10 Questions About International Multi-Platform Co-Production - An Interview With Shawn Bailey

questions
about
International
Multi-Platform
Co-Production
an interview with
Shawn Bailey
10
Thursday, March 27, 2014

Shawn has been producing and overseeing innovative Canadian digital and
broadcast content and technologies for over 15 years. Having served as Head of
Digital Entertainment and Special Projects for CBC, Shawn was one of the first
Producers/Broadcast Executive and Commissioner to work across all arms of the
Broadcaster, overseeing, creating and producing hundreds of convergent and stand
alone projects for Digital, Television, Radio, Mobile and Live Event programming. In
2009, Shawn moved back into Independent Production as the Canadian Director of
Chocolate Liberation Front, helping to launch the company and overseeing Feature
Film development as well as digital projects for Kids in the Hall’s Death Comes to
Town and The Kratt Brother’s Wild Kratts series. In 2011 Shawn launched his own
production company, Orangepaperlip.
His recent credits include Product of Italy, a 20 episode interactive food series
designed for tablet and smart tv, season 1 of the award winning web series Bill and
Sons Towing and the digital portion of the Gemini nominated documentary We Will
Remember Them. He is currently working on a new Feature Film, in production on
the interactive documentary Craftsmanship and developing a new interactive food
series The Picnic Crew for tablet and television.
who is shawn bailey?

Tell us a bit about a couple of International Co-Production
projects you have worked on? What platforms were
involved & how did you structure the arrangements?1Doctor Who, Taken and the Tudors. I was also involved at the service level
on Wild Kratts with TVO and PBS. Taken and Doctor Who were online
projects done alongside our US and UK partners while the Tudors was
produced for Television and online. In the case of Taken, Doctor Who and
the Tudors, we created stand alone content that was then made available to
our partners and they did the same. We worked together, but with each
party building mainly for their own broadcast needs. Most of this was pre-
agreement days, so it allowed us to produce our own content within the
guidelines of our countries while sharing and working together on how it
would all fit together in the end.

Which countries have you worked with and why? Have you
coproduced with these countries before? How familiar
were you with their funding structures going in?2Mostly the UK, Australia and the US. During my time at the CBC we had a
great relationship with the BBC and seemed to be quite interested in what we
were both up to since we shared similar mandates and programming lines.
Early on in my career at CBC, both BBC and CBC were doing a lot of
innovative interactive projects that we often connected over, so through that I
was introduced to a number of UK based production companies and some
really talented individuals. Australia and Canada have fairly similar funding
models as well as similar tastes in programming.
Around 2005-06, while still at CBC, my counterparts and I at the BBC and ABC
began holding monthly video conferences with our collective teams to discuss
our current development slates. Through those meetings we were introduced
to new projects that we may have been interested in when we normally would
have seen them once they’d gone to market in either Australia or the UK.

Continued...2These meetings allowed us to get involved in the production stages, rather
than just acquiring projects. It also allowed us to reach out to our own
independent production communities and make introductions. The other
key thing it allowed us to do was to really talk through the details of our
production process, funding availability and issues, content focuses,
technology and talent.
In the beginning, I had an idea of the funding structures that existed in
these countries, but it was through these discussions and the ones I was
having with international Producers and content creators at festivals and
conferences that I truly began to understand the mechanics behind how
they funded and created content.

Tell us about the financial structure of your
coproduction: what percentage Canadian contribution and
what percentage was from the other country or
countries?3Due to the requirements of the funders at the time, everything we
produced was Canadian. We would then licence our part to the other
partners in exchange for their content to form the whole. The license fees
allowed us to raise larger budgets and spread our focus across the
partners, so we could each do more with our part of the larger picture.

How did you find your coproduction partners? Or how did
they find you? 4Having been the Head of Digital at the CBC, I had the advantage of
meeting a tremendous amount international Producers, Broadcasters,
Funders and Trade Commission Officials. I still meet a lot of people meet
at conferences and festivals or via introductions from people I’ve worked
with, or met,in the past. Most of the projects I’ve been involved with
stemmed from the people I met during my time at the CBC and the
relationships I’ve maintained as a result.
Contacting the various trade organizations, funding agencies or the
consulate of the country, or countries, you want to partner with can be a
great place to start if your new to the industry or maybe not as aware of
who is out there that can, and would be interested, in joining forces. The
same can be said for the organizations that exist where you operate. They
are always in discussion with their global counterparts, and even if they
don't have the answer you need they can almost always point you in the
right direction.

continued...4I also subscribe to a number of online feeds and trade publications from
other countries. I find I’m always finding someone or something interesting
that then finds me looking up the person or company and reaching out to
them.

What were you primary motivations going in? Where you
motivated primarily by financing concerns, finding the
right partners for your concepts? Were your coproduction
partners familiar to you already?5Financing is now probably the leading motivation for co-production, but in
a lot of cases, the projects I’ve been involved in were ones that generally
ended up being of interest to the same Broadcasters or Distributors.
Somewhere along the line we started talking at the beginning of a project
about making something that worked for everyone and was that much
better as a result of the upfront increase in financing for all.

Did those countries have formal digital or multiplatform
agreements in place? Did this help or hinder the process?6Co-production agreements are fairly new in the digital industry still, but a
lot has been done by the various funds and governments to enable these
productions to happen. Most of the projects I was involved in pre-dated
these agreements, and in some cases helped shaped the language and
agreements we have today. Not having these agreements made
structuring deals a long, drawn out process, sometimes resulting in things
taking too much time to get going and being turned off. In some situations
we collectively just couldn’t figure out how to make something work based
on the laws governing each of the partners. The agreements we have now
are an evolving and important step in growing sales, financing and talent
related to projects.

