This Wednesday, the TTV Media event focused on the business of entertainment formats, with producers from Fremantle, Endemol Shine Boomdog and Warner ITVP Spain; and the co-production of fiction, with the directors of Kapow and Plano a Plano.
TTV+Live: The Future of TV Content offered its sixth day this Wednesday, December 16, with two interesting panels focused on entertainment and fiction.
First, The New Age of Unscripted Formats brought together three top producers and executives from leading development companies: Coty Cagliolo, Director of Latin America Production at Fremantle; Sebastián Moguilevsky, CEO of Warner Bros. ITVP Spain and Portugal; and Marie Leguizamo, executive producer at Endemol Shine Boomdog.
This was followed by the panel The Roads of Co-Production Between Latin America and Spain, in alliance with Conecta Fiction. Agustín Sacanell, co-founder and creative director of Kapow from Argentina, and Emilio Amaré, partner and general director of Plano a Plano in Spain, shared their experiences and discussed the partnership opportunities for the future.
THE NEW ERA OF UNSCRIPTED FORMATS
“What did you learn as producers from this unique year?” began by asking Pina Mezzera, a journalist for TTV News and moderator of the panel, to the three producers.
“It was a whole year of learning,” replied Coty Cagliolo from Fremantle. “What we learned the most was our adaptability: everything that we believed was essential for our work and for our industry, was not. And from Fremantle I learned the importance of having a global network in a year like this.”
Sebastián Moguilevsky, from Warner ITVP, summarized his year in three great lessons: “We learned to work in adverse circumstances and with simultaneous plans. We learned to be more effective, specific and punctual. And we evolved in teamwork, in looking at everyone the same”.
For Marie Leguizamo, from Endemol Shine Boomdog, the teams’ ability to adapt to new ways of working this year translated into two concepts: “Patience and communication.”
In addition, the three executives agreed on the oasis that the entertainment formats represented during these months of pandemic.
“When it wasn’t so much about live news and the fatigue from so much information kicked in; humor, familiar content and shows suitable for all generations took center stage,” commented Moguilevsky. Leguizamo also highlighted the importance of feel good TV and co-viewing this year, two factors that go hand in hand in entertainment formats.
“The game show was placed as the banner of the covid-friendly format, commissions grew and audiences soared,” Cagliolo added to the conversation. “Because, in addition to being one of the family entertainment contents par excellence, it is content that adapts very well to smaller budgets, and generates a world of its own that is a bubble in itself.”
There was also time to address the growing demand from platforms for unscripted content. What scenario is coming?
“It will be coexistence,” said Moguilevsky. “Linear TV is going to continue to be the home of large formats, such as Big Brother, MasterChef, Got Talent or The Voice. Then there are other formats that are destined for platforms – there are factual contents that in linear TV have no more space – and others that can coexist in both places.”
For the Managing Director of Warner Bros. ITVP Spain, linear TV knows what its products are and the platforms are trying to understand what theirs are. “They are at the moment of studying data and metadata to sharpen their aim, the same exercise they did with fiction.”
In this sense, Leguizamo also referred to the differences between platforms. “We as producers are adapting to produce for each streamer and for each market”, since it is not the same to think of content for a national or regional audience than for a global one.
“The type of content is changing,” Cagliolo added to the conversation. “We come from a region where in general linear channels have not been very daring with new ideas, with paper formats. It was always much easier to go and offer a catalog, proven and safe ideas”.
The big change of the streamers, for the director of Production of Fremantle in Latin America, is that they have been able to develop again. “We are beginning to generate content that is not in any catalog, and we are finding people willing to listen to it on the other side of the table. And that for me is a dramatic change”.
“Over-using highly exploited genres no longer works. Platforms are inviting us to break structures, take risks and generate new trends,” Moguilevsky said.
This vibrant scene, which also carries its challenges, is a breath of fresh air that is making Latin American creativity re-emerge with force.
During the panel, Cagliolo, Leguizamo and Moguilevsky also exchanged views on what is behind the boom in Korean formats, the instinct to spot trends, the synergies of teams between territories, the ingenuity to hit the target by adapting locally, and their personalities. forecasts for 2021.
The full panel can be accessed here: https://ttv.live/ttvplus/es/virtual/stage/42051
THE PATHWAYS OF CO-PRODUCTION BETWEEN LATIN AMERICA AND SPAIN
After years of trial and error, finally the first series co-produced between Spain and the Americas are coming to light. Thus, since the end of 2019 we have witnessed the premieres of fictions such as Hernán (Mexico-Spain), You can’t hide (US-Hispanic-Spain), Inés del alma mía (Spain-Chile) or Tell me who I am (Spain-US Hispanic ).
In parallel, there are dozens of projects in development announced in the last two years between producers on both sides of the Atlantic.
As the main events promoting these initiatives, Conecta Fiction collaborated with TTV+Live for this panel. Its director, Géraldine Gonard, and its head of Marketing, Beatriz Cavanillas, spoke with the directors of two of the most active production companies in the field of international production: Argentina’s Kapow (El Presidente, La Jauría) and Spain’s Plano a Plano (The prince, Toy Boy, Valeria).
“The platforms showed that not only Hollywood could make content with a global reach,” said Agustín Sacanell from Kapow.
In addition, he highlighted other recent important changes that have favored international co-production: “Spanish-speaking professionals are aware that we are a huge market. And the audience has also changed, demanding higher quality content and challenging us to raise the bar and stand at a higher quality level. Although not without great challenges, all this will generate a lot of work for us in the near future”.
For Emilio Amaré, from Plano to Plano, we are at the beginning of alliances between production companies from different countries to create content. “Now our audience is the whole world. We have to start thinking about satisfying territories that were not in our imaginary. That is why co-producing with Latin America is the order of the day”.
“To reach these global audiences, co-production went from being a possibility to a necessity,” said Sacanell.
During the panel they also talked about the topics of series co-produced between Spain and Latin America and the apparent difficulty in finding current stories.
“It is a natural tendency to go down the familiar paths, and Spain has a tradition of telling historical fictions. However, there is a new audience on the platforms that I do not know if it is so linked to those historical events. I think you have to do the exercise of thinking about today’s stories. Furthermore, producing historical series is more expensive and more complex. We have both types of projects, but we are trying to focus on more current stories,” said the creative director of Kapow.
“The historical is recurrent due to the presence of Spain in Latin America, from Colón until just 120 years ago,” added the CEO of Plano to Plano. “We also have more historical projects, such as Los Niños de Morelia with Dopamine, and a couple of current projects.”
Another issue highlighted by both producers was the importance of having the right partner.
“More than a partner, it is a traveling companion, and it is important to have empathy, affinity and trust. Otherwise it would not be viable. This is like a marriage: you can get married but then getting divorced is much more complicated,” said Amaré.
“Exactly. And, like a marriage, the bond has to be worked on. Two people and not two companies can empathize. When you decide to go on that journey, it is a decision. We try to professionalize ourselves in this, to generate an expertise in relationships,” added Sacanell.
However, despite all the obstacles along the way, both agreed that the balance is always positive: “Content wins and you get rich a lot, you end up being a more professional and smarter professional,” said Sacanell. “It is about giving in the two, of talking, molding and adapting. And that greatly enriches both parties,” concluded Amaré.
During the talk, the producers also addressed topics such as the impact of the pandemic to co-produce internationally, the little management experience of the producers and the need to professionalize processes, the challenges of humor when producing with another country, and the complicated distribution of the IP in these cases.
The full panel can be accessed here: https://ttv.live/ttvplus/es/virtual/stage/41943
