01/02/2010 - The European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE) will organize, with the support of the MEDIA programme, a series of meetings and workshops aimed at improving the training of producers and audiovisual professionals in the film industry.

The European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE) will organize, with the support of the MEDIA programme, a series of meetings and workshops aimed at improving the training of producers and audiovisual professionals in the film industry. The last of those workshops was held last December in Luxembourg, where the issue was about the modern marketing techniques. A total of 27 participants, most of them producers, from 15 different countries attended this event with the intention of presenting their projects and receive advice from the experts participating to the event.

Over four days, several professionals of the film industry have offered to producers a number of different visions of the film marketing. The team of experts for this workshop was composed of Fraser Bensted and Dan Light, from the Picture Production Company (United Kingdom), the distributor Pim Hermeling from Wild Bunch Distribution Benelux (The Netherlands), CEO of Festivals Darlings Thomas Mai (Denmark), the producer Hanneke Niens from KeyFilm (The Netherlands), the international film and PR marketing consultant Jonathan Peake (UK), the entertainment lawyer Joris van Wijk (The Netherlands) and the Head of Sales at TrustNordisk, Susan Wendt (Denmark ).

The briefing focused on several topical issues, followed by a series of questions from the participants and open discussions with experts of both marketing and film industry. On the first day, Jonathan Peake gave an overview on principles of marketing. Joris van Wijk went deeper into the distribution agreements to assist producers in understanding each other, managing and negotiating this type of agreements.

On the other hand, Susan Wendt used her briefing to present the international sales process. The distributor Pim Hermeling interviewed the producer Hanneke Niens with the aim of offering a closer look, a first-person look, on the issues of co-production, marketing and distribution. Throughout the interview, Niens says that after her experience as Director of the IDTV Film production company the second largest independent from the Netherlands, decided to work in a smaller producer (KeyFilm) to be closer to the creative process of the films realization. She also highlighted the positive and negative aspect of co-producing "what I like about the co-production is seeing how other producers run their companies. The downside is that many of the films produced are never done." Niens particularly stressed the importance that the producers associated shared the same passion for the project.

The production of trailers and show reels was the theme chosen by Fraser Bensted for the EAVE workshops. Dan Light further explained the online marketing with some examples and Thomas Mai addressed the theme of the Video On Demand (VoD) and the future trends in the audiovisual industry. The case study was present along all of the EAVE sessions. Pim Hermeling chose the teen comedy Costa! , a box-office hit in The Netherlands, to explain the strategy used for films releasing and a set of principles on distribution. Another production that was also analyzed in Luxembourg was Felix van Groeningen's The Misfortunates [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Felix van Groeningen
film profile], awarded at the Directors Fortnight at Cannes in 2009.

Through both group and individual sessions, each of the participating producers had the opportunity to show their projects and to identify the new trends of marketing in the film industry.

The next workshop that EAVE is planning also in Luxembourg and will be held between April 15 and 18. It is going to be a forum on films financing, and should cover the legal and financial aspects of co-production. Registration will be open until February 19, 2010.