In the context of the American Film Market (AFM) the FFF Bayern accompanied a delegation of representatives of the Bavarian Film industry to L.A. The aim of this journey was to present Bavaria as media-location and to get an insight view of the films and film-production in L.A. Another aim was to share experiences and knowledge with international film makers. The individually organized meeting with decision-makers of the American film industry is supposed to have a positive influence on the business-development and publicity of Bavaria as film- and media-location.
The Participants were: Achim Rohnke, Michael Hilscher, Oliver Vogel and Florian Bähr from the Bavarian Film Group, Mischa Hofmann and Britta Meyermann from Odeon Film AGI H&V Entertainment,Prof. Dr. Klaus Schaefer and Gabriele Pfennigsdorf from the FFF Bayern. Markus Vogelbacher and his team from IFP Entertainment organized the program. The delegation-journey was supported by ARRI Media, Scanline VFX, Trixter, FTA, Cine-Mobil, BigHugFX and Atlas International Film.
The schedule of the two day delegation-journey included an intensive professional discussion in the post-production offices of Roland Emmerichs film Independence Day 2 with Oscar winner und VFX Supervisor Volker Engel and Marc Weigert from Uncharted Territory. In the Universal Studios the Participants met Pamela Russell (Vice President Production Finance), Alexander Jooss (SVP, Business & Legal Affairs) and Lawrence Ulman (Senior Vice President, NBCUniversal). Furthermore they discussed with Benjamin Kramer (Agent Film Finance Group) and Grant Kessman (Talent Agent) from the Creative Artists Agency, one of the biggest artists agencies in the world. Further conversations were carried out at Disney with Philip Steuer (Executive Vice President Production) and Paul D. Steinke (Senior Vice President Production Finance) and Chris McComb, Vice President of the Marvel Studios. In the Amazon Studios a meeting with John Lynch (Head of Production), Tara Pietri (Production Legal) und Jenna Klipp (Production Coordinator) took place. Stephan Trojansky, the president of Scanline VFX L.A., impressively presented the possibilities of Scanline that is one of the most successful companies in the VFX sector in L.A., Vancouver an Munich with over 300 employees. On their second day the delegation met Derik Parrent (Local Manager) of YouTube Space L.A. and Brian Pearson (Director Content Acquisitions) and Kai Finke (Content Acquisitions Europe) of Netflix. At HBO Film the participants spoke with Jay Roewe (SVP Production) and at 20th Century Fox with Tomas Jegeus (Fox International President), Michael Andreen, (Fox International SVP of Production), Stephen Plum (Fox International EVP of Business Affairs) and Germar Tetzlaff (Locale Production and Marketing).
At a joined conclusive reception in the margins of the AFM national and international industry representatives came together. Among the German participants there were:Gabriela Bacher (Chief Executive Officer, Film House Germany), Veronica Ferres (Actor und Producer Construction Film), Marc Gabizon (CEO Wild Bunch Germany), Martin Moszkowicz (Managing Director Constantin Film), Dirk Schürhoff (Managing Director Beta Film), Oliver Simon (Partner, Production, K5 International), Germar Tetzlaff (Head of Marketing Local Productions Germany), Bora Dagtekin (director author Fack Ju Göhte 2), Lena Schömann (Producer Fack Ju Göhte 2) and Christian Ditter, who shot the from Drew Barrymore und Nancy Juvonen produced romantic comedy How to be single with Dakota Johnson as central character.
In the context of the delegation journey one point came out clearly: A lot of American dialog partners pointed out that the missing of a German tax-incentive-program on the global market means a disadvantage in completion. Transparent, quickly accessible and calculable funding-instruments play a crucial role for the allocation of international projects. The new funding possibilities in international cinema co-productions and VFX productions was recognized as particularly attractive but also expandable. The latest projects that were funded in this context were projects such as Snowden by Oliver Stone, The Happy Prince by Rupert Everett, Captain America: Civil War by Anthony und Joe Russo and The Lake by Steven Quale.
On Photo: v.l.: Gabriele Pfennigsdorf, Achim Rohnke, Klaus Schaefer, Oliver Vogel, Mischa Hofmann, Michael Hilscher, Alexander Jooss, Pamela Russell, Lawrence Ulman, Britta Meyermann, Markus Vogelbacher, Florian Bähr