difference because there are so many stories. We, the selection people of the festival, watched 400 shows, and we can really see some trends that are repeated and repeated. There is a tendency to say “Oh, this worked so we have to tell the story the same way” which is the same way of filming, telling, starting and finishing the story. It’s like recipes but the viewers are clever and at some point, when they get served the same product it starts getting boring. No matter if it is a very high-pace big-budget production. And because so many are getting launched every week, at some point you become indifferent. That is the main danger. Maybe… we should produce less but with more thought. We are now at the peak, and I think we really cannot do more, and we can see now money is now getting less because even the platforms are now firing people and canceling projects, so I expect that there will be a decrease. On top, you have the upcoming strike in the U.S. which will affect the production level. I expect producers and platforms to take a little more time to find and produce the unique stories. That’s why this year we have series from Iran, Greece, Pakistan, Mexico, and you can feel they have a hunger to tell stories, and these voices are fresher in a way than the voice of the “usual suspects”.
But is it really possible with the current competition to have less series, when streamers and broadcasters basically need new premieres every week?
Maybe they should do less season one only productions and focus more on two, three seasons. There is now this tendency to do only miniseries, just because you need fresh announcements with new actors, which is another problem to block actors, and also it is more expensive to produce second or third season because the price increases and the agendas are difficult. This makes it easier to launch new series, but also they need to give series a chance to find their audiences after one or two seasons because some series are slow-burning and need some time to be discovered. Some series were not that successful with their first seasons but the shows found their way after two or three seasons. Things are constantly changing, so let’s see.
Another trend that is really important is the crossing of cinema and TV productions. It is very strong, and this year around one quarter of the shows that were selected are directed by cinema directors and there are no cinema actors now that say No to TV series. For example, in the past in France if you went to a TV series, that meant your career in cinema is dead, and it was shameful for the big stars. At the moment it’s really the opposite. We open with a Cédric Klapisch show and we have many cinema directors doing TV series now. Also, now there are more miniseries of just a few episodes which really look like long features divided into chapters. So, we will ask when will a series start to become like a long film? Because the writing is different, and actually, these series are not series but longer films.
Well, it's difficult to say main highlights because we have so many of them. It's at the same time, a public event with 57 series selected with more than 30 world premieres and also a lot of guests: Brian Cox, Marcia Cross. We also do master classes, premieres, and at the same time, we also have the professional forum for three days during the event, which is another event within the event, with more than 3800 accredited delegates expected from more than 60 countries.
I would say, in the public festival, what we are really happy about is welcoming back some American talents after the pandemic. Last year, it was difficult to convince them to attend. They were really more attracted to local premieres in the US and staying there. So this year with Brian Cox, with the world premieres of Succession season four and The Power, and we have Marcia Cross coming, and Lisa Joy as the President of the jury, we have quite a few American participants and we are really happy about that.
How many online only delegates do you have this year?
I don't know about that yet. Because accreditations are still being bought. We have more people on site than online. Online is just complimentary when you cannot travel at that time. It's really great. We have all our series selected for the professional accredited online for two weeks and it gives a huge window of visibility for the professionals of what we select for the public. And in that sense, the platforms are really complementary with the onsite events.
Tell us more about the Series Mania Forum. What is planned for this year and how many projects will be presented?
There's a lot of projects in different categories. In the Co-Production Pitching Sessions, we have the same number of projects that we selected – fifteen, out of 400 applicants. We also have the Franco-Israeli pitching session. We have the African sessions. Now we have SERIESMAKERS, a creative initiative led by the Series Mania Forum and supported by European content powerhouse Beta Group. The new program is about directors coming from cinema and wanting to make series. There will be ten of them selected and presented. I would say there will be 60 or 80 projects that are pitched or presented during the festival. We also have a lot of sessions with exclusive first images from new series from Spain, Canada, different countries. So this is a lot of content that you can really hear about or see the first images or hear the pitch and watch the pitch sessions.
We have a baseline tagline called Where Series Begin, one with finished series in the public festival where we have world premieres and the second one where they are just an idea or pitch deck and producers want to find the money to do that internationally. So in both events, the sister events under the same umbrella, that makes the big difference compared to the classic markets, which were really built in the past based on selling finished series.
What topics will be discussed during the Conference program?
