- The 7th episode of the 5th season of Skam France will be available this Friday at 6 p.m. on France.tv Slash.
- This season follows the fate of Arthur, a teenager confronted with the appearance of "sudden deafness".
- Niels Rahou, collection director of Skam France , explains to 20 Minutes , the writing secrets of the teen-drama.
He's the man in the shadows. We owe him in large part the success of Skam France , whose first four seasons have more than 100 million views. After two running-in seasons, the France TV Slash series, the public group's digital offer dedicated to young adults, really took off in season 3 when the writing was supervised by Niels Rahou. After adapting two seasons of the original Norwegian version, the French screenwriter is the first to develop a completely original fifth season. This season, the 7th episode of which airs this Friday at 6 p.m. on France TV Slash, follows the fate of Arthur, a teenager confronted with the appearance of "sudden deafness".
20 Minutes was able to discover behind the scenes of the Skam France writing room.
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Oh yes, by the way ...
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Niels Rahou officiates there as director of collection, that is to say that he is a kind of chief screenwriter. The seasons of Skam France are written in pairs. The writing of seasons 5 and 6 of Skam France started "at the end of April" 2019. "I had a little more than four and a half months to write two seasons," says Niels Rahou. Very short deadlines which require collective writing as in Anglo Saxon writing rooms . Here, we say "writing workshop", specifies the expert, who works for each season with a team of four authors. "I have always made the choice on Skam France to choose young authors, who were more or less in tune with the target audience," he explains. The screenwriting team around Niels Rahou is therefore between 25 and 30 years old. "Some come out of FEMIS, but not that, some are self-taught," he explains.
"What are we going to talk about this season?" "
"I'm lucky to be able to take care of one season after another, I don't have to cross border like David", the director, explains the scriptwriter. The first mission of the collection director is to define "what are we going to talk about this season?" What is the general arch of the season ”. Director David Hourrègue is involved from this stage. Niels Rahou then writes a proposal which must be validated by NRK, the Norwegian channel which launched the format, Banijay Studios France, the production house of the series and France Télévisions.
Once the general ark of the season has been validated, work in the workshop begins: “In a fairly sustained manner, five days a week. First, we “break” the season into 10 episodes. Then, we “break” each episode into sequences, ”says the scriptwriter. Once the sequencer is finished, the four authors and Niels Rahou each leave on their own with two episodes to write. "Each author writes the dialogued continuities at home," explains the scriptwriter. Once the collection director has collected all the copies, he will re-read all of the 10 episodes and "re-read" everything, that is to say, harmonize. "The homogeneity of the season is thus easier to obtain," he believes. The collection director will then submit the scripts to the director, the production company and the chain. “They will give me feedback, comments, suggestions and I will integrate them into the scenarios. The end goal is to come up with a version that works for everyone, ”he says.
On Skam France, as the director is involved at each stage, "90 to 95% of what we write ends up on the screen," says the screenwriter. “Afterwards, we do with the intangibles. Season 5 was originally written to include the character of Manon, but since Marilyn Lima was ultimately unavailable, we had to make last-minute changes. I rewrote in one night the whole season by removing his character but also all the occurrences linked to his character and the consequences of what his character had been able to say or do, ”recalls the director of collection.
"Dramatize at least sequences of daily life"
“There are three ways to look at Skam. You can watch clip by clip, episodes by episode or binger once the season is over, ”says the screenwriter. Skam France's very specific dissemination system, "in real fictitious time" is "necessarily taken into account" at the time of writing. "Each season, each episode, each sequence must have its own rhythm," says Niels Rahou. Another challenge: "You have to succeed in dramatizing at least sequences from everyday life to make you want to see the next sequence," notes the director of collection.
The spectators who follow Skam France do not know when the next sequence will be broadcast. “It is very interesting as an author to integrate this dimension. We play it in the narration, but not artificially. If we make a character say: “see you Friday at Lucas and Eliott's rack”. The spectator suspects that Friday will be broadcast a sequence at the time of the rack. But if a given appointment is canceled, it immerses the viewer in the blur and offers a new viewing experience. "
Background and foreground
As each spectator has their favorite character, “the challenge, as an author, is not to give in to ease. If of course characters are called to be there, we must not remove them, but we must find a balance according to the story we are telling, ”recalls the scriptwriter. “The most important remains the story of the main character of the season. We are not going to make a clip that will be seen hundreds of thousands of times, showing Lucas and Eliott together for example, if it has nothing to do with the script. "
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SEASON 3 | IS | COMING 👬🏳️🌈❤️
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To juggle between main characters and secondary characters, Niels Rahou has another tip. “We are helped by the transmedia device. Each character has an Instagram account. So, if we see less or less such and such a character during an episode or even a season, he can continue to exist through his storys and post on Instagram. For example, at Lucas and Elliot's rack, Imane is with Sofiane. Afterwards, she posted a message on Instagram saying, “Don't say my mom loves it”. This suggests that Sofiane met Imane's mother. Suddenly, it allows you to see the characters moving in the background. "
The festivals, numerous in Skam France , also make it possible to find the heroes of past seasons, but the authors are also subject to technical and budgetary constraints. "10 episodes of around twenty minutes is not much," points out Niels Rahou. And to continue: "Between an evening with 10 actors and an evening with 20 actors, That makes 10 additional fees".
"Fresh and modern but also make sure it is not dated in six months"
If Skam France is such a great success, it is because the target audience, that of young adults, recognizes itself in the stories that are told to it. Particular attention is paid to dialogues which must ring true. “Sometimes you realize by turning that something is not working. I am lucky to have a director who trusts the authors and who calls me in these cases ”, applauds the scriptwriter.
This tone that sounds right, we also owe it “to the additions of the actors, even younger than the writers, who are given the opportunity to appropriate the text. They have the possibility of saying exactly the same thing but perhaps in a more current way ", declares the author who hails the" formidable capacity of improvisation "of Robin Migné, who camps Arthur in season 5. Only limit to the exercise: “Something very current, fresh and modern today, can be dated very quickly in five or six months. If there can be expressions like “schlag” in the first episode of season 5, generally, we try to have expressions not too dated 2019. The language of young people is changing a lot. The Skam series, the first French teen drama praised abroad, is therefore ready to enter the history of French fiction.
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