© MarVista Entertainment LLC
JOSEPH SZEW MARVISTA ENTERTAINMENT
Courtesy Greg Payne
“In the early days, it was just me and my business partner in a new company called Whamo Entertainment. There was a lot of waiting in line at the video library in those days — but then you’d meet all the acquisitions managers there, and that was a huge help in building the company. I remember meeting with the guys from Westinghouse CBS and having coffee with them afterwards, and we came up with this plan to do business in Abu Dhabi. Here I was, a small guy with a new company just starting out, sitting there with the big boys talking about making Sinbad in Abu Dhabi! These days, it’s a bit different. MarVista is a bigger deal now. My son Fernando brought along a new generation of executives and two years ago we started developing the Power Rangers brand with Saban and this year we’re launching Power Rangers Megaforce, forty half-hours of totally new content. It’s the 20th birthday of Power Rangers this year too, so it’s a double celebration.”
JO KAVANAGH-PAYNE FOOTHILL ENTERTAINMENT “I attended the very fi rst MIPJunior in 1993 with Link Entertainment and it literally changed my life. We got a note from Robbie London at DIC about a show called What-A-Mess, which had been picked up by ABC Network. ABC appointed its newly-acquired animation company, DIC, to reformat the show for the US market, and they sent over their lawyer to sort out the contracts. I didn’t really warm to him at first, but a little while later I did. He’s now my husband, and we run Foothill together... Junior is a good platform for launching shows, and you never know who’s going to see it. We’ve also found sponsoring the networking lounge a very effective way to make a splash. And it’s not enough to just do it and hang out a sign. We’re in there, talking to people.” 28 I
preview magazine I September 2012 I www.mipjunior.com
“I first went to Junior in 1997 as a buyer for YLE, and it’s been a major screening opportunity ever since. I spend the whole of Junior screening, and dedicate MIPCOM for meeting all the relevant producers and distributors. Some producers still want to pitch you at Junior, though. I was in the ladies washroom at 2 in the morning one time, and a producer slid a pitch document under the door of my cubicle.”
Photo: Harri Hinkka
“My fi rst MIPJunior must have been for ICTV in 1996. It’s an incredibly efficient way to screen these days, but in the 1990s, it was slow. You spent hours in the queue for the library trying to get hold of a VHS of the most popular shows. Setting up meetings took months. You used to send meeting requests by fax, giving people a choice of three slots so they could choose one and fax it back. We worked around the clock and sent faxes during the night so as not to block the machines during the day. I remember waking up on the floor by the fax machine one morning at 8am two days before Junior with bits of carpet in my hair, surrounded by coffee cups and buried under a ton of fax receipts!”
VIRVE SCHRODERUS YLE
ELIE DEKEL SABAN BRANDS “MIPJunior offers an intense and user-friendly focus to the global kids television business. It’s highly efficient and allows us, as distributors, to gather with our clients and television partners. While MIPJunior has brought new technologies to make the business of kids television more efficient, technology can never replace relationships. We look forward to MIPJunior to strengthen our existing relationships and to forge new ones each year.”
OLIVIER DUMONT ENTERTAINMENT ONE “Junior is still the number one way to launch a brand and create buzz around a property in the kids industry. My best memory was coming with Leon produced by Studio Hari. We were presenting an episode for the fi rst time. Buyers knew the studio’s work because of their fantastic series The Owl. We worked hard and Leon was one of the three mostscreened shows that year and I was very excited and proud about how we had engineered this through a well-orchestrated teasing campaign through print and email before the market.”
Courtesy of Entertainment One
JUSTINE BANNISTER PGS ENTERTAINMENT
Courtesy PGS
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