email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

Studio 37 - A Newcomer to Film Financing

by 

- The article presents an interview with Renaud Chan, Marketing, Animation Movie & Generic Movie Director at Studio 37, a new co-production company created by Orange. He explains the reasons that led to the creation of Studio 37 and its involvement in animation. He also talks about Les Lascars, the full-length film co-produced by his company.

Renaud Chan began his career in 1999 as Marketing analyst at TF1 for the website www.tf1.fr and for children’s cable channels such as teletoon, Cartoon network and Piwi. In 2003, he worked as Marketing Manager for a TF1 department. In March 2006, he created and launched a web and mobile community platform based on blogs and video sharing: www.wat.tv. In March 2007, he became Marketing, animation Movie & Generic Movie Director at Studio 37, a new co-production company created by orange.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

For what reason was Studio 37 created?
France telecom and its subsidiary Orange created studio 37 in order to access audiovisual content further upstream than a simple VOD broadcaster or, of course, broadcaster by mobile telephone.
Studio 37 is entering co-production of feature-length works; we will invest in 10-15 projects per year, of which 1 or 2 will be full-length animation films. To this end, we have a team of programme advisers for the new media and for marketing. The Orange Internet gateway is one of the most important in France, with 15 million visitors per month, and we provide a general-subject editorial content. And on Orangeworld, we offer VOD for mobile telephones. Co-production is crucial to the development of the company. We position ourselves as a multi-media actor with the will to promote our content from one media to another.

What is the involvement of Studio 37 in animation?
Our targeted audience is the 12/35 age range, because this public is a certain online media consumer. Some figures to support our reasoning: 86% of 13/24 year-olds connected once during the last quarter, 8 out of 10 blog creators are under 25, 71% of 16/20 year-olds make use of several medias, television, SMS, Internet, at the same time. We realise that the key words coming back most often from this target are «cinema», «animation», «manga»…

Can you introduce us to Les Lascars, the full-length film co-produced by Studio 37?
Les Lascars is a cult animation series broadcast in 2001 on Canal+, on MCM between 2003 and 2007 and of which 6 million episodes have been viewed via Internet on Youtube and Dailymotion. The episodes of the series had a format of 1 minute 30, easily viewed on a mobile phone. The full- length work is based on this successful series and is in preparation since 2004. The budget of 10 million € is financed by the co-producer Millimages, France 2, Bac, France televisions and studio 37 to the sum of 2 million €. What is interesting in this case is that the mini-formats promote the feature-length animation film, which will be released during the first quarter of 2009.

Is Studio 37 also considering the co-production of feature-length works in 3D?
This is one of our largest work areas, the major producers operate in 3D, and this allows pirating to be avoided. In addition there have been technological advances in TV screens for 3D, and 3D will probably be first available to all on mobile phone screens. In this respect, in Korea, Samsung has just commercialised the first 3D telephone at the price of 700 $.

Cartoon Master Potsdam, Germany, November 2007

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy