An EICAR Alumnus Launches Skeem and Revolutionizes Audiovisual Production!
Graduating from EICAR more than 20 years ago and with extensive experience in audiovisual production, Thomas Jacquemin presents the platform Skeem, aimed at all professionals in the sector.
From Dreaming of Cinema to Film Sets
As a teenager in the 80s, Thomas Jacquemin developed a passion for writing and directing short films. Naturally, he decided to join the Film and Television Directing program at EICAR to train for a career in the audiovisual industry.
"University lectures didn’t appeal to me much. I needed hands-on experience. That was one of the reasons I chose EICAR. Beyond the theory, I had access to the experiences I had always dreamed of."
"My end-of-year short films were the first projects I directed; they pushed us to exceed our limits and discover ourselves. They encouraged us to be creative, not just artistically, but also in finding ways to make things happen beyond the resources provided by the school."
First Experiences in the Field
"Documentaries were my first immersive experiences in an unknown ecosystem. Understanding people, their motivations, interactions, and choices, which were far from my own cultural reflexes. One internship I still remember is a travelogue documentary about a Harley Davidson raid in Morocco, lasting over three weeks. We departed from Toulouse, excited to embark on a 3,000 km journey with a camera in hand, heading toward the Sahara Desert. It was 1998, and it was the football World Cup. For the first time, I experienced this powerful sense of discovery in what could become my profession."
After graduating in 1999, the transition to the job market turned out to be more difficult than expected.
"The excitement of the 3 years at EICAR came to an end. I hadn’t anticipated it, and I felt a bit alone. I was offered a job as an editor at an audiovisual agency in Besançon. It took me just a few months to realize that a salaried position wasn’t for me. Let’s say in its purely operational form, without being involved in the strategic decisions shaping the company."
"[The film shoots] pushed us to surpass ourselves and discover who we really are!" says Thomas Jacquemin, EICAR graduate © Mathieu Sautour.
Entrepreneurship: A Revelation Through Corporate Films
In 2000, he started his first company with two schoolmates, producing documentaries and offering services to businesses. The venture ended after four years: "It was a financial failure," Thomas Jacquemin notes, "but an enlightening lesson in professional maturity."
In 2005, he gave entrepreneurship another shot and founded Élan Films with Stéphane Pézard. According to Jacquemin, their collaboration "was so enriching that it alone felt like the culmination of a lifetime." Élan Films has produced over 1,000 corporate films, including 2D & 3D animations, motion design, and live-action footage.
Skeem: A Revolution for Audiovisual Production
With 15 years of experience at Élan Films, working across nearly all sectors and company sizes, Jacquemin and Pézard made a realization. "We had collaborated with hundreds of partners: agencies, freelancers, media, and we were often surprised by the lack of structured tools during audiovisual productions."
"We experienced it ourselves daily. While creative jobs require collaboration across multiple platforms with sometimes subjective and complex approaches, there was no solution to streamline production management and ease the frustrations everyone felt: static Excel schedules that offered no clear vision to clients, endless email chains resulting in Kafkaesque feedback lost amidst the daily chaos, outdated or misplaced links..."
Thomas Jacquemin, Stéphane Pézard, and their team then began dreaming of an ideal solution, one that would be simple and intuitive for both clients and service providers. "After a few months of reflection, still enthralled by the subtle power of entrepreneurship and its challenges, we created and developed Skeem.io. We had a deep conviction that we were creating something useful for our peers."
Skeem is a specialized B2B platform aimed at all video content creators and producers working with a third party. It centralizes exchanges between different stakeholders involved in audiovisual production, helping to improve project organization and management. The platform’s goal is to offer greater productivity, comfort, and client satisfaction.
The tool is primarily organized around four key features:
- Scheduling
- File and media exchanges
- Media annotations and validation
- Discussion/Chat
A Platform Accessible to All, Even EICAR Students!
In terms of budget, Thomas Jacquemin aims to make Skeem accessible to everyone! "People often think Skeem is intended for large productions, but on the contrary! Small teams or freelancers often lack structured and professional tools. Skeem significantly enhances their credibility and professionalism. Additionally, we designed the pricing model so that Skeem is accessible to all and can adapt to users’ activity levels."
In this spirit of providing an accessible solution to as many people as possible, Jacquemin naturally turned to EICAR. He recently hosted a masterclass for students in the Audiovisual Production Master's program. Alternating between coursework and internships at production, distribution, or broadcasting companies, the second-year students were introduced to Skeem and tested its various features using access codes provided by Jacquemin.
During the session, Jacquemin shared advice with the students: "Be creative, be brave, and be attentive!"
For more information, visit the platform’s website!