MIP markets are the world’s leading entertainment content tradeshows which take place in Cannes, France each year and include MIPCOM and MIPJunior in autumn, and MIPTV, MIPDoc and MIPFormats in spring.
At a recent round-table event at Vision+Media, the MIP markets were discussed with attendance widely agreed to be essential for producers of content to form international partnerships and to sell content to international markets.
But if you’ve never been to one of the MIP markets before what should you expect? Well who better to tell you than somebody who’s been there and done it to share their experience of their first time at one of the markets, MIPCOM:
Deciding on MIP by Steve Hanton
My name is Steve Hanton and I run STUDIO DISTRACT an animation and IP development studio in Manchester. Just over a year ago we made the jump from the development of animated educational materials for the government into the then quite scary place of TV IP development. It was something that we had talked about for years but we felt that the time was right and we gave it a go.
We had many ideas over the years for what we thought would make a great children's series, but didn't really know where to go with them. Believing we knew what we were doing with animation development we chose to invest around £80,000 into a project entitled 'Little Animals'. To cut a long story short we developed a complete broadcast quality Pilot and sent it to all of the UK broadcasters. Despite getting nice responses we didn't get any takers for the show in its current state. At the same time we had been contacting Singaporean studios to try and raise finance through something called co-production. After much communication on one sunny day in August we got a phone call which ended in a promise for 80% of the finance for the series.
Little Animals Title Sequence from Studio Distract on Vimeo.
Realising that we were looking at giving away a huge amount of equity in our project just to get it moving, we decided to develop a second property. Our thoughts were, 'let's try to produce another idea, that we like more and then letting go of 'Little Animals' would be much easier'.
After months of development we had 'Rollie and Friends'. A show about Sunshine Cove Theme Park where the rides come to life when the children leave the park. It was a relatively simple premise but had great potential and more importantly had not been done before.
Rollie and Friends Promo from Studio Distract on Vimeo.
So now we had 2 unique and appealing properties to offer and were still not 100% sure as to the protocol for offering them to the world. Through Vision+Media, UK Trade & Investment and PACT we were introduced to MIPCOM; the world’s entertainment content market.
We had around 2 months and needed to start preparing. Who were we going to meet? What did we need to take? How many people should we take? Where should we stay? There were so many questions, but luckily Vision+Media put us in contact with all the right people to help answer them.
The Road to MIP (Part 1): Deciding on MIP
The Road to MIP (Part 2): Preparing for MIP
The Road to MIP (Part 3): Attending MIP - Days 1 and 2
The Road to MIP (Part 4): Attending MIP - Day 3
The Road to MIP (Part 5): Attending MIP - Days 4 and 5