Producers and mission director laud Australia/Singapore mission as a success

A Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund executive is calling a recently-concluded trade mission to Australia and Singapore a success for the new business opportunities it’s likely to create.Bell Fund executive director Andra Sheffer sees significant new opportunities opened up for business in both countries. A dozen new media producers recently spent three weeks in Australia and Singapore with the support of the Bell Fund, the Canadian consulate in Sydney and the provincial film funding agencies, and spent hours in public and private meetings with dozens of Australian broadcasters, producers, animation and games shops, and funding agencies. The meetings focused on both the broad opportunities in the Australian market, and concrete pitch sessions, which many producers have apparently already taken advantage of. Sheffer tells Canadian NEW MEDIA, "It’s up to the producers, now, to take what they learned and make it happen." She sees both potential short-term payoffs stemming from the mission, as well as long-term benefits new measures such as an unofficial co-production treaty between the two countries take shape (CNM, March 14/05). Sheffer will meet with Telefilm Canada this week to brief it on the co-production deal. Sheffer says she was struck by the sophisticated use of mobile phone technology to deliver content in both Australia and in Singapore, and by the willingness of funding agencies in each of the Australian states to assist projects that might involve Canadians. The trade mission, she argues, was critical to create face-to-face meeting opportunities. She notes, for instance, that the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) has shown strong interest in working with Montreal-based Trinôme Inc. and with Toronto’s marblemedia on projects including 11Somerset and the format for This is Daniel Cook. "That wouldn’t have happened had the producers not been there pitching their projects." Also, she says she had her eyes opened to the potential markets for content delivered by mobile phones. In both Australia and Singapore, vendors of third-generation (3G) mobile phone services that have much faster download times than current technologies in North America, are vying for customers with heavily-subsidized handsets and competitive price plans. "Mobile is obviously the future," Sheffer says, noting that the Bell Fund has given money in the past to Canadian projects delivered to consumers wirelessly. Sheffer’s assessment of the benefit of the mission was echoed by the producers on board, whether they came back to Canada with deals or not. In the case of each producer with whom CNM spoke after the trip, participants were wowed by the advanced mobile phone networks being used, and feel the Australian and Singapore markets are likely spots to work with local producers on co-productions. Collideascope developing with Adelaide company Steve Comeau, president of Halifax-based Collideascope Digital Entertainment, tells CNM he’s come back to Canada with two potential new projects in his pocket. In Adelaide, he formed a partnership to develop a convergent television/interactive project dubbed The Fantastic Magical Imaginary Friends with a local house, The People’s Republic of Animation. He is also working with Colin South’s Media World on a project dubbed Satellite City that he will begin pitching to broadcasters here. Things did not go as well, however, trying to sell his Rock Camp format to Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), something he was hoping to spark interest in when he spoke with CNM prior to leaving. Comeau is cautious about the potential Australia (he did not accompany the mission to Singapore) has to become an important new media partner or market, however. Asked for his assessment of the marketplace opportunities, he tells CNM: "I was surprised that, in my mind, there hadn’t been a lot of change in the industry or scene since last year. I’ve been going down there a number of years and it seems like the industry down there has hit sort of an equilibrium or plateau and there are some things that need to change for it to be taken a step further…Some of the funding systems and mechanisms down there need to be re-formed…But, I was very happy to see projects like UsMob – I think that it’s quite a good project and exemplary of taking some of the best practices that have been learned through different events in Australia where Canadians and Americans and Europeans have come, and incorporated it into the larger business plan." Comeau also praised the co-production model hammered out in Sydney. "The co-production framework, in my mind is very strong and very pragmatic. It’s not built on hype. It’s basically built on aligning the mandates and guidelines of various funds to ensure sort of maximum eligibility for projects that would take advantage of both funding streams. It’s purely a very pragmatic document based on maximizing eligibility, so I’m a big fan of it. I’m a big fan of Australia just because I’ve made a lot of personal relationships there with people whom I very much look forward to working with. If any of these opportunities come forward, I’ll most certainly be taking advantage of that document." Trinôme sees limited opportunity Pierre-Paul Larivière, producer and VP of finance at Montreal-based Trinôme says that despite some reservations about the Australian market, he is still coming home with two potential projects that he’s moving forward with. One, he says, is with fellow Canadian producer Mark Bishop that he sees working as a three-way partnership between marblemedia, Trinôme and a potential Australian partner. Larivière agrees with comments made by several of his colleagues on the trip to the effect that one of the strongest benefits of participating was rubbing elbows with Canadian producers. Though the Australian market shows some potential, he notes that only the ABC is currently buying interactive products, including kids’ properties such as 11Somerset. "It seems as though over there there’s a very important problem of funding for local production. I saw the numbers from the Canadian consulate, and I think last year Australia did three co-productions with Canada, which is not a lot compared to France who have done, I think, 35 and UK who did about 40 co-productions with Canada. So, it’s a very little market. For new media, I don’t know. I think they have great ideas, they want to get into it, but they don’t have the economical infrastructure available in this market to do so." ReelGirls hopes for long-term payoff ReelGirls Media Inc. head Ava Karvonen, based in Edmonton, tells CNM that she is returning home without any concrete proposals in hand to work on, but she says those will likely develop in the next year and a half. "I don’t see something coming out of this, like, next month, but I would say within the next year I’ll see things unfold. Where I see some of the opportunities is in localizing of content, or versioning of content. It was especially interesting to hear in