Medienboard stands for qualified funding advice, in which the respective specialised funding officers decide whether and how an application can be submitted. There are no forms for this on the website. Only after the mandatory meeting does the applicant receive an online link to Medienboard’s digital application portal. And we asked Christian Berg, the coordinator for film funding at Medienboard, how this works.
DP: What can be funded, and for whom does an application make sense at all?
Christian Berg: Medienboard funds the development, production, distribution and sales of cinema films. We also support television films, serial formats, innovative audiovisual content (games, apps, multi-platform projects, VR/AR) and media-related location projects. Furthermore, to a limited extent, cinemas as well as, for example, festival presentations and continuing education. Producers and distributors can submit an application to Medienboard, but creatives cannot. As a rule, this principle ensures that, for example, producers have already made a contractual commitment to authors or directors to realise a project.
We receive around 2,000 project enquiries per year across all funding areas, of which around 650 qualify for an application that is evaluated, advised on and decided. In the end, a good 300 projects are approved across all funding areas. For years, the capital region has exerted such appeal and attractiveness that, in principle, we do not have to acquire a single project, but can successfully draw from a wealth of possibilities. This will certainly continue as long as creatives can still afford the Berlin metropolitan region, as long as work, housing and life remain affordable.
Medienboard discusses applications in an internal committee 3–5 times a year in each of the two funding areas. We are the only funding body in Germany that does not have an external committee. This was decided by the local media industry in the mid-1990s when today’s film funding was installed. The decision criteria are probably similar for most funding bodies: good script, good cast, good crew, strong financing partners, regional effect, relevance to the location, festival prospects, etc.
DP: That sounds easier now than it probably is in individual cases – do you have specialists on the team to provide advice?
Christian Berg: Medienboard’s film funding department has 6 officers. In addition, there are 3 colleagues in the back office. As a rule, the funding officers can cover all funding areas. But of course there are specialists, among other things, for distribution, serial formats, Eastern European co-productions or world-cinema projects.
DP: So if you arrange an appointment, what do you need to bring?
Christian Berg: Let us take production funding as the area involving the larger sums. Here, it makes sense to request a meeting in good time before the deadline. We try to complete these consultation appointments up to 14 days before the deadline. Exceptