MIDPOINT TV Launch 2019

Golden Globe winner and critically acclaimed creator Hagai Levi (Bi Tipul, In Treatment, The Affair) will share his experience with creating successful, world-wide traveling television series. Hagai will talk about the brand new series for HBO which opened just a few days ago, Our Boys.

The new digital era brought many new trends in storytelling, web series being one of the most significant, bringing whole new perspectives and styles. Both major and independent content providers are exploring new ways to deliver original programmes specific to the digital audiences. Web series are without any doubt an attractive audiovisual field that allures many talented creative minds.

But what are the main differences between the web series and other forms of storytelling and what to keep in mind while creating your own web series? What is the current web series market situation? Which platforms can you use? What are the financing and selling opportunities?

Whenever you do something from the bottom of your heart all the great energy you put in reflects in a form of an excellent result. There are no general rules that define a great pitch. The only rule is to know your story well and be able to have your heart present while pitching it. During her lecture, Michaela Sabo will guide the audience to find their strengths and weaknesses and make an advantage of both of them, to create a custom made pitch. And last but not least, Michaela will give useful tips on how to overcome jitters, how to stay focused, how to find the core elements of the story and how to transfer it to the pitch audience.

Web series offer great opportunities for storytelling. But how to bring those projects to life? This lecture will give an overview on financing and distribution models for web series, look at potential partners, platforms and networking opportunities and get you into the mindset for defining the potential of your project, identifying target audiences and developing a strategy to find the right partners.

Startup might be a TV series, but every TV series is a startup as well! Marike Muselaers uses the format of a business plan to discuss the process of entering the TV market and how to navigate the current landscape in this age of plenty. She will give examples of different ways to finance/package a TV series with international partners and discuss various TV business models. She will talk about how to stay true to your concept when pitching to a variety of players, what to expect from possible coproducers, sales agents, broadcasters, platforms and financing partners, and last but not least: why it is so important to know both your audience and your industry.

Production of the TV series is a marathon process, and you can easily lost your breath on this long journey. This lecture will try to put a light on the most important moments in pre-production, production and post production in order to establish proper ratio of time you have to spend in each of this "episodes" of the process so you can achieve satisfying result. Time is the key factor in TV series production, and the first step of every project should be, literally, turning script into time, and then turning time into numbers in the final budget breakdown. In order to find out how this "alchemy" of turning words in picture works, this lecture will try to explain importance of the script breakdown as the most important and central point of the making of TV series and to give an answer on the most important question: Who is producer's best friend? Director or 1st AD?

Steve Matthews, an experienced expert, now the Executive Producer of Drama Development at HBO Europe, will discuss the process from pitching your project through series development, production and beyond. What to expect, the stages in the process, the pitfalls to watch out for, and learning to love notes.

Director, producer and writer Rumle Hammerich will talk about the importance of finding the theme, the core and the philosophy of the show and how this "shared vision" is the common platform for the writer, the producer and the director. The script and the money are almost two-dimensional or digital, but a TV series will eventually happened in the third and fourth dimension and this is the director’s focus: transforming the script into four dimensions. Rumle Hammerich will talk about the director’s role and responsibility in a TV series production. Trust is the major element in the creative triangle. One vision is death.

The episodic length of web series has tended to grown in recent years. Still, most web episodes fall between 5 and 20+ minutes. Their core audience watches them mostly on phone and computer screens, sometimes on the go.

For those reasons, web series need to catch the attention of the audience quickly – there are always millions more YouTube video waiting to be seen. Web series must deliver as much emotions, drama, comedy and thrills than TV episodes two or three times longer. They require an intense narrative efficiency : the shorter the set-up, the longer the engaging pay-off can be!

A pilot episode needs to serve many different needs. First and foremost it has to be a great story itself but also must set up a long, ongoing narrative. We will be looking at the various elements necessary to introduce in a pilot to hook the audience and make them want more of your stories.

Ms. Murphy will discuss the highlights of the most powerful and critical parts of your script… The beginning and the end. In this market of television where there are hundreds of shows to watch - how can you break out of the clutter. It is critical to hook the audience in the first 10 or 15 pages. This is the heart of your show… the make it or break it. Maggie will screen an assortment of iconic pilot openings and analyze why they keep the audience mesmerized. There will also be discussion on the ending of your pilot and how it must also be equally strong to bring the audience back for more.  

Using his two award winning webseries Low Life and High Life, Luke Eve will talk about financing, production and distribution models. His two webseries were created in two different countries using very different models but both went on the achieve a strong audience following and high critical acclaim.

In 2014 Luke created, produced and directed the online series, Low Life: A Black Comedy About Depression. It went on to win over 20 major festival awards and was sold to Amazon Prime and CanalPlay. In 2017 he completed directing and producing the follow up series, High Life which was Executive Produced by Stephen Fry. The series won over 30 major awards including Best Digital Original at C21 Content London and was also nominated for an Australian AACTA Award. It took out the Web Series World Cup for 2017 for being the most awarded and successful web series on the festival circuit. The series sold to BBC3 in the UK, Channel 9 in Australia, CanalPlay in Europe and Fullscreen in the USA.

How do anthology, continuing and mini series work? And why should we care? Examining the formal structures and common story elements that compose the “DNA” of a series, we will look for the ‘engine’ that powers the storytelling in each series format. We will review clips from current shows to look for new trends in series writing. The goal of this seminar is to help you find the series format that’s right for your show.