VOD sector: recent trends and perspectives for indie and animation producers

As part of the CEE Animation Workshop 2020, we hosted a live online session VOD sector: recent trends and perspectives for indie and animation producers with Wendy Bernfeld on Friday, November 27. The event had 60 participants and was organized in cooperation with ACE Producers.

ABOUT THE SESSION:

Beginning with 2020 trends, including some key innovations/ industry changes around new titles since Covid-19, online festivals, virtual cinema, and Premium VOD, the core of the session focused on the VOD/OTT sector: The current realities of the “BigGuns’’ Netflix/Amazon/ Disney+ etc., and who else in the international digital sector is buying and sometimes funding content. This includes the mid-sized regional or multiregional direct competitors of the “BigGuns” (including mainstream telecom and cable companies) and, perhaps even more interesting for animation and independent producers, the accessible and complementary thematic, or niche, VOD’s. Overall there are a myriad of opportunities for independent film, series and animation producers and rights holders to explore, balancing traditional and digital players across multiple windows, regions and business models (TVOD, SVOD, AVOD etc). This 90-minute session allowed its participants to understand the multiple possibilities.

ABOUT THE LECTURER:

Wendy Bernfeld, the founder and managing director of consultancy and digital agency Rights Stuff (Amsterdam) is a passionate film buff specializing in content strategy, curation, acquisition, and distribution for and to traditional  and digital media platforms, including Pay/TV, mobile and TVOD/SVOD/AVOD/OTT and other hybrid variations. This includes ’Originals’ deals for digital-first (web, short and long format) and cross-platform content, as well as interactive and VR/XR production and distribution.

If you were unable to attend the session or would like to read more about the topic, we would like to recommend an article by Wendy here.