Animated content in Indian Home Entertainment

Indian animated content within the entertainment space is undeniably an important future growth market of the world. 'Made for India' is a term most animation production companies shun as they want their content to appeal to the world, but for that to happen, our production quality should meet world standards and our stories, distribution and marketing should truly go global. Often the 'Made for World' content produced in India ignores or confuses our own audience and misses the pulse completely. We are also the largest youth population with every 4.5th human in the world an Indian, hence the term 'Made for India' is a realistic one to begin with any ways.

Taking a holistic view, the overall Home Entertainment (HE) business in India is plagued with many challenges viz. piracy, low perceived values, abundant and cheap CATV, fragmented market, low hardware penetration, etc. Within it the animation content (a product for keeps) has often been a catalyst for growth for the Home Video Industry. Data from large-format retailers suggest that 55 per cent of the total HE business is contributed by international content whereas animation contributes a whopping 35 per cent of the overall home video business. With great entertainment and educational values for children, animation often gets purchased by consumers for its repeat viewing appeal.

In the past two to three years, the performance of feature length animation or theatrically released animation films on home videos has improved dramatically in the country. This could be attributed to the marketing of such films, shorter windows and also since local content as produced for cinema screens being superior in quality and storytelling. Also, the recent explosion of the medium has opened new doors to captive consumption of DVDs.

The the spin-offs in gaming and merchandising are quite integral to overall growth of a property and it particularly assists the Home Entertainment stream as the most convenient storyteller after Cinema and Satellite TV. The retail space being common, it only helps further build the fastest growing segments in the country - Home Videos, Consumer Products and Video Games; as all of these are such natural extensions of any animation blueprint.

With so many new players and productions, sophistication of the business is the key to continued growth, and as newer content evolves from monolith to multi-tiered products where there are consumers available for all ideas, stories, creations, imaginations and formats - I am certain that Home Entertainment will become one of the most critical revenue streams for Indian animation!

Spielberg to raise $1 billion for DreamWorks

Steven Spielberg aims to raise over $1billion in third-party financing to recreate DreamWorks as a separate company that reacquires ownership of films.

Spielberg wants to reestablish DreamWorks as a studio that owns the movies it makes. Currently, DreamWorks is a unit of Paramount Pictures, a subsidiary of media conglomerate Viacom. DreamWorks was acquired by Paramount in 2005.

Earlier, Spielberg was supposed to grant the distribution rights to Universal who lost the acquisition in 2005. But on the recommendation of his advisers, Spielberg will allow a bidding effort among studios for the acquisition of distribution rights of future DreamWorks movies.

From 1 May Spielberg‘s personal contract with Paramount allowed him to discuss potential offers for his services from rival studios. And since then Spielberg and DreamWorks chairman David Geffen and attorney Skip Brittenham have held several meetings with studio suitors and financiers.
Major studios include Universal, Disney and Fox. Spielberg‘s contract is valid until 2010 but he can terminate it early at year‘s end. Snider and Geffen have similar clauses in their deals with Paramount. However, Paramount owns "Transformers" and other films produced by DreamWorks while it was housed at the studio which could lead to conflicts regarding rights between Spielberg and Paramount.

DreamWorks-produced movies have helped fill distribution pipelines at Paramount. The loss of such content would put severe demands on remaining production executives.
But this summer, Paramount has been a distributor in high-profile releases, such as the Lucasfilm-produced Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Marvel-produced Iron Man and the DreamWorks Animation-produced Kung Fu Panda.

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Hot Pitch Party Tips from Last Year’s Winner!

Hot Pitch Party Tips from Last Year's Winner!

One of the most frequent questions we get around this time of the year is what has happened to previous winners of our Pitch Party contest. We caught up with Brian Smith and the team at Toronto's Eggplant studio who won in 2007 with their entry King of the Universe and also got second place with their Monster in a Box two years ago

“Our first Pitch Party entry from '06, Monster in a Box, was optioned by Decode Entertainment,” says Smith. “Last year's winning entry, King of the Universe, opened a lot of doors. We met with Sony Pictures' feature animation division, a division of Disney, and have had ongoing talks with broadcasters, production companies and talent agencies. We're optimistic that it will be picked up in the next little while.”

Smith tells us that those important meetings allowed his team to discuss their other projects as well. “For example, at Sony Pictures, their primary interest in that division is feature length—so we left them a feature length script we're very excited about.” Another advantage of entering is raising your profile in the industry: “At Eggplant, we have a great reputation for producing award-winning music for animation, but this has allowed the industry to see us in a new light—as an originator of ideas,” he adds.

When we asked him to offer some advice for this year’s brave batch of Pitch Party contestants, Smith says it’s really important to come up with an idea that is simple to convey. “The best idea you've got may not be the best Pitch Party idea you've got. If it can't be conveyed in the space of a business card, it doesn't matter if it's the next Simpsons!”

Natasha Parrish, who came in second last year with her Deidra Daydreamer concept, also wrote to remind us that you don’t have to be the Top Prize winner to get some attention! “I had wonderful feedback on my entry, so right know I'm working out some of the story kinks to make it ready for pitching.” She also entered Baton Rouge’s Red Stick Festival event, has polished her live pitching techniques and is ready to take on the big studios in 2008.

There are only three spots left for this year’s Pitch Party. To find out how you can be a contestant and get your idea reviewed by a top list of industry professionals, visit www.animationmagazine.net/pitch_party_08.html.

Posted from Animation Magazine ~ By Ramin Zahed.