The Role

First professional immersion, stepping into the worlds of cinema, documentary and audiovisual production.

My immersion at Le Film & La Plume

January – March 2025 Internship Multidisciplinary
During my second year of the BUT MMI degree at the UGA, I had the opportunity to do an 8-week internship with the production company "Le Film & La Plume". I worked alongside Jérôme-Cécil Auffret, a director of TV documentaries (ARTE, Canal+, TV5 Monde) with over 40 years of experience and an International Emmy Award winner. The mission entrusted by my supervisor covered a wide range of tasks, reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of my training:

Alexis Cardon will be in charge of carrying out documentary research on several themes, then developing documentary concepts by producing project pitch decks. He will also need to define a communication strategy around these projects, including editing a "bible" document, cutting a teaser trailer, and shaping one or more promotional accompaniment strategies for social media. We are considering a collaboration on 3 to 4 documentary film projects at most, intended for both French and international distribution.

In the end, my missions revolved around three main areas: research and planning, audiovisual production, and web development.

Research & Communication Strategy

This first area aimed at laying the groundwork for future projects and improving the company's online presence.

Documentary Research and Concept Development
As part of developing new documentary concepts with international ambitions, I led in-depth historical research. I notably focused on Sima Qian, a major Chinese historian, with the perspective of a future documentary on women in imperial China. I also ran comparative research on the circumstances of Socrates's death to feed the narrative reflection. The point of this thorough research was to draw out strong narrative angles to design impactful pitch decks. This mission sharpened my analytical mind and my ability to synthesise dense sources. I also did contact research, notably to identify the communications managers of the Picasso Museum for future shoots.

Social Media Strategy (France & China)
I was tasked with defining a communication strategy adapted to French social platforms (LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X). I produced analysis reports detailing the best days to post, the formats to favour and the tone to adopt. In parallel, I worked with a colleague to adapt this strategy to Chinese platforms (WeChat), designing dynamic posts.

Audiovisual Productions

This is the area where I thrived the most, putting my editing skills into practice while benefiting from my supervisor's expertise.

Logging & Assembly for Karuna-Shechen
I processed video rushes featuring young nuns in a monastery in Bhutan. The footage was meant for the Karuna-Shechen association, founded by Matthieu Ricard, for international fundraising campaigns. Using REDCine X Pro for native R3D files and Adobe Premiere Pro, I selected the strongest moments (prayers, gardening) and assembled a coherent edit with basic colour work.

Showreel Editing
I was responsible for editing a retrospective showreel celebrating 15 years of the company's productions. This massive task involved screening and sorting through several terabytes of video from around sixty productions. The main challenge was finding the right rhythm and giving meaning to the sequence of shots to highlight the company's craft within a final 10-minute video.

Multicam Editing and Audio/Video Restoration
I also edited the recording of a 59-minute theatre play ("Le Maquisard"), alternating between two camera angles. I had to face technical challenges, notably reducing noise/grain on a poorly set camera (ISO too high) using Premiere Pro's "Reduce Noise VR" function while keeping sharpness. I also fixed an audio recording issue by duplicating the left channel (which carried the useful sound) onto the right to create a clean mono output and remove white noise. Finally, I handled the dynamic editing of a short video (1m30) on a calligraphy class, in collaboration with my colleague in charge of China relations.

Web Development: Building filmetplume.com

Although it wasn't my initial mission, I took charge of the full design and development of the company's website (Front-End and Back-End), drawing on my skills in development, integration, hosting and SEO. The goal was to create a platform gathering all the company's activities and rich catalogue ("Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow").

Architecture & Database: Faced with around sixty productions to showcase, I went for a dynamic architecture based on a MySQL database. A single PHP page generates the content based on the selected project, avoiding manually creating dozens of pages.
Multilingual System: I developed a complex translation system (French, English, Chinese). The chosen language is passed through the URL, and the PHP script queries a dedicated table to display the translated content or fall back to the original version when the translation is missing.
Admin Interface (CMS): To ensure the company's autonomy, I created a secure dashboard letting them add, edit or remove projects easily through forms wired to the database.
SEO Optimisation and Routing: I built a dynamic filter system (auto-generated from the genres in the database) and a JavaScript search bar (notably for the "Award-Winning Films" page). Above all, I configured the .htaccess file to create "clean" URLs (URL rewriting), essential for SEO (e.g. transforming ?titre=Ham into /realisation/ham).