Chinese Coproductions - Learning from the Experts

China has an annual box office of around US $1.5 billion and a growth rate that makes the rest of the world jealous.  But if we want access to Chinese cinemas for our productions we hit a problem - China has tight internal regulations that limits non-Chinese films to a limited number of slots.

Thankfully there is loophole, however - Australia's co-production treaty with China offers a method to get around the import quotas on foreign films.

So it was worth hearing from some Aussie producers talking at the latest SPAA conference about their experience working in China.

Product Placement - Case Study (Heinz Ez Squeeze)

In some ways product placement for our indie films is trivial.  For example, set designer Margaret McDonald was telling me recently how she gets Woolwooths to supply free groceries for set dressing.

However, real product integration is something that provides the producer with real value - either with money upfront or marketing support later on.  As much as we'd like to save $50 on set dressing - for a $10 million film it's not exactly value for the producer.  So I thought I'd look at some examples of successful product integrations to see how others do it.

Example 1 - Heinz 'EZ Squeeze' bottle.

Marketing Brief:  Heinz Ketchup had a new 'EZ Squeeze' bottle.

They'd worked for years to get people to recognise their old bottle - now they were taking a totally different product to the market.  Not only that - but the bottle was used quite differently too .. so would the public accept this new shape?


So Heinz worked with a US company called 'International Promotion' to include the new bottle into product integration on TV and film so that the consumer 'would consider the EZ Squeeze bottle as an everyday household product'.

Private Film Investing - More bad examples

There seems to be a rash of prosecutions in the USA over indie film investments.

Example 1:  "There for Hope" 

Here's a blurb about the film.  http://comedymovies2011.alotoffilms.com/usa/there-for-hope.html

Pretty impressive cast list for an indie film :

Martin Sheen, Diane Ladd, Britney Spears, Nick Nolte, Brian Krause, John Carroll Lynch, Gedde Watanabe, Mark Rolston, Voyo Goric

Absurdly impressive.  And it doesn't even make sense.  It almost looks as if someone had picked some random famous names and claimed that they were involved in the film!