The Matadero pavilions, in Madrid, are abuzz these days. Audiovisual industry professionals from more than 50 countries meet in talks, conferences, workshops and many work sessions. The fourth edition of Iberseries & Industria Platino will be held from Tuesday to Friday the 4th, an event that is confirmed as the largest meeting of the Ibero-American fiction content industry. In one of those rooms, behind closed doors, meetings take place that could be the seed of a future series or film. On one side, a creator or producer presents his project. On the other, a studio or platform listens, questions and takes notes. They both play it in 15 minutes, which is how long each of those face-to-face meetings lasts. These meetings are called Pitch of Platforms and Production Companies and are the first step before an audiovisual project becomes a reality.
“Our goal is to offer an opportunity for projects to reach where the recipients want,” explains Samuel Castro, co-director of Iberseries & Platino Industria. To this end, the Madrid event launched 15 calls this year in communion with different studios and platforms that are looking for projects of various types, from feature films to miniseries, animated stories or long-running series. A total of 1,219 projects were submitted to these calls, of which an evaluation committee of 10 people selected the 159 from 15 different countries that were put on the table this Tuesday and Wednesday. Since the event began in 2021, the number of selected projects has doubled.
With pitch They refer in the audiovisual industry to that meeting in which the creator tries to sell his project to a producer, a channel or a platform. It is a time when a lot is at stake. The meetings held these days in Madrid have an advantage: “The projects are shared with the representatives of the listening companies for a final review, analysis and confirmation of selection,” explains Juan Aliá, co-director of Iberseries & Platinum Industry. In this way, the creators do not blindly launch into the sale, but rather they know that on the other side there is someone who already slightly knows their project and may be interested in it.
“In a pitch “You are looking for a new, striking, different story that stands out in the cacophony of content that exists,” explains Javier Williams, senior vice president of content in Spanish at the production company. 3Pas Studiosone of which has heard the most projects in Madrid these days. He compares these meetings with what in the United States they call elevator pitch: How would you sell your story to a producer in the time it takes to take an elevator ride. “It’s a moment that has to be very well rehearsed and go straight to the jugular of what it’s about,” he says. He speaks from experience, because production companies also have to sell their projects to platforms and channels where they can be disseminated. “We rehearse and rehearse, as if they were small plays, and we know what visual part we are going to show when we say that thing or that when that part comes up you are going to tell a joke so that people don’t tune out. It’s quite an art, and you can tell who has it well rehearsed and in 15 minutes tells you everything and who finds it more difficult. My recommendation is to start in general and then move on to the specifics,” he explains, sitting in one of the Matadero rooms.
For Raymundo Díaz-González, production director for Mexico and Latin America at Sony Pictures International Productionsthis is their third year in Iberseries & Platino Industria and in previous editions they already found projects that they continue working on to try to turn them into reality. “He pitch It is the creative ingredient. To move on to the next phase, which is how to make that a reality, we have to see how much it costs, how it is going to be financed…” For him, a good pitch It must capture the listener’s attention immediately, and highlights the importance of the Deck, a document they received prior to the meeting and which contained, in a concise way, the characteristics of the project. This prior information and that given in the face-to-face meeting must complement each other so that the complete picture of what you want to sell is clear.
“Ant work”
On the other side of the table there is a lot of excitement, a lot of work and a lot of nerves. The Argentine screenwriter and producer Ariana Saiegh repeats in Iberseries & Industria Platino after his experience last year. This time it comes with three projects (two series and a movie), in addition to presenting a series that Disney+ will soon premiere in Mexico. Before meeting with Amazon Studios to try to sell them one of your series, explain the process to prepare for these meetings. First of all, he had to decide which of his projects to submit to each call, that is, what could fit with each studio or platform, because here each project can only be shown to one studio. To do this, he analyzed each buyer to get an idea of what they could be looking for. “It is difficult to prepare a pitch. There are a lot of courses, which I recommend taking. The first time I went to a market, in 2019 in the Canary Islands, I didn’t know the dynamics, and I arrived at the 15-minute meetings and didn’t know what I had to do, I was sweating. Over time you warm up and learn.”
Each one has their style. Saiegh, for example, advises starting by selling yourself, explaining your professional career in brief, for example with previous titles you have released. He also recommends being concise and clear about the concept you want to sell. “You can have a story and tell it, but it’s important to know what you want to talk about. For example, I knew that I wanted to talk about the role of women in different eras. There are things that you may not like about the story and they may change, but the concept is that and I will not change that,” he explains.
Saiegh recommends taking these events as “an ant job.” “Coming to a market helps you meet people and move around, let them know you, but it does not necessarily imply selling a project. “You have to know how to manage expectations.” In his case, one of those meetings took place last year and he met representatives of the Belgian RTL channel with whom he has closed an agreement to make a remake from an Argentine series of his. “But other processes are slower. Market to market you meet the same people and it is a matter of generating trust and talking, rather than waiting for them to directly buy a project from you, that does not usually happen.”