What were your key learnings? What worked, what didn't
work? What did you wish you knew going into the process? 7Pre-production, pre-production, pre-production... The reality is that everyone
has rules and regulations that they have to adhere to to ensure they remain in
good favour with their corresponding territories in terms of content, financing
and ownership. This may seem straightforward in theory, but in practice it can
end up requiring a number of complex deal points - there are a lot of moving
parts to any deal and co-production exponentially adds to the process. Every
partner has requirements in terms of ownership, percentage of production
happening within their territory, content focus and platform needs. Starting out
with a clear, shared plan of what everyone requires and what roles or division of
labour is best for all is critical. One of the most common mistakes in a true co-
production scenario is that everyone gets excited about the project and then
leaves the meeting table and starts developing their own vision of what’s been
discussed. As a Producer and Partner I think it’s imperative that you understand
how financing, funding and content production work for each of your other
partners and that they understand the requirements of the agreements that you
are bound to.

One of the most common problems I’ve seen and heard of a lot with projects
is that they ended up with ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ syndrome. It’s
something that can happen really fast, and without any malintent. Everyone
gets excited in meetings and immediately sets off to produce things the way
they are used to. Not only can it create a situation where everyone sees
themselves as the project lead, but tone, cultural nuances, design and
technology can begin to clash with the result being a mess.
In my experience, where content is collectively produced, sharing teams
across territories to work on the same production components hasn’t worked
that well unless the team members can work from one location together.
Things like timezones and production process can work with a bit of give and
take for global team meetings, but in the day to day build, having members of
the team start when the others have gone home, or having to get team
members to do daily Skype calls either super early or late at night can wear a
team out pretty fast. Not to mention the lag in answering emails about critical
code or design issues.
continued...7

What is the best advice you can give a producer who is
thinking about international co-production?8Educate yourself and really understand the funding and production models
of the country, or countries, you are looking to partner with. Look at how
financing flows, and what production milestones are required by each
partner, financier and possible fund. It’s a huge undertaking, so
understanding and respecting your partner is a given if you hope to build a
longterm relationship. It takes a lot of commitment to build trust in each
other, so be smart and don’t forget that this might not be the only project
you and your partner, or partners, end up doing together. The easiest way
to stay on top of what’s happening around the world is to keep in touch.
It’s amazing how many people, and other companies, you’ll meet via your
partners. People move around, start new things and are always coming
up with ideas, so never lose sight of the possibilities the future holds.

What are the top three things a producer should consider
when contemplating an international coproduction?9Know what you are looking for in seeking an international partner. Is it
financing, creative or developing new markets? Just going in with the idea
of increasing your budget is still considering your potential partners as
acquisition sales and not production. Try to clarify your needs to yourself
and then start looking at where you can look to either grow or help fill in
some of the missing pieces.
Look for partners you can work and grow with. You don’t need to be
looking for a mirror of yourself, but if you can’t get along then the
production isn’t going to be that much fun and probably won’t lead to a
future desire to work together.
Do your homework when it comes to contracting. Really know how your
partner’s business works so you don’t get caught in unexpected situations.

With the older projects funding was contained to each partners territory.
We would each make our version of the framework and build our own
content. The key was in working together to come up with a content plan
that insured we all weren't producing the same thing beyond the basic
generic content. So someone would focus on videos while another might
build a game or two. By working together this way we were able to pre-
licence and share content with each other that left us all with a larger
project than we could have attained on our own. The current
agreements are evolving to allow content to be produced in the same
manner as we're seeing with large scale television and film projects
where filming and post is happening across the partner countries and in
conjunction with the funds. The difference from before is that everyone
is collectively at the table and working together to build better offerings
and work out marketing. It's a lot more focused on how a project is
globally supported these days.
How did funding work with these projects? Were there
any roadblocks that made it difficult to work across
countries? to what extent did similar funding systems
help or hinder your ability to set up a coproduction
10

In terms of roadblocks, I've never had the experience of anyone trying to
stop a project from moving ahead. There's always been a positive
collaboration to see things happen. The issues were always around sorting
out everyone's needs and the agreements each of us was bound to.
Sometimes one partner would be commercially driven to sell ads and
sponsorships while another was precluded from doing so. Trying to sort
through the idea of each of us building projects in pieces meant having to
change our outlook from internally building and then seeing everyone else's
bit as an acquisition and starting to think and work together with the idea of
creating THE project as a whole together. Business models, financing,
distribution and production all had to be tweaked over the ten years to get us
moving in this direction. Having similar funding structures just eases the way
we all converse and strategize over what needs to be done. It streamlines
everything and also allows us to collectively, and globally, sort through how
we continue to evolve production. I do like a bit of variance though in the
funding models because it keeps bringing new ideas to the table or
challenges us to catch up in other circumstances.
continued...10

get in touch!
TMC Resource Kit
info@tmcresourcekit.com
tmcresourcekit.com
Co_Production Interview prepared by:
Anthea Foyer
redsquidlab.com
@redsquidlab
with the help of Zan Chandler
zanchandler.com

10 Questions About International Multi-Platform Co-Production - An Interview With Shawn Bailey

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