Video Agency Carcassonne: Creative Ads, UGC and TikTok
More than twenty films have been shot in the Cité de Carcassonne, which has hosted productions since 1908 according to the Centre des monuments nationaux, and the camera still finds new angles there.
Scroll to learn more ↓︎Shooting, editing and publishing for brands in Carcassonne
More than twenty films have been shot in the Cité de Carcassonne, which has hosted productions since 1908 according to the Centre des monuments nationaux, and the camera still finds new angles there. The château and ramparts received 643,882 visitors in 2024, for a commune of 46,080 inhabitants in 2023 according to Insee. Esekai takes the train from Paris to film Meta and TikTok ads, UGC testimonials and short-form content in the Aude, for businesses in the Cité and companies in the lower town alike.
See our workTwo towns in one: the Cité and the bastide Saint-Louis
Carcassonne is filmed as two settings separated by the Aude. On the hill, the fortified Cité, with its château comtal and the basilica of Saint-Nazaire. On the left bank, the lower town, the bastide Saint-Louis, with its covered market and its cathedral of Saint-Michel, which the Centre des monuments nationaux points out from the wall walk. The two don't attract the same audience. The Cité lives to the rhythm of visitors, who came 643,882 times to the ramparts in 2024, the fifth most visited monument in the network according to The Art Newspaper. The bastide follows the daily life of the 46,080 inhabitants of Carcassonne counted by Insee for 2023. A souvenir shop, a restaurant in the Cité or a hotel will speak to tourists before their stay; a bakery in the bastide or a medical practice will speak to the people of Carcassonne, with videos shot in their own streets.
Health, administration and services in the lower town
The commune had 32,065 jobs in 2023 according to Insee, for 46,080 inhabitants; it is also the prefecture of the Aude. Of the 2,569 active employer establishments at the end of 2024 according to Insee, 71.7% belong to the trade, transport and miscellaneous services block, and 13.9% to the broader public sector: administration, schools, health, social work. That last figure speaks to recruiters: care facilities, administrations and training bodies often look for profiles from other regions. A recruitment film showing the job, the colleagues and the life around it, with a shot of the ramparts at sunset, attracts a nurse or a teacher more surely than a written ad. SMEs, for their part, mostly need short product presentations, calibrated for LinkedIn and trade shows.
Restaurants, shops and visitors to the Cité
With 643,882 visitors to the ramparts in 2024, the restaurants, shops and hotels of the Cité have a renewed audience every day, who often choose on their phones, a few minutes before sitting down. The format that works is the table Reel: the dish set down, the terrace with the wall behind it, the waiter announcing the speciality. For a hotel or a guesthouse, a one-take shot at traveller's eye level, from the porte Narbonnaise to the bedroom, runs as an ad aimed at people planning a stay in the Aude. In the lower town, place Carnot hosts the Festival OFF in summer, and bastide businesses do well to show their daily life on TikTok, without the ramparts, to stand out from the tourist addresses. A winemaker or a producer from the Carcassès finds in the covered market a simple, lively setting.
Ramparts, summer festival and the Embrasement
The double wall lends itself to wide shots without leaving the ground: an outer rampart of 1,600 metres, built after the Cité became a royal town in 1226, and an older wall, 1,200 metres long, raised in the 3rd and 4th centuries; the whole was restored in the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc. Since 1908, an orientation table has crowned the Tour-Porte Saint-Nazaire, facing the Corbières and the Pyrenees. The Centre des monuments nationaux hires out its spaces for shoots all year round, on request. The tourist office lists among its highlights the Festival de Carcassonne, with the Festival IN at the Théâtre Jean-Deschamps and in the courtyard of the château comtal, the Embrasement de la Cité, the Magie de Noël and the Féria. The Canal du Midi and the Lac de la Cavayère offer calmer settings for sport, wellness or outdoor content.
Organising a shoot in the Aude from Paris
The train brings us to Carcassonne with a change depending on the timetable, then the team walks from the station to the bastide and up to the Cité, or travels by vehicle for more distant locations. Based on rue du Colisée, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, Esekai has worked for more than 350 brands, and the preparation for a trip to the South doesn't vary: script locked by video call, permits obtained, creators from the Aude chosen when UGC is part of the brief. For a shot inside the château or on the ramparts, we go through the events department of the Centre des monuments nationaux, which manages shoots. On site, the Cité is filmed from opening time, before the groups arrive; midday belongs to a table at the foot of the walls; the afternoon to the bastide, its shops and offices; the evening to the pont Vieux, from where the fortress is framed at sunset.
Why creative ads deliver better results
An ad that looks like an ad gets skipped in a second. A creative ad works on the hook, the message and the format so it is watched to the end, then tested and adapted for as long as it converts.
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Every video is designed to be tested, measured and then improved.
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Market, goals and audiences: we choose the angles to test.
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Scripts, shooting and editing to each platform's codes.
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We compare the variants and roll out the winners.
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