AFM Diary (4): A soft market
When Luke hardiman discovers that the American Film Market still suffers from GFC symptoms, and that an iPad might not be the best business partner.
AFM has been running for 30 years, with the sale of Rambo: First Blood in 1981 putting it on the map and over the years films like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Pulp Fiction and more recently Brokeback Mountain and The Hurt Locker coming through. This year IM Global has made the biggest sales at AFM for years with the Reliance Big Pictures/Evergreen Films/BBC Earth project Walking with Dinosaurs 3D to Fox, on the other hand the head of Wild Bunch, the huge French sales agent says it was a “soft” market still reeling from the GFC.
This is the last day of real business at AFM and the crowds are noticeably thinner. We have a series of meeting set up. I’ve been presenting on a iPad, which has been working well, but it starts to go wrong in the first meeting. The iPad has been deleting content as we watch it, and I have virtually nothing to show. I show one piece of work, and talk at length, and that seems to do the trick, and we get through the second meeting the same way before dashing back to the hotel and swapping back to old technology – the laptop.
Our decision to buy the half-market pass seems to have paid off with the sales agents happy to take meetings. In general we are getting a very positive reaction. However even in this age of globalisation and digital communication, and despite all the positive talk of the time zone and Australian dollar – the sales agents are significantly more comfortable with the agreement to set up a satellite office in L.A. Technology has advanced, but in the end they want someone they can meet face-to-face.
Haywire is an entertainment marketing company that provides full service advertising for Australia’s leading distributors, production companies and online publishers. Established in 2004, Haywire’s clients include Hopscotch, Southern Star, Austar, ABC, Fairfax Digital and ninemsn.