There are two big trends here. One, about the marketing, about the necessity to develop marketing tools and knowledge and know how to help the shows to be known from the beginning when they are really announced or produced in a world where the competition is highest as ever. There are so many titles that are announced every day, produced every day and launched every day, that you have to make the difference, because even the professionals cannot watch everything. Even the critics cannot do it, and even us festival people cannot really follow everything. So at some point, you need to be clever in the way you market the shows from the beginning until the end to reach the consumer. You need to brand something. You need to make it known that it's going to happen, because otherwise, when it's released, it's really going to be at the bottom of the pile. We heard some testimonies of creators that productions were destroyed because they spent two, three, four years battling for the shows and they thought it was a great success because they were produced by a platform, a US platform. So, the day they were released, they had to explain to their mother where to find the show in the platform, because there is tons of stuff at the same time. So there will be a lot of discussions about marketing. There's a new prize that will be given about the best marketing campaign of last year.
And the other important point is also the Woman of the Year prize that will be given to Nicola Shindler, who is a great British director. And we will screen a new show with Russell T. Davis Nolly in the public festival and she will be there to introduce the show.
And not to forget, we will also have the ecological discussions: how to produce with sustainability and also how to tell new stories in a different way to make the audience change their habits because we are all responsible for the dramatic changes. In the festival, we have at least four shows dealing with different topics. Obviously, we have a trend with ecological disaster stories but those are always told after the disaster happens, and it’s already too late. But there are other shows which are more explaining what is going on now – shows that make us reflect on our actions and help realize that we really have to change the way we live. This is also one of the main topics of the Lille Dialogues on the last day of the Forum where companies will talk about what is their vision of the future and what is the responsibility of storytellers to help change people’s behavior because series can be a very powerful tool in that respect.
Will you have some last-minute surprises for people attending the Festival?
In the public festival, we will have lots of actors who were not supposed to come but will be there. For example, during the closing ceremony, we will have the world premiere of the Netflix show of Anna Winger Transatlantic, and we will have three main U.S. stars coming which we didn’t expect. So, we will have more, good last-minute surprises like this.
Let’s talk about industry issues a bit. What are the main challenges when it comes to series development and co-productions? What does your experience show?
The question is how to make the difference because there are so many stories. We, the selection people of the festival, watched 400 shows, and we can really see some trends that are repeated and repeated. There is a tendency to say “Oh, this worked so we have to tell the story the same way” which is the same way of filming, telling, starting and finishing the story. It’s like recipes but the viewers are clever and at some point, when they get served the same product it starts getting boring. No matter if it is a very high-pace big-budget production. And because so many are getting launched every week, at some point you become indifferent. That is the main danger. Maybe… we should produce less but with more thought. We are now at the peak, and I think we really cannot do more, and we can see now money is now getting less because even the platforms are now firing people and canceling projects, so I expect that there will be a decrease. On top, you have the upcoming strike in the U.S. which will affect the production level. I expect producers and platforms to take a little more time to find and produce the unique stories. That’s why this year we have series from Iran, Greece, Pakistan, Mexico, and you can feel they have a hunger to tell stories, and these voices are fresher in a way than the voice of the “usual suspects”.
But is it really possible with the current competition to have less series, when streamers and broadcasters basically need new premieres every week?
Maybe they should do less season one only productions and focus more on two, three seasons. There is now this tendency to do only miniseries, just because you need fresh announcements with new actors, which is another problem to block actors, and also it is more expensive to produce second or third season because the price increases and the agendas are difficult. This makes it easier to launch new series, but also they need to give series a chance to find their audiences after one or two seasons because some series are slow-burning and need some time to be discovered. Some series were not that successful with their first seasons but the shows found their way after two or three seasons. Things are constantly changing, so let’s see.
Another trend that is really important is the crossing of cinema and TV productions. It is very strong, and this year around one quarter of the shows that were selected are directed by cinema directors and there are no cinema actors now that say No to TV series. For example, in the past in France if you went to a TV series, that meant your career in cinema is dead, and it was shameful for the big stars. At the moment it’s really the opposite. We open with a Cédric Klapisch show and we have many cinema directors doing TV series now. Also, now there are more miniseries of just a few episodes which really look like long features divided into chapters. So, we will ask when will a series start to become like a long film? Because the writing is different, and actually, these series are not series but longer films.
