We had a great time at the 2019 Celtic Media Festival in Aviemore, met some fantastic people, soaked up a lot of the conversations and presentations from some superb speakers, and thoroughly enjoyed all of the food and drinks.
Celtic Media Festival is held over three days and a brilliant way of immersing yourself amongst the media professionals from all of the Celtic countries. It’s an annual celebration of broadcasting and film talent that is supported by broadcast, film, cultural and economic development opportunities.
This year, we had the privilege of watching the screenings for Eminent Monsters and Dark Sense and the chance to mingle with the producers over drinks afterwards.
With such a full programme it was impossible to go to all of the sessions, the ones we did visit were incredibly interesting and we took away a lot of valuable information.
Page to screen was an intriguing conversation about the process of adapting a story from script or book to the screen. Some of things that we learned from this was that it’s events like this one that is key to breaking down the boundaries between writers and producers. As a writer persistence is key to your success and you can make any adaptation successful with a big marketing push.
Making money from Celtic Content was a great conversation with agents who were talking through tips to help make your production a success. The best strategy is to keep looking for good content to sell, if the story is good it will fly. Opportunities are everywhere with Netflix and Amazon Prime you have to have the creative imagination to get it out there. You should never bank a series after it has been aired and consider an international market and it doesn’t matter what language your programme is in for any market. It’s important to find the right sales agent who in genuinely interested in your show to sell it.
Local office, Global audience was a live interview with Kieran Doherty from Stellify Media a successful production company from Northern Ireland. We got to see clips from their new Netflix series Flinch which is a comedy torture game show set in a barn. Kieran explained how they came up with the concept and then created a taster video of it in a wooden barn to pitch in a 26-minute slot to Netflix.
The event finished on the Thursday with the Gala Awards night. It was extremely well organised and coordinated with a great turn out. We would highly recommend going in 2020.