“More attendees than in its first edition, a great demand for documentaries, co-production deals, animation, and a strong investment on local promotion, are some of the event’s highlights. With a significant increase in the number of attendees, the Ceylan Intercontinental in Turkey has closed its doors, thus ending a new edition of Discop Istanbul (February 28 – March 1).
After witnessing a significant increase in the number of guests present at the event, the Ceylan Intercontinental hotel in Turkey closed its doors, thus ending a new edition of Discop Istanbul, which took place on February 28 – March 1. Some of the main highlights -according to several attendees- were the search for co-production and adaptation deals for formats, animation and documentaries.
“One of the market’s strong suits is documentary sales,” said Jennifer from A&E Networks. “Nowadays, here you can see excellent TV movies, series and general dramas. But outside their primetimes, these networks program documentaries and educational programs, and that’s where our production quality surpasses what they do in these markets,” she added.
According to Xavier Aristimuño, SVP of new business sales and development at Telemundo Internacional, producing high quality fiction series entails “analyzing co-production deals that are convenient for both parties. This is why our presence in markets like this one has to do with our interest on both selling our products and identifying good projects.”
Meanwhile, Guido Baumhauer, head of distribution at Deutsche Welle, believes “the development of new platforms and the constant growth in content offers forces us to search for distribution deals that are just right for us. Given our structure, it’s not so much about producing locally with big budgets; it’s about finding windows that allow us to add value to the content we already have.”
According to Mathieu Béjot, representative of TV France International, as far as French companies focused on exporting content go, “this market has been fruitful for those which distribute documentaries and animation, since for the rest, competition with local products was quite tough.”
Yet, according to Katia Sol, head of international sales at AB International Distribution in France, “the potential within these markets has a lot to do with the type of content. For instance, our series Mafiosa -possibly the most internationally distributed French series- has been very accepted, which proves the potential these types of series have in these markets.”
THE PARTIES
Another one of the event’s highlights were definitely the amazing parties, especially the one organized by Global Agency at an antique Palace by the Bosphorus, where approximately 300 people enjoyed a lavish affair with great production and technical resources.
With not quite as much production yet still successful were the parties organized by ATV at the Arabesque restaurant and Kanal D at 360 in Istanbul.”
Source : Turkish News