Morgane Bohn started in the industry as production manager. She went on to become production director working on music videos before joining advertising at Prodigious as TV Producer. She also worked at Marcel on brands such as Oasis, DS, Axa, BP, Persol, Lancôme, and CLM BBDO on Ubisoft, Mars, Mercedes, or Total, before being hired at BETC in 2019.

LBB> What advice would you give to any aspiring producers or content creators hoping to make the jump into production?  

Morgane> Jump, you’ll be fine. Okay, at some point, you may backtrack, feel cornered, but just jump into it. Production is magic because it’s where everything comes to life. It has more lives than a cat and always ends up on its feet 

LBB> What skills or emerging areas would you advise aspiring producers to learn about and educate themselves about? 

Morgane> Go to the movies, go on sets. Watch as many things as you can. Feed your brain and your eyes, all the time. With people, art shows, architecture, TikTok, wrestling, songs, series, whatever your brain feels like to. Constant curiosity should drive you and it must drive you. 

LBB> What was the biggest lesson you learned when you were starting out in production - and why has that stayed with you?

Morgane> Don’t come up to people with your problems, you are not working in a post office. 

An agency can sometimes feel like a weird place for producers. You are surrounded by people who can decide to change everything about a film at any moment. 

I learned and I keep on learning everyday how to take it, digest it, and think it through to come up with solutions and questions. Do not give in to the temptation to shout and burn everything because the film has turned into quicksand.

It’s okay to feel cornered sometimes, but you need to be a part of a team and when you do not have the answers, find someone that has them. 

LBB> When it comes to broadening access to production and improving diversity and inclusion, what are you and your team doing to address this?

Morgane> It’s in every conversation we have in pre-production on the different brands I work on (Citroën and Leroy Merlin). 

It’s a subject for the brands and the agencies, productions and directors have digested it already. We must sift through each script; each talk we have with creatives and clients. We must draw a line and create a new frame on everything we produce. 

I’m often the ‘feminist/diversity & inclusion alert’ and it’s super important for me to work closely with my creative director, Guillaume Rebbot , in early creative stages and discuss ideas, what we can and can’t say, and what we must say and show in 2022. 

LBB> And why is it an important issue for the production community to address?

Morgane> Agencies have a huge responsibility here. 

We are responsible for the images that we produce, the ideas we write, how we build things and who is actually making them (production, director etc). I strongly believe that a new vision will rise with diverse eyes, new talents, with more women, more diverse people, coming from different places, because they know how to address this more than anyone. 

There is nothing more depressing than white cisgender male talking about periods, gender pay gap, inequalities between social and genre classes. 

Advertising must take the pulse of society. We used to be ahead of time, but we are a bit late now. We need to be sincere with our ambition to address this.

We must give the mic to new voices. 

LBB> There are young people getting into production who maybe don’t see the line between professional production and the creator economy, and that may well also be the shape of things to come. What are your thoughts about that? Is there a tension between more formalised production and the ‘creator economy’ or do the two feed into each other? 

Morgane> I don’t think there is tension. There are so many facets on a disco ball. Each one matters.  

LBB> If you compare your role to the role of the heads of TV/heads of production/ Exec Producers when you first joined the industry, what do you think are the most striking or interesting changes (and what surprising things have stayed the same?). 

Morgane> I guess there is an answer regarding the amount of assets we need to produce today compared to what we used to, but what strikes me is what I feel has not changed. 

I still feel like there are a lot of men that are heads of TV, managing production departments, whereas a lot of tv producers are women. 

In French, the automatic pronoun that comes before ‘TV producer’ is feminine (please watch Loic Suberville’s videos on TikTok)  because we are so used to this job being done by women. But who is managing all these TV production departments? 

Mostly men.

I believe having more women for these types of positions will benefit our vision on how we produce and how we work differently. 

LBB> When it comes to educating producers how does your agency like to approach this?

Morgane> I started as a production manager and I’m glad every day for learning how to understand how to make a film because I used to drive cars, run everywhere on sets to rip stickers off bottles, block streets, manage kids on sets, find a new location two hours before the shoot and see what actually happens when working 24/7 with a director. 

We need talents who have experience in production to understand how an image is made. 

Talents need to be educated to overcome, oversee, and handle clients, procurements, and cost controllers better.  

LBB> It seems that there’s an emphasis on speed and volume when it comes to content - but where is the space for up and coming producers to learn about (and learn to appreciate) craft? 

Morgane> We tend to divide contents between the prototypes and the industrialised contents.

It’s wrong to think these two types can’t collide. Because they can and they will. 

Of course, it’s always pleasant to work on a real prototype, super creative, with high expectations on craft and with two million euros, but with social media, the way we produce and create prototypes has changed. 

And we are moving with the flo ‍️. 

I think craft is the word we say the most at BETC, and we have the same level of expectations on digital assets as we have on massive, big budget films. This does not mean it’s produced the same way, it’s not.

Please don’t give up on craft. 

Being curious and feeding your brain will level up your expectations. 

LBB> On the other side of the equation, what’s the key to retaining expertise and helping people who have been working in production for decades to develop new skills? 

Morgane> I believe we all have something to learn from the producer next door. I’m 32, and I have my very own way of producing, that is very different from Michel, 58yo who was a producer when I was two and dressed as a mermaid. I can learn so much from them, and they can learn from me. Communication is key and being able to discuss what we go through everyday within a TV production department is necessary and benefits everyone. 

LBB> Clearly there is so much change, but what are the personality traits and skills that will always be in demand from producers? 

Morgane> Creativity, being able to overcome and oversee, analyse, and handle things with a peaceful mind