Spotlight on the 2013 projects
Summary
A year after the Mifa Pitch sessions, here's news about the development of some of the projects presented.
Feature Film Project
Funan
Project Leader: Sébastien Onomo (Les Films d'Ici)
Director: Denis Do
France
Creative Focus Partner Prize 2013: Ficam/Tomato Sound Factory
1. What was your Creative Focus experience like? What opportunities has the pitch brought you?
The pitch gave me the occasion to meet Annemie Degryse (Lunanime Bvba), with whom we will coproduce the film in Belgium. She will also distribute it on Benelux. She came up right after the pitch to tell me that she was touched by the story. A couple of weeks later, she confirmed her participation with the project after having seen the first version of the scenario.
2. What is your project's current status?
We recently made a pilot which we presented for the first time at Cartoon Movie 2014. We are completing a new version of the scenario which we will present to potential partners.
3. What are your objectives and upcoming steps?
The film's development is finished. We are looking for a distributor for France and for partners for international and video sales. We are leaving room as well for a foreign third coproducer. If everything works out in our favour, we will be able to start production in 2015 and finish the film in 2017.
Short Film Project
Yùl and the Snake
Project Leader and Director: Gabriel Harel
France
Creative Focus Partner Prize 2013: Ciclic and Rhône-Alpes Cinéma/Bourse des festivals
1. What was your Creative Focus experience like? What opportunities has the pitch brought you?
During the Annecy's Festival 2013, the Yùl and the Snake project was already in development. I was working with a producer and Canal+ had just prepurchased the film. So I wasn't looking for a producer or a broadcaster. On the other hand, the Creative Focus presentation and the the project's poster at Mifa helped to make it known and talked about in the professional world.
Creative Focus was also the opportunity for us to find ourselves amongst collaborators, to discuss the project with other professionnals and so to better anticipate the film's production. The act of presenting the project also helped us realise what the project's strong points were and what we needed to work on. We made summaries and assessments which allowed us to advance and to lead the project with more confidence, about which directions to take and which choices to make.
2. What is your project's current status?
The project is in production, I'm working with a small team of talented animators at the Folimage studio. We have already recorded the voices, with actors who played out the dialogue scenes outdoors.
3. What are your objectives and upcoming steps?
The objectives are to continue making the film. I'm going to Ciclic this summer to create the sets and to do the clean-up of the animation. I'm still thinking about and looking for the film's soundtrack.
TV Series Project
Cagemates
Project Leader: Alvaro Ceppi (Zumbástico Studios)
Directors: Pablo Castillo, Leonardo Beltran
Chili
Creative Focus Partner Prize 2013: Disney Channel
1. What was your Creative Focus experience like? What opportunities has the pitch brought you?
Participating in the Creative Focus was a great experience, but also a very demanding one. First, having the support of a tutor was very important. I was lucky to work with Shamik Majumdar from Disney EMEA, who gave us very helpful (and what's more important, truthful) feedback. I have to say that our first pitches with Carlos (Bleycher, creator of Cagemates) were crap, and Shamik helped us a lot to improve that. A good piece of advice for everyone doing pitches at Annecy this year: don't try to sing your show's theme song during the presentation. Been there, done that, it didn't work. But in the end, the pitch went great and Cagemates got a lot of attention during Mifa.
2. What is your project's current status?
After Mifa 2013, we signed a deal with Cake Entertainment (UK) to coproduce the show and we received an offer from a major company to develop the series.
3. What are your objectives and upcoming steps?
We will continue the development, with the goal of enhancing the concept, the scripts and the art of the series, and we will hopefully go into production next year.
I'm very grateful to Mifa's Creative Focus because it gave us a unique and privileged opportunity to show our work, and that brought a lot of good things to this production.