Singapore – to see how hungry they were for interactive content, especially when it came to people talking from the schools about how parents wanted to have content to enhance the learning of their kids. And, that was interesting because I was surprised to hear about people using subscription models for that. And, I thought, that’s a fantastic opportunity, because it’s not something we’re doing here. It’s interesting to look at what can happen in a small market like that, what can evolve out of it. So, I definitely see some opportunities in Singapore. I think that I’ll have some content licensed out of Australia." Karvonen was also struck by the pervasiveness of mobile phone technology in Australia, where only 20% of people have access to broadband Internet – and even then at speeds usually of just 256kbps – and only 25% subscribe to subscription television services such as cable TV. "I was surprised by how few cable subscribers there were in Australia – just the access to bandwidth. We just take it for granted how far ahead we are in Canada. But then the other thing is you look at how addicted people are to using their mobile phones for absolutely everything, and where people were delivering content for the mobile phone, they’re way ahead of us there. I mean, it’s something we’re developing, but it’s not a platform that we’re using a lot. "That was kind of exciting to see because I think that’s coming for us, but we’re not there yet… I think in terms of sharing with the Australians, it would be great now if they could come here and say, ‘here’s how we’re using the mobile phone, here’s how we’re using this platform.’" marblemedia sees interest on format, licensing Marble’s Bishop tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the ABC is interested in licensing the This is Daniel Cook format, and a Singaporean broadcaster is interested in licensing DeafPlanet.com – opportunities he chalks up to being in Australian and Singapore in person. While he was also surprised at the pervasiveness of high-speed wireless network content, and by the degree to which the Canadian producers were creating content partnership opportunities among themselves, he says a key thing that struck him was the level of interest in both countries he visited to partner with and buy from Canadian new media producers. "It’s one of those things that when you’re on the other side of the world you don’t necessarily understand that those opportunities can exist. But, once you’re there and have the opportunity to meet with local producers, government funding bodies, (you find) there’s really a tremendous amount of potential over there for co-production. "Again, co-production for us is co-production on TV and on new media, and there were a couple of projects that were brought to us which are just dynamite. They’ve had a lot of development. There’s a real interest there we saw from the government in Singapore to invest in content for export – content as revenue generating potential… "They have government investing in projects in Singapore where there’s not even a broadcaster attached to it. This one project has two-thirds of its financing committed with no broadcaster involved in it. Again, we can’t even get our heads around that. They’re a country of four million people, so the funders have identified that it has to be something that is being produced for export and not necessarily for the local market. It has an international focus first, and it has very little cultural mandate attached to it. All of that to say that there are great opportunities to work with producers there, and producers who already have financing attached to their projects. Again, because they’d already developed their projects quite extensively, there’s great opportunity to then take it to the next level here with our broadcasters and with other broadcasters in North America." Minds Eye looks to long termMinds Eye Interactive’s Gail Bryanton tells CNM that while the company isn’t bringing home any signed deals on co-production, she sees the key benefits the same way her colleagues do: learning about the markets in Singapore and Australia and the contact with her fellow Canadian producers. "At this point it’s too premature to assign dollar values onto things, but you couldn’t even get to this point unless we’d had that mission. Because, without the information and the understanding of the marketplace, there is absolutely no way that we would have ventured into an export situation or a co-production relationship in Australia on a crossover project. So, as far as I’m concerned, does that have dollars attached in the future? Yes. It does. What those dollars are right now? I don’t know. I don’t have a signed contract. But, you know, like any other project, if you’re looking at a $400,000 web site and they bring a certain amount to the table or vice versa, as long as you can make that project happen, it’s very likely it’s a project that wouldn’t have happened (without the mission)." Digital Wizards sees positive interest Digital Wizards president Diane Williamson says that while she didn’t make progress with some of the projects she brought to Australia to pitch, strong interest has emerged for a wireless content application she’s now hoping to sell to ABC. Williamson also notes the strong role face-to-face meetings played in bringing about sales opportunities, despite the fact that ABC wasn’t even present at some of the pitch sessions in which she presented her properties to Australian audiences. She says of the wireless application: "It was one of the things I kind of had in my hip bag, but it wasn’t necessarily my number one task to have this be expanded to the Australian market. But, it was just interesting that when I spoke of it a couple of times, it really appeared to get the attention of people… And, two different producers got in touch with ABC and said, ‘you have to meet with this woman. You have to hear about this. You should do this.’. . So, by the time I met with the right person at ABC, he was already sold." Having a wireless application to sell likely stood Williamson in good stead in Singapore, where she found as her colleagues did that the market is hungry for mobile content. But, she says, there may be pitfalls in dealing with the highly interventionist Singaporean state. "I wasn’t sure what to make of Singapore. Having read sort of the stuff about the industry, it was interesting that they appear to be really very strategically focused on becoming the media distributor for that whole region. And, they really seem to be putting their money where their mouth is. The only thing I guess I’m a little bit concerned about is the level of government involvement. I guess the proof will be in the pudding…But, I had a good meeting with StarWave and I also had a meeting with one of the mobile networks, M1, which is rolling out its 3G. So, it was definitely worth my staying that extra day for those two useful meetings."

Producers and mission director laud Australia/Singapore mission as a success

News | 03/22/2005 5:00 am EST

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