Co-Production: A Winning Strategy
The rise of the export of Singapore content underscores a successful co-production strategy. This has reaped dividends for Singapore television producers, who have entered into winning partnerships with international broadcasters, distributors and studios to develop programmes with international flavour and commercial viability.
Factual Content
Singapore television producers continue to gain traction with factual programmes produced in high-definition. One such collaboration is the partnership between The Right Angle Media, Beijing TV and BBC Global Channels to produce Beijing: Biography of a Capital, a three-part documentary exploring themes that have defined Beijing for over a thousand years. Timed for the Beijing Olympics, this series premiered on BBC Global Channels across Asia and Europe in 2008 and is being distributed worldwide by BBC Worldwide.
Mad About English! by Journey Pictures, a hilarious and heart-warming tale about China’s newfound passion for the English language as it prepared to host the world for the 2008 Olympics, won Best Documentary, South East Asian Award, at the Yogyakarta Film Festival Dokumenter 2008. The documentary has been distributed to CBC (Canada), DR Media (Denmark), Noga (Israel), Discovery Channel, NHK (Japan) and Phoenix TV (China). It also received commercial theatrical success in Singapore when it was released in August 2008.
Another example of high quality Made-by-Singapore content going places is Little Big Dreams by Threesixzero Productions. The full-length documentary produced in high-definition and supported by MDA won the Gold Medal Award for Best Direction at the New York Festival’s International TV Broadcasting Awards 2008. It has since been broadcast on several international channels such as BBC HD (UK), ZDF (Germany) and HKTVB (Hong Kong).
A groundbreaking co-production was also sealed with Extinctions, a global co-production television series by France 5, Frederic Lepage Concepts (France), Coyote Conseil (France), Oak3 Films (Singapore), MDA, Mixer (Brazil) and Greenspace Productions (Canada). The six-part documentary-thriller series in high definition features endangered species and is also Singapore’s first co-production spanning four continents.
Mandarin factual content from Singapore made it to regional screens when newly-formed YR Asia Satellite TV began broadcasting on Hong Kong’s I-Cable Channel 28 in October 2008, marking the first landing for the brand new entertainment channel.
Animation for Television
Within five years, Singapore’s animation industry has grown from fewer than 10 companies in 2003 to about 40 in 2009. Many of these companies are moving from fee-for-service work to owning partial or full rights of the content they produce, and penetrating the global market on the back of international co-productions.
One such exciting development is the collaboration between the renowned The Jim Henson Company and Singapore’s Big Communications, to produce a children’s animated series Dinosaur Train . Launched in September 2009 on the PBS Kids channel in the United States, Dinosaur Train has secured sales in Norway and Canada, with broadcasters from Nickelodeon Australia, Germany’s Super RTL and France 5 also expressing interest in purchasing the 40-episode series.
Another significant highlight in the animation space is LaMB, touted as the first animated project created by regional cable channel Animax Asia. Animax Asia is part of SPE Networks - Asia which is owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Animax has chosen homegrown companies Peach Blossom Media and Imaginary Friends Studio to helm the cable movie project slated to premiere in 20 countries including Europe and Lati