NEM Zagreb day 3: The future of television industry

NEM Zagreb 2022 brought an exciting set of panels including The biggest challenges a person can face in the role of a leader, How to approach true stories? and the Scandinavian model of co-production in the Adriatic region, as well as, a panel case study Global trends in the media.

Leadership challenges were an interesting topic at the Croatian event. Today, when production costs tend to grow and budgeting tends to include cutting costs, when new technologies and processes are implemented in an effort to keep up with trends, encouraging employee productivity is by no means an easy task. The Biggest Challenges One Can Face in a Leadership Role panel was hosted by Maria Rua Aguete, Executive Director, Technology Fellow, Omdia, and the speakers who shared the secrets of their leadership skills included Matthias Settele, General Director TV Markíza and Member of the Editorial Board of CME, and Emil Koshlukov, Director General, Bulgarian National Television.

GLOBAL TRENDS, POPULAR GENRES AND FORMATS
True-story based content is extremely popular, but is this description at all accurate? This was an important subject of discussions at the How To Approach True Stories? panel, which had speakers commenting on the standards content needs to meet to be categorized as “based on a true story“. "The responsibility of telling true stories is very important. The more I researched for my last project, the more I realized how important it is to take details into account. Every detail can play a main role, but sometimes you shouldn't go detail by detail, you have to be credible by finding the essence of the story. To tell the truth, it doesn't mean you have to say everything that happened. You have to find your own path“, said Darius Jablonski, Founder, CEO, Producer, Director, Apple Film Production.

As part of the interesting discussions at the Scandinavian Co-Production Model in the Adriatic Region panel, the speakers talked about the options of implementing the successful Scandinavian production model within the different culture of the Adriatic region, sharing their views on what it would take to make this model work in this area too. “You need something that appeals to other countries. For example, Nordic Noir wasn't even something that was completely made up in the Nordic region, but it became a quality stamp. There was this idea, like with nordic books, fashion, or design, that these shows were good, it was a whole wave. Everything from the Nordic region suddenly had this quality stamp, so the question also is there something from the region that you could use to promote the shows? Also, what we've been seeing is that when the global streaming went into the new territories, the local players were also much more willing to work together”, said Marike Muselaers, Chief Content and Partnerships Officer, Lumière.

TV WRITING CONTEST WINNERS
The winners of scripted category are Milena Džambasović and Matija Dragojević (Serbia) with period drama “Wool”. "When I started to develop the story and when I got in touch with Matija, the first thing that came to mind was NEM. It is a good step to see how potential partners willreact to such a story. At NEM Zagreb, I got everything I wanted - not only the award, but all the accompanying events - Workshop, panels, people I met. I think this kind of market allows you to get in touch with people you would otherwise have a hard time reaching. The project continues to develop as far as the script is concerned, and now we will certainly catch this wave of people who are interested in the project”, said Milena Džambasović.

The finalists of the scripted category are Katarina Belić (Serbia) with “The Missing Life Manual” comedy/dramedy and Agne Serpytyte (Germany) with “The NFT Hunt” action drama.

The winners of the unscripted category are Hrvoje Osvadić and Jasna Nanut (Croatia) with the game show “The Dream Pension”. “What is interesting is that I was at NEM Zagreb three years ago with the comedy series "Playing the Tiger", which I am also developing, and from which 'The Dream Pension' was born, so it all somehow connected nicely. NEM is the only and most important event of its kind in Croatia. It is very important that there is a platform of this kind, to connect us authors - a place where we can present and promote our projects”, said Jasna Nanut.

The finalists of the unscripted category are Matej Merlić (Croatia) and Agne Serpytyte (Germany) with ”The Astronaut Experience“ game show and Laura Pribanić (Croatia) with “Projekt Rast(anak)” docu-series. Mediavision Marketing and TV Industry Agency, the event organizer, provided great prizes for the competition winners that included an award of 3 000 Euros, participation in a writing workshop, participation fee for one television industry event, and participation fee and joint conference table at NEM Dubrovnik 2023 TV market planned for June 2023.