DAILY BLOG CARTOON MOVIE LYON 2013 No 1

Ernest & Celestine

Its again this time of the year. Again over 700 animated people come together from all over Europe and also the rest of the world to talk feature film. Animated feature film. From March 6th to 8th lovely Lyon in southern France, not so far from Annecy (the world´s animation capital in every June) hosts Cartoon Movie, the gathering of producers, television people, distributors, investors. They will pitch and reject, buy and bargain, talk and eat, discuss and listen, agree and disagree. 56 different animated projects will be pitched in various stages of development. 22 in concept phase, 16 in development, 9 actually in production and 9 completed films
20 european countries are involved in those projects, again France is the leading nation with 17 projects, Scandinavia is coming up with 10 projects, Germany is part of 5 projects, Spain 4, United Kingdom 3, Poland 3. Belgium, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands will present 2 projects each.
Big names will be present at Lyon, that is big names in animationland: Sylvain Chomet presents his next film "Swing Popa Swing", a prequel to his famous Triplettes of Belleville, Patrice Leconte pitches his second animted feature film "Music". Enzo D´Alo screenes his finished film "Pinocchio" and also Jean Francois Laguionie, who last made the lovely and critically well received  "The Painting", steps forward with his his new project "Louise in the Winter".

Sylvain Chomet´s Swing Popa Swing

I myself am looking forward to finally see the Cesar-nominated "Ernest & Celestine", which is based on the the much beloved children´s books and directed by Benjamin Renner. Copenhagen Bombay, who have produced the great "Great Bear" presents two new ideas: "Beyond Beyond" and "Get Santa"
Upfront to Cartoon Movie there is the second edition of Cartoon Games, a plattform, where video game companies can meet animation producers. Cartoon Movie opens itself to the normal, animation loving people of Lyon with the festival "On Cartoon dan le Grand Lyon", organized by the network of cinems, GRAC.
I will try to cover the event as best as I can, this means certain information overload tommorrow morning.And the information will not stop to flow until Friday evening!  At the moment, sitting in a fast TGV-Train heading towards Lyon, I am trying to set up a timetable, which always turns out to be futile. On paper, its always tricky to choose the project, there are always two projects being pitched against each other in different places.  The final decision where to go will be made during the so called croissant shows during the next two days, where the whole group of cartoon movie will watch the different trailers. Depending of this visual eye-candy, I will made my final decision where to attend. Tonight the events starts with a welcome cocktail, where you can start networking your way around 700 people, that means you will need a lot of cards or else to make yourself known to all this people. Around 19.30 the opening film will be screened, this year its "Tad, the Lost Explorer" from Spain, following that there will be the Welcome Dinner starting around 21:45 o`Clock. Again Networking! And something to eat too!

Tommorrow the real work starts. From 9:00 to 10:00 there will be the first croissant show, followed by the first pitching session.  2x 4 sessions will be held, so you can as one person just attend 4 sessions, this means  I will attend 3 long pitches where the producers have time to talk around twenty minutes about one project - and there is also one session where six projects are presented in a ten minutes each format - so it will be 9 different projects for me in the morning. Afterwards Lunch and Coffee - Details about that tommorrow! In the afternoon there will be 2x 4 long pitches, then I will probably skip the short pitches (depending of the croissant show) and have a good look at the screening of "Ernest and Celestine". And maybe I risk a quick look afterwards at the screening of the german feature "Raven the little rascal".  As I have seen the german version already, "Kleiner Rabe Socke", I think I will not be there for the whole movie, but nothing against a second opinion. More about the condition of german animated fature films hopefully later on. Because "Ritter Rost" will be presented here as will be Der MondmannAfter that a free evening awaits me... meaning I will sit down with all the new information and type something into the computer to put it on the blog! For you to read! And same procedure on Friday - Croissant shows and pitchings, Lunch, Croissant Shows and Pitchings.... All day long. But there will be also the Farewell Party and my departure from Lyon. It will be all in all just sixty hours, but they will be as always pretty intense!

 As I will not attend Cartoon Games, I will give  you a quick overlook about this event, which is hosted from 9:00 until 18:30 today. Organized in collaboration with the Imaginove Cluster the event tries to create artistic and commercial synergies between animation and games. In over 700 speed dating sessions, one-to-one meetings of 15 minutes, the companies can establish a first contact. Three  companies presented keynotes in the morning: Joelle Caroline from UBISOFT talking about "Building Synergies between games and animated features", Mikko Pöllä, Creative Director, Rovio Entertainment talked about "ANGRY BIRDS A Multimedia Brand". And Visual Designer Victor Antonov from Arkane Studios gave an insight into "Building a city called Dunwall"

Molly Monster from Germany!

Here is the list of the participating game companies:
Belgium: Belle Productions
Finland: Rovio Entertainment
France: 3 Singes Production - 3DDUO- Arkane Studios - Artefacts Studio- Audiogamers - Avant-Gout Studios - Bento Studios - BiP Media - Eents for Games -  Iboo Interactive - Iconik - L´Effet Papillon Production - Novamotion - OUAT Entertainment - Rendal Studio - Succubus Interactive - Ubisoft - Whumpe  Entertainment
Germany: Affare - Digital TreasureEntertainment - Experimental Game - Macromedia University of Applied Studies - satisfactory - Saxonia Media - Studio Fizbin
Spain: Abylight Casual Brothers - Evil Mind Entertainment - Immersive Interactive - Moonbite Games - Mutant Games - Osom Videogames - Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team - Unkasoft Advergaming