Selling French beer to the British by convincing them it tastes better is a tough job. So we enlisted the UK’s favourite ever Frenchman and got him to do it for us. He delivered the reason to believe (it’s brewed with a unique hop) in his own inimitable style, making a potentially dry message, and the advertised beer, instantly more appealing to all.

Budget to production company: £680k

4 days shooting on 35mm film on location in Alsace, France.

1 x 60" originals film, 1 x 30" cutdown plus 2 x 20" original films.

With no technical wizardry required, the challenge on this job was financial - to protect high production values, hopefully make some nice films & maybe even prove to ourselves it is actually possible to shoot in notoriously expensive France without unlimited resources.

The scripts were set in Alsace but during bidding, the French social charges (62% on top of rates already comparable to UK crew) got the better of a superficially acceptable looking budget target and it looked like we’d be resorting to shooting in Argentina. With time running out to get going, the director decided that cheating the look of the vernacular architecture & scenery of rural Alsace elsewhere would be a disaster so we gambled that we’d make it work in France for the budget (despite being way over on all estimates). And that the weather would be nice. In November.

Firstly, the 62% trap was swerved by using as few French crew as possible - travelling in technicians and facilities and keeping their travel costs low (with apologies to those on Ryanair Stansted to Baden Baden flights at 5am). Production, AD, art department, wardrobe, glamour all came from the UK. Camera, grip, sound & electrical from the Czech Republic. Equipment trucks & film rushes relayed between Prague & Alsace. Location facilities & other suppliers came from Luxembourg, Germany & Belgium. Logistically, the inter-EU entente required rivalled nearby Strasbourg.

Then we went native. We had to forgo using a service company to avoid paying mark-up / overheads - The production company has an office in Paris but we couldn't even afford to cover their reduced costs. We found a small-fry French fixer to handle French talent payments, find locations & location crew plus negotiate any French bureaucracy our Franglais couldn’t cope with. Otherwise we were independent. Crew & talent were split across a multitude of chintzy chambres d’hotes, we set up office in the village hall, brought our own coffee machine, printers, biscuits et al in a van from London, drove ourselves around & hung with the locals.

Overall we spent the job precariously skint, with the fixer losing the plot & threatening to walk almost on a daily basis. Then came biblical rain, emergency castings, scheduling upheavals, celebrity wranglings (although Eric Cantona was an utter pleasure), inexplicably extended public holidays, local shops/services open only for one afternoon and morning a week, Lambourghinis & tractors cancelling at short notice, extras demanding 2 hour lunch breaks, unscheduled bell ringing practices during dialogue shots, and some truly awful food. Nothing special really: just the usual trials of production but with an added Gallic shrug.

It was actually great fun, the sun appeared for the shot we needed it for and we eventually just squeaked in on budget. Vive la France.