- France 2 will broadcast the 31st season of Fort Boyard from July 11.
- The show followed a strict protocol to ensure the safety of all teams, and had to be mounted faster than usual.
- For Francis Côté, the director, the program has learned something positive from this extraordinary situation.
Let the little ones (and the big ones) reassure themselves, there will be Fort Boyard this summer on France 2. Félindra and his tigers, Passe-Partout and his keys, Père Fouras and his puzzles will be back for a 31st season. Coronavirus forces, the new edition of the game will have a special flavor this year and it will be seen on the screen. The production, which wanted to put the game on the air despite a loss of its insurance, worked hard to reconcile the respect for barrier gestures and the organization of the usual play on the Charente Maritime building.
Hosting 140 technicians on a monument as narrow as the fort was not a gamble won in advance. The cells, which sometimes do not exceed 20 square meters, must house, in addition to the candidates, the cameramen and the assistant director. For a test like that of Cyril Féraud, one of the novelties of the season, a dozen people must pile up in the cell, while remaining hidden from the eyes of the cameras. But production took care of the grain during the two weeks of shooting.
Before the Fort, comfort
Mask, hydroalcoholic gel, meter away, the little kit, now essential for any good self-respecting citizen, was delivered to the car park upon arrival. Usually, only one boat supports the whole team until the mooring at the fort, but this year, two boats were requisitioned. On the monument, the canteen has doubled in size and Olivier Minne and Father Fouras have been treated very carefully to ensure that there are very few people around them.
The precautions taken behind the scenes will also be seen on the air, and this from the start of the broadcast with the mask (tabby) mandatory on the arrival of candidates in front of Olivier Minne. Rest assured, the five adventurers for a day will not wear it during the whole show, and will not put it on again until the boyars are harvested. "If the candidates had worn the masks for an hour and a half, it would have sent a slightly anxiety-provoking signal and we would have lost a lot of emotion," concedes director Francis Côté.
Duo events? Canceled. The mud cell? Sentenced. This year, candidates are called one by one to move to the place of the test and will enter it systematically alone. Even the metal cage where the boyars are hiding has been revisited. "We have created partitions in this well where the treasure falls so that each candidate does not touch the hands of the other," says the director. Despite these changes, we are still promised a season full of fear and surpassing oneself.
Fourth-speed mounting
If the filming of the summer game of France 2 was organized later than usual, Fort Boyard will indeed be back at around the same time as in other years, from July 11. It is actually a real gamble, the shooting of the last show took place on June 26. To meet the challenge, the production brought its chief editor on site from the preparation phases and during the shooting. "We managed to save almost eight to ten days of editing thanks to that," says the director of the program. Even though the entire season was not yet in the box, we were already working on the Paris side to assemble the first images. “It's nice to be able to see the assembly of a cell that we shot the day before,” explains Francis Côté, who thinks that the experiment could be repeated.
Despite an exceptional sanitary arrangement, filming habits have not changed. Fort Boyard is hours of rushes for a full 130-minute show. The production took the time to shoot the additional shots necessary for the editing and called on more cameramen. For this 31st edition, the program even offered a racing drone that could point to 130 kilometers in less than two seconds. "This is a great first and I think it will be a signature," added Francis Côté. For more peace of mind (and security), we are assured that it is not Father Fouras who will be in charge.
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- Television
- Covid 19
- France 2
- Coronavirus
- Fort Boyard