Interview : Michel Beaudet,
Creator of "Tête à Claques" - Interview Via Vancouver Animation
by Mario Pochat



Michel Beaudet is the creator of the popular Internet site tetesaclaques.tv. Created for the Quebec market, its short humoristic video clips have rapidly become a veritable phenomenon among francophones. Prior to bringing characters like Oncle Tom and Raoul to life, Michel worked for 15 years as a copywriter for some of the top advertising agencies in Montreal. He wound up his career as creative director at Publicis Montreal after having amassed over fifty local and international awards.

A great adventurer, the creator of TAC travelled to the four corners of the earth before returning home to start a family and launch his animation studio, Salambo Productions. Today, Michel runs his company, creates, writes, and plays all the Têtes à claques characters in French.

VA : How would you describe Tetes a Claques?

MB: Created by Michel Beaudet, Têtes à claques (a.k.a. TAC.tv) is an original Canadian production of short Web-based animated clips. Since it launched in mid-August 2006, the site has garnered 600 million page views! To date, the website has averaged 1.2 million unique visitors each month (source: Google Analytics), mainly in the Francophone Web world. TAC.tv is recognized as being among the first commercially successful Canadian production created for the Internet that is also distributed on cell phones, VOD platforms and traditional format such as DVD and Television in French Canada and Europe.

VA : You are extremely creative, what inspires you to write all these episodes?

MB.- Everyday situations, really. The inspiration for all the characters we?ve created (there is almost 100!) are no one specific, but rather everyone I know! My characters depict the average Joe, and I truly believe that this is why we've succeeded in engaging the audience. While absurdly rendered with outsized eyes and facial features, TAC.tv characters strike a chord of familiarity. Also, although we love to recreate ordinary and everyday situations, we never depict existing characters' you'll never see John McCain or Céline Dion spoofed on TAC.tv; plenty of people do that very well already. As per the impressive amount of episodes (almost 150 stories in 24 months) I must mention that I am not writing alone! Although I still write a lot of scripts myself; I also work with a Alexis Cadieux who I hired as a full-time script-writer at Salambo since fall 2007.

VA.- How much of your previous marketing/advertising experience does Tetes a Claques demand?

MB.- I worked in advertising for 15 years. I climbed all the steps, from junior copywriter to creative director. I think my previous life has been very helpful in different ways: I know how to tell a good story in 30 seconds and I have a tremendous working discipline in terms of creating ideas and writing with very short turnaround time for production. On a business level, my previous working experience has influenced a lot my entrepreneurial approach: I've never considered Têtes à claques only as a good entertaining series; I also wanted to build a BRAND. And, on that level, we have succeeded beautifully in creating a brand that is highly sought after by our partners and by advertisers as an innovative way to generate branded content or product placement.