Sydney Seminar 2009

Introduction

The demand for content has only kept pace with the variety of options facing today’s production professionals. While the potential rewards for correctly aligning those choices have expanded, so have the risks for getting it wrong.

The TV Production Seminar explores the future of television in a premiere event that brings together some of Australia's leading professionals in the television production industry.

Don’t miss the opportunity to be part of a unique free seminar which will blur the boundaries between audience and panel members as you engage in an interactive discussion with industry experts. Explore television’s role in producing innovative entertainment whilst utilising an unprecedented mobile technology within the seminar. You can help redefine television and the future business models that drive production.

Audience

You are an experienced professional in television production and post production, and have seen the market change significantly. The traditional broadcasters are finding that the old ways don't work and as advertising budgets move away from traditional television model, there is a new breed of productions and methods distribution that are the new lifeblood for the television industry. This seminar is designed to enable your invaluable experience, engaging and leading the new industry with better knowledge about the future of television.

Future of Television

The seminar explores television's role in producing innovative entertainment, engaging and developing community experiences that the online world is now driving. In redefining television, we can also investigate the future business revenue models that will shape and push production.

The days of one screen, many viewers are rapidly disappearing as advertisers and viewers enthusiastically adopt one-on-one communications through PCs, the internet and the small screen portable media players. To the other extreme, our viewers have also upgraded their home televisions to large, flat panel displays, with high definition becoming the new "standard" definition.

Today any person making commercially viable content for television must carefully consider all distribution options and deliver sophisticated internet responses to communicate with these audiences.

Internationally and locally, viewers are no longer limited to just a programme’s regional broadcast partner as the internet delivers potentially larger audiences who are just a click away and looking for your web sites, blogs and social networking outlets.

We also ask the question – what is the right workflow for the job type? Just as engineers in grey coats and dedicated black boxes made way for computers, today’s decision makers need to step back and review their creative process. Are they making the most of new technologies or do older platforms and workflows hold them back?

To cater for these demands content creators need to ensure their workflows can seamlessly output their material to suit their internet requirements. Post-production suites must include tools that can access, manipulate and format media for the internet as part of normal operations.

Details

12-6pm, 22 July 2009 - Powerhouse Museum

Speaker/Session Profiles

NEW SPEAKER/SESSION

Evan Schectman

Chief Technology Officer @radical.media

Ben Liebmann

Vice President, Licensing (Australia/New Zealand) FremantleMedia Enterprises

FremantleMedia is one of the world's largest international creators and producers of entertainment brands – owned by RTL and forming part of the Bertelsmann Media Group.

As Vice President of Licensing, Ben is responsible for the development and commercialisation of FremantleMedia properties off-screen in areas such as online, interactive television and wireless, as well as more traditional ancillary rights businesses including brand licensing and sponsorship, live entertainment, gaming, brand funded entertainment, consumer products and merchandise.

The FremantleMedia Enterprises portfolio encompasses both wholly owned brands and managed third-party properties from partners including Paramount Pictures, CBS Corporation, 19 Entertainment, Shine Reveille, Syco and The Weinstein Company. Properties include Australian Idol, Neighbours, The Biggest Loser, Project Runway, Australia’s Got Talent, The Price Is Right, MasterChef, The Farmer Wants A Wife, Australia’s Next Top Model, Star Trek, CSI, The Godfather, Tintin: The Movie, Gladiator, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Grease, Footloose, So You Think You Can Dance and Merlin .

Over the past twelve months, FremantleMedia Enterprises have worked with partners including Network Ten, MySpace, Vodafone Australia, YouTube, Ludia, ninemsn, 3 Mobile, Yahoo7 and Facebook in developing a range of innovative digital media initiatives – including the 2009 AIMIA Award nominated MySpace Road Tour .

Prior to joining FremantleMedia, Ben established himself as a leading digital media and content specialist, working with companies including Warner Music Group and Vodafone.

Ben holds a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Marketing and Business Economics from the University of NSW.

Marcus Gillezeau

Firelight Productions

2009 Emmy Award winning Firelight Productions, are producers who have delivered over 50 hours of broadcast television for domestic and international clients such as Channel 7, Channel 9, ABC, SBS, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Channel 4 UK and ZDF Germany. Firelights work has screened in 32 countries and won numerous international and domestic awards.

Marcus is an innovator in digital media and cross-platform content creation and is co-director of Firelight Productions. As a producer Marcus’ slate has covered a diverse range of formats and subjects from social political documentaries, entertainment television, adventure travel series and screen biographies. He has delivered two documentary series and nine international documentary co-productions in the last eight years.

Marcus is a specialist in digital production technologies and is able to write, direct, shoot and edit his films. In 2004 Marcus wrote the critically acclaimed book ‘Hands On - A practical guide to production and technology in Film, TV and New Media’. He was the NSW Chapter Head at the Screen Producers’ Association of Australia for 4 years, and is the President of Metro Screen. He has lectured at numerous institutions including the AFTRS, and is a regular contributor to industry magazines. Marcus has a Masters in Media Arts Production from UTS.

Ellenor Cox

Ellenor Cox is an innovator of all-media screen content creation with specialised experience in financing and producing cross-platform delivery projects. She is a storyteller, generator of creative ideas and co-director of Firelight Productions. Over the past 13 years Ellenor has produced five factual series, eight international co-productions and several groundbreaking web based projects. In 2001 she produced Little Dove - Big Voyage (Network 7), which was Australia’s first fully convergent, multi-platform documentary project. Her films have sold to over 30 countries and have won several prestigious domestic and international awards.

MC: Karel Segers

The Story Department

Producer and Story Analyst, Karel Segers is a Licentiate of Germanic Philology, Literature and Linguistics (University of Louvain, Belgium).

Before founding OZZYWOOD Films Pty Ltd in 2001, Karel was the Head of Production, Programming and Acquisitions at the Digital Broadcasting Company in London (Sky, UK), a film buyer for Europe’s largest pay-tv group Canal Plus and a movie show host for MTV Europe. He started his career in the late eighties as a producer of top rating radio shows in his home country of Belgium.

He has produced three short dramas and co-produced a documentary and a feature film. As a producer he has one feature film in post-production and a handful in development.

Alongside his production work, Karel enjoys blogging, teaching and consulting.

In 2006 he founded The Story Department, whose clients have been award-winning writers, directors and producers; he consults on films from conception to post-production. His work has resulted in a diverse range of projects finding development money, production funds, post-production investment, international sales, film festival acceptance, etc.

His views are published in The Story Dept. and ‘Karel’s Feedback Forum’ on the AWG web site . Both nominees for last year’s AWG Monte Miller Award were Karel’s clients.

Panel Session: Australian TV Production for a new digital era

Moderator: Karl Segers

Industry Panel:

Panel members from: FremantleMedia Enterprises (Ben Liebmann), 7 Network (Paul Slater), Firelight Productions (2009 Emmy winner  Marcus Gillezeau), ABC (Chris Winter)

Topics:

• New media
• Programs that sell
• The international market for content
• Technology provides creative freedom
• Cross-platform strategies
• When will online revenues become meaningful
• The future of television - do we need to redefine what television is?