Stephanie Fialkow, manager of International Digital Distribution for New York City-based FilmRise, sent VideoAge‘s Water Cooler a first-hand report about her experience with the virtual MIP Cancun event, which was held November 17-20, 2020. Fialkow (pictured above) was assisted at the virtual event by Emilia Nuccio, FilmRise consultant for the U.S. Hispanic and LATAM market, including Brazil.
“MIP Cancun 2020 online was a very positive experience for FilmRise,” reported Fialkow (pictured above). “Most of the meetings we asked for were set up well in advance and we were satisfied with the number and quality of appointments.”
She continued: “We had enough time to prepare and found the experience very worthwhile. As expected, the digital players were numerous, which reflects the new reality of the marketplace. While we met with free-TV broadcasters, all had or will create a digital component to their business. For FilmRise, this was the perfect opportunity to build our brand in LATAM, get to know the digital players in Latin America better, and make it known that FilmRise is expanding internationally with in-country based platforms.”
Fialkow added that the event was simple to navigate: “The virtual platform itself was easy to understand and it worked very well. We had the sense that a lot of planning and preparation was behind it and we only had minor technical problems not stemming from the MIP Cancun Platform.”
Asked what she found most useful, Fialkow said: “The fact that MIP Cancun organized the meetings ahead of time and in an effortless manner made for ease of planning and preparation.”
She noted that she and her colleagues “were connected for four days, at least three hours a day” and that “it would have been useful to have the buyers’ emails in advance so that we wouldn’t have had to ask for them at the end of each meeting.”
“Obviously we all wished we were in Cancun attending in person, instead sitting at our desks, without sharing meals and experiences,” she said. But “overall, it was a positive experience.”
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