The work of an audiovisual production company endures a large number of myths associated with fleeting moments of glamour and celebration when a good part of the work is already finished.
Festivals, premieres, awards and interviews are a recognition, deserved or not, of a kind of invisible journey through an unknown desert.
This journey has been lived and described crudely by Pau Subirós, in his book “The accidental producer”. We had the opportunity to talk to Pau in Barcelona when he and director Neus Ballús were still in the production of “The Plague”. This is the feature film that triggered this book. Pau is a young producer from El Kinògraf, a modest producer, like the vast majority, who one day decided to embark, for love, on production.
At Mosaic we have been producing documentaries for years. It would be naïve to say that the premiere of a production fills the months dedicated to raising the financing and completing, against all odds, the production of any audiovisual work.
The pleasure of our work is strong. It discreetly dwells in overcoming the challenges involved in the construction of an audiovisual film. There are moments when our work exhales masochism. Others it is nothing more than a stubborn and pleasant act of observation and narration.
Pau Subirós rightly states that each film is learned to make once it is finished. Each project is a new challenge. In each one, we are faced with new financing models and new languages. Even to aesthetic approaches different from those made previously. That non-repetition contains, precisely, part of the poison that hooks those of us who live from production.
We could say that the production is framed in a philosophy of resistance. A philosophy that combines eternal learning with detachment from the formulas already experienced. A predisposition to travel inhospitable places is required. It forces constant ego management. It requires overcoming scratches, licking your wounds and continuing to move forward until the end.
“The Accidental Producer” is a necessary book in our industry. Anyone who works or intends to do so in audiovisual production should know about it.