By Jenny Wallace
Arts & Entertainment Editor

“Get ready Reading! If all goes according to schedule, we will be filming this fall!” said Sue Lange, producer for local company Schott Productions, who plans on bringing their second locally shot film to fruition. 

“Le Bon Chef” will deal with current diet culture and its impact on a female French chef’s livelihood. Filming will take place in Berks County. Currently in pre-production, locations and actors are to be determined. 

Lange and director Tracy Schott’s previous locally produced film, “Dust Nuggets” featured Eric Roberts and Roberts Picardo. However, filmmaking could be much different this time around.

If anything has changed since COVID-19, it’s the way we see films. While many of us stayed inside for hours binge watching television shows, the industry itself came to a halt; film festivals went virtual, movie theaters closed, and now all film sets need a COVID-19 budget for testing and cleaning.

“Shooting a film during the pandemic has proven extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive, especially for large productions,” said Lange. Planning to film their movie “Le Bon Chef” sometime this year, Lange said, “While we hope that the restrictions of the pandemic are behind us by the time we shoot, we’re prepared to move forward while following pandemic protocols.”

Maintaining a positive attitude, Schott said, “While the pandemic has made things more difficult and more expensive, we’ve also discovered that we now have more access to people in the industry who in the past were caught up in studio productions. This means there are some very talented actors out there who aren’t working,”

For this film, Schott Productions crowd-funded $20,000 for public relations, as well as cast and legal personnel.

Visit leboncheffilm.com or contact info@schottproductions.com  (800) 995-5963 for more information.