by Thinus Ferreira
While South Africa's film and TV co-productions market is still in its infancy, the future for series shot in the country with international partners attached looks promising, with the MultiChoice Group that is set to announce soon that it will be doing a new Afrikaans TV series as a global co-production with France's Canal+.
Nomsa Philiso, the MultiChoice Group's new executive head of programming, who was one of the panellist at 2022's 10th Silwerskermfees in a panel discussion on fostering co-productions, told attendees that while South Africa's film and TV co-productions with other countries are still in its infancy, there is a lot of scope to expand on new partnerships and in new parts of the world.
She said that the idea is to make sure that South Africans go out there and tell their stories as good as anybody else on the world stage.
In terms of what MultiChoice and M-Net are looking for in terms of international co-productions, she says "people tend to bring what they think we like - because it worked last year - but we want to evolve. We don't have all the ideas as the broadcaster - the ideas live in the minds of the people who supply us with content."
"It is them who must take us to the next level in terms of what is out there, what stories are we not telling."
She said "our stories haven't been told in the manner that we want and we see now that the opportunities exist to leverage on that in a much stronger way."
Kaye Ann Williams, M-Net's head of local content and independent films, said the blue ribbon pay-TV broadcaster is "from a genre perspective definitely looking for crime content but don't get stuck in that - look at sub-genres that could be married to that like comedy, like psychological thrillers, like action".
"The other opportunity for pitching is definitely in the factual space. We know that our premium audience loves documentaries."
"We know that they view them elsewhere and they enjoy it and consume it on our platform as well, so there's definitely an opportunity to go into the high-end factual documentary space, but again it must be very compelling and it must sell."
Allan Sperling, the MultiChoice Group's executive head of physical production, said "an Afrikaans co-production that has been signed and we're going into production within the next few months".
"It is also possible to do Afrikaans international co-productions. We're in partnership with Canal+ who are taking the French rights and the rest of the world will be up for sales and this is where we're looking to recoup and the producer also gets proceeds from that. So it is also possible for Afrikaans shows to become co-productions," he said.
As passionate as possible
Panellist and producer Layla Swart, co-owner of Yellowbone Entertainment producing the fantasy drama series Blood Psalms for MultiChoice's video streaming service Showmax as a co-production with Canal+, said packaging a show for co-production is extremely important.
"Because we're existing in an industry that is in its infancy, we're also trying to figure out what our audiences want, we're trying to figure out what our partners want from us as South African content creators, and often there's an unknown. Everything relies very heavily on how you present yourself and your product."
"It's exhausting and I know it's very difficult at the moment to be a producer. It's a privilege to be able to sit here and to say I've done a co-production," she said.
"I'm acutely aware of how difficult it is to put something together and how difficult also is with co-productions because they take long - bringing partners on, and then aligning a vision, and also aligning finance and business models are not a quick strategy."
"It definitely pays off at the end because your project has scope but it's not an easy process. We can only be as passionate as possible about what we're making, finding the right people to make it, and then package it as well as we can."
With Yellowbone Entertainment which has been struggling with getting the department of trade and industry to pay the promised film rebates for Blood Psalms, Layla Swart said "every producer will say they've been having struggles with the South African government specifically with film rebates and tax incentives".
"Why that is so crucial is because producers are emerging producers."
"Many of us don't have a lot of capital and resources behind us. What the government instruments are there for, is for you as a producer to be able to bring something to the partnership, for you to be able to entice international people to want to work with you, and want to shoot here and want to use our crews and actors and our stories."
"That is the biggest struggle. It's killing our industry to be honest and we're heavily reliant on our broadcasters to such an extent that we feel we can't mobilise anything on our own and I think with the broadcasters being inundated, there's only so much broadcasters can greenlit."
"Our biggest challenge is how do we empower producers and production companies through incentives, that are supposed to be there, to sustain the industry."
