An overall challenging year is drawing to a close. Motivated by program commissions from streamers and the continuous expansion of linear providers in the media library offering, production companies continued to invest courageously in developments and service providers of sustainable and innovative technologies. The weak financing contributions for feature film projects and, by international comparison, cumbersome, outdated funding programs were able to be tolerated in the overall volume. The pandemic and war in Europe had increased agility, partly through more generous personnel structures. At the same time, the massive slump in so many areas is now causing existential fears in the industry. Completely unnecessary, seemingly unpredictable federal policy is creating additional uncertainty with international appeal. Every crisis brings with it new insights and the opportunity for resilience. Looking ahead, we turn once again to the events in the film industry of the past few months.
Climate change as a societal issue with the consequences for everyday production and ultimately the regulations for corporate sustainability provided numerous impulses that will strengthen international competitiveness. The voluntary commitment to green filming under the green motion label defined uniform ecological standards across Germany, the Green Tec Day of the VTFF (Association of Technical Companies for Film & Television) on the occasion of the Berlinale and the ESGRC program from International Film Partners with service and workshop offers to fulfill the requirements for non-financial reporting obligations from the European CSRD Directive and the German Supply Chain Act.
With ChatGPT , artificial intelligence gained attention among the general public. The impact on the creative industry will be significant. At the 25th Film Industry Forum as part of the Munich Media Days, our solution partners, together with Ensider, presented the current state of application in the industry. adag once again demonstrated the practical use of technology in practice, with the digital employment contract and other digital tools for payroll accounting and extras support.
While cinemas showed notable films on the big screen with great success this year, on-demand services such as linear broadcasters restructured their program offerings due to competitive pressure from one another. OneGate Media has expanded its offering with 400 additional titles, presenting itself as a strong partner on the international stage. Optical Art was also again involved in a number of successful feature films. Overall, the industry certainly suffered from the simultaneous special effects of the US strike on the one hand and a weak cinema production year on the other. Due to the reduction in commissioned productions on television and streaming, significantly fewer projects were realized, which posed substantial challenges, especially for companies with high fixed costs. Due to the absence of news about the film industry in Germany, managers can only react appropriately to a limited extent. At Ensider, we will therefore also be offering information on transactions, management changes and bankruptcies from January.
The competitiveness of German funding led to a discussion due to the massive drop in sales, with politicians making big promises that now need to be fulfilled as soon as possible. German productions are fleeing to neighboring countries to film, and service providers are following suit. The loss of know-how and added value will put the location under increasing pressure. As one of the leading providers of equipment rental, Ludwig Kamera now also operates locations in Warsaw and Budapest. The Oscar-winning documentary film “ Navalny, ” on the other hand, was shot in the southwest of Germany, in the Black Forest Studios . Penzing Studios also offers modern production infrastructure and smart service production very successfully on the international market. There, funding and top international talent are combined in a competitive way in order to successfully position the extensive studio capacities. This year, too, Italy must be mentioned as an attractive filming location, where Cattleya was able to very successfully realize a large number of productions.
An important issue continues to be the issue of skilled workers and talent .
At the Munich Film Festival, we were once again able to bring together important specialists for a larger audience with the Talent Summit. Incidentally, the Munich Film Workshop is offering an interesting new program with the Master's in Film and Digital Media - especially for employees on set, in the editorial department or in program planning.
Networking is becoming more important again, both analogue and digital. A resilient community for decision-makers in the creative industries is growing in our group on LinkedIn ! We are delighted that you are interested.
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(Author: Markus Vogelbacher, Image: Ensider 2023)