The media tech company will take over Haymillian’s operations in Greece, UK, and Mexico.

Blu Digital Group, a media technology company that offers award-winning cloud-based software and digital media services to the global entertainment industry, has officially acquired Haymillian, a dubbing, subtitling, and access services company supporting over 40 languages within subtitling and dubbing.

The acquisition enables Blu to further enhance its localization and access services capabilities and to expand its presence in Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. The venture aims to cater to the growing localization needs of the entertainment industry as well as contributing to the industry’s efforts to enhance content accessibility for people with hearing loss or visual impairment through the provision of high-quality access services (closed captions, subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, and audio description).

“When we launched our localization division to complement our content distribution and software divisions, we saw a gap in the market for full-service media management facilities which integrated localization into the content distribution workflow,” said Paulette Pantoja, CEO of Blu Digital Group. “By acquiring Haymillian, we substantially grow our localization footprint, adding services and territories in key areas. We can now integrate our proprietary project management tools into the end-to-end workflow, taking clients from post-production all the way through packaging and final delivery to platforms. We are excited to welcome the team from Haymillian into the Blu Digital Group family, joining us on the next chapter of our growth story.”

Following the acquisition, Blu establishes its presence in the UK, Greece, and Mexico. The newly expanded dubbing studio in Mexico is centrally located and enables access to an extended pool of talented voice actors and localization professionals. At the same time, the Greece-based operations team facilitates timely communication with clients and vendors.

“We are excited to join Blu Digital Group and combine their experience in digital media management with Haymillian’s know-how to better respond to the evolving needs of the entertainment industry,” said Aida Martirosyan, Managing Director, Haymillian. “We are going to build on the expertise of our talent pool and internal teams to keep becoming better at what we do: helping the entertainment industry reach a wider audience with its content.”

La entrada Blu Digital Group Acquires Haymillian se publicó primero en TTV News.

The Managing Director of the content localization company highlights a “busy year” as it started providing turnkey service, popular among its clients, that includes localization, post-production, and digital packaging.

Haymillian has been busy at work and happy to be able to reconnect with clients, face to face, after the pandemic. Growing around the world and with new services, particularly a turnkey option that offers dubbing, subtitling, video formatting and delivery, the company continues to grow to better cater to the needs of its clients.

Aida Martirosyan, Haymillian’s Managing Director shared with ttvnews the latest accomplishments of the company.

How has 2022 been for the company?

It has been a very busy year for Haymillian. In general I think that is the tendency for all the companies after the pandemic.

How valuable is the return of in person events?

For us it is very important to be in contact, to know the projects and the future plans of our clients, so that we understand how we can best cater to their needs. And also, to inform them of some of the new services that we have been providing this year.

Apart from expanding our studios in Latin America, and our presence in France this March, we have also started providing technical services; so from now on our clients can simply come to Haymillian and get their projects as a turnkey service, from dubbing, subtitles, all the way to video engineering, changing the format of their videos and delivering them directly to their destination.

Which of Haymillian’s services is the most sought-after?

Dubbing has seen most of the demand and we have lots of requests for Latin American Spanish dubbing, for Brazilian Portuguese dubbing, and also for the main European languages-French, Italian, German and Castilian Spanish, have been in high demand.

On the other side, we are seeing a big demand for subtitling when it comes to Nordic languages. Our clients are really looking for that turnkey option we have started to provide, because it is less headache for them, they have one point of contact.

Do you have any dubbing or subtitling projects you would like to highlight?

We are really proud of dubs and if I have to mention some of them, that would be the Japanese to Arabic dubbing of Naruto for a big client, such as TV Tokyo.

Another important project for us is Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish dubbing of Suspect, a new TV series that is going to come out from Fremantle Studios.

And also, animation projects which we are really keen on. We love working on children’s content, and Bimi Boo‘s Chinese dubbing is another example of such content that we worked on.

How much of the services utilized -or the client approach- is related to the territory the client wants to enter?

It does depend on the territory. For example, most of the clients know that in order to sell the content to Latin America they first need to dub it. But then there are other territories like France or Germany; where the clients know that because dubbing is very expensive, they first need to find the buyer and then dub it. There are also very rare languages that are very difficult for the common person to understand, so the producers that have content in these languages will say to us: “Let me dub the first episode so that my potential buyer can watch it and understand what my content is about and then, if there is a demand, I will continue the project”.

La entrada Aida Martirosyan, Haymillian: «Our clients are really looking for that turnkey option» se publicó primero en TTV News.

The increasing popularity of international content has accelerated the company’s growth, which also led to the expansion of its Mexico studios with new dubbing and mixing rooms.

With the global rise and consolidation of OTT platforms, -content localization is becoming imperative in meeting the growing demand of international audiences. A trend that started flourishing during the pandemic and is picking up speed.

However, this was not the only change triggered by the pandemic. For the past two years, localization companies, just like any other industry, had to adjust to a new ‘normality’.
“Adapting to a new reality is not something we only had to do during the pandemic, as our industry is constantly changing and adaptation needs to be continuous,” explained to ttv Dolores Irazábal, Business Development Director at Haymillian.

“Adapting to the new ‘pandemic’ normal was a bit easier for the localization industry, as we collaborate daily with people from different countries or continents. At Haymillian, we took advantage of this knowledge and we built on it to maintain business continuity while keeping team members and clients safe,” added the executive.

The truth is that the pandemic had a “positive effect” on the localization business. “The increase in content demand brought along an increase in the demand for dubbing, subtitling, and access services, as well as a diversification of services and an increased need for fast turnarounds. As a result, the localization industry experienced growth when most industries were seeing their turnover decline,” explained Irazábal.

The growing popularity of international content, with countries seeking productions from new territories, has altered the landscape of the dubbing and subtitling industry.
“The rise of international content has had a significant impact on us. More and more often we provide services in languages with limited demand until recently,” affirmed Irazábal.

“Today, Korean, Japanese and Chinese are part of our everyday life at work. On top of this, in the past couple of years, the content genres have also diversified, and we now receive orders for dubbing anime, web series, and educational content, in addition to feature films, documentaries, and animation which have always represented an important percentage of the projects we work on,” she added.

Haymillian has always had a strong presence in Latin America, which has been further enhanced in 2020 with the opening of new studios in Mexico.

“Our studios in Mexico have experienced continued growth during the past two years. The number of dubbing projects they cater to increases steadily,” remarked Irazábal.

In order to meet the growing demand, Haymillian has expanded its studio in 2022 by adding new dubbing and mixing rooms.

“It is a busy but happy time for Haymillian, as we are working on several big projects right now. We are dubbing multiple anime projects into Spanish and Arabic, while we have just finished dubbing nine Korean drama series for CJ & ENM. At the same time, we worked on a number of Turkish series, which are quite popular in Latin America,” concluded Irazábal.

La entrada Haymillian: Quality services and fast turnarounds se publicó primero en TTV News.

In his new role, he will support the company’s efforts to achieve its goals and establish long-lasting relationships with content producers in French-speaking territories.

Haymillian announced the appointment of Alexandre Collet as Business Development Director in charge of French-speaking territories.

Alexandre, who comes from a multicultural background, has extensive experience in sales development and is well versed in the TV industry.

Prior to joining Haymillian, he was a Sales executive at Reed Midem, the organizer of the MIP Markets.

Aida Martirosyan, Managing Director of Haymillian, commented that: “Haymilian is constantly growing, enhancing its global presence. We are excited to announce Haymillian’s expansion to France and the appointment of Alexandre Collet as Business Development Director for France, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Switzerland.”

“With his expertise and knowledge, Alexandre will support the company’s efforts to achieve its goals and establish long-lasting relationships with content producers in French-speaking territories. We are looking forward to working on new and exciting localization projects, helping engaging and inspiring stories from the region to cross borders and reach a wider audience.”

La entrada Haymillian Appoints Alexandre Collet as Business Director for France, Belgium, Luxemburg and Switzerland se publicó primero en TTV News.

Aida Martirosyan, Managing Director of Haymillian, spoke to ttvnews about the company’s new dubbing facilities in Cuernavaca, its most recent appointments in the country and how they’re facing the covid-19 pandemic.

Responding to increased demand for neutral Spanish dubbed content, Haymillian Mexico announced it has moved to a larger site in the country.

Located in Cuernavaca, the new site measures 400 m2 arranged over two floors and a garden. Recording and mixing rooms, along with a reception and waiting room for actors, occupy the ground floor, with an office on the first floor.

“Clients will now benefit from increased delivery capacity run by industry professionals. The new studios will boost the company’s growing activity in the region, while continuing to offer clients the full range of voice services and talent for all types of content,” Aida Martirosyan, Managing Director of Haymillian, said to ttvnews.

Accompanying the growth of its facilities in the country, the company also announced the appointment of Angelika Ocampo as Studio Director and Cesar Gomez as Senior Dubbing Director for Haymillian Mexico.

“Increasing our capacity and operations in Latin America has been an ongoing process, and we have been cooperating with Cesar and Angelika for some time. Their addition to the Haymillian family is not only about bringing great team players and talented people on board Haymillian Mexico but also building a strong team under their leadership”, she explained.

“Both Angelika and Cesar have already demonstrated impressive operational success undertaking the delivery of neutral Spanish projects during the Covid-19 pandemic without disruption to client operations. They have built a strong team and added new creative talent,” she added.

And in regard to the pandemic, the executive explained Haymillian’s top priority is the health and safety of its employees, freelance talent, partners and customers. ”We’re committed to business continuity and supporting your requirements when you need us most,” she said.

The company has responded to the emergency situation in two ways: on the one hand, its employees have been working from home. “We’ve been monitoring the Covid 19 situation from January 2020, during which time we tested and finetuned our operations to make provision for working from home to provide business continuity to our clients”, she said.

“With the extended risk of Covid-19, this initiative proved to be especially useful. All our systems and tools are in the cloud and we can continue operating with zero disruption to our subtitling and translation services from order to fulfilment”, she added.

On the other hand, the company has implemented guidelines to stay safe during studio operations, regarding any production, editing, mixing staff and freelancers whose presence is required in studios for recording. Recording studios are getting antibacterial treatment between recording sessions and team members have been asked to adhere to social distancing guidelines, while still being able to carry out their work.

“At this point, we do not foresee any disruption to the dubbing business unless specific countries prohibit movement and business, as is the case in Italy,” she said.

“We are committed to doing everything possible to keep our team, partners, freelancers and customers safe and to ensure business continuity. To date, all projects are being delivered on time. Through our cloud-based systems we continue to have full visibility and control of projects from start to finish within a secure eco-system,” she added and concluded: “We wish you and your families the very best. Stay safe and keep strong.”

La entrada Haymillian Opens New Studios in Mexico se publicó primero en TTV News.