Martina, Dale and David – The MeetMarket Team
For those who didn’t necessarily want the public pressure of the DOCUmart there was another way to connect with buyers at the MeetMarket. I spoke with MeetMarket manager, the AFC’s DALE FAIRBAIRN. She explained that a call for pitches from filmmakers had been made in October. Fifty-five applications were received. These were written and filmed pitches that were made available to an international panel of buyers on the MeetMarket website. If a buyer thought a project sounded interesting they registered that interest online. From here the fifty-five projects were culled down to twenty that were invited to the AIDC in Perth. Fairbairn explained that some filmmakers had expressed a preference for the MeetMarket experience over DOCUmart. She said the idea of MeetMarket was to bring together top quality projects of interest in the current market.
Meetings were scheduled to run for either 15 or 25 minutes. The MeetMarket room upstairs at the Esplanade was large. It had a dozen tables and when I was there a number and buyers arrived in groups and huddled around the talking. The place was quite noisy as it buzzed with the energy of potential docos. I had a look at the MeetMarket website (it’s usually only accessible to buyers) and I clicked through some impressive three minute filmed segments. These were either images brought together for the pitch or sometimes footage that had already been shot.
At the end of the day, Fairbairn and her team put on drinks so that the pitchers and buyers could talk more informally about projects not in the final twenty.
The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).
Tags: AFC, Dale Fairbairn, MeetMarket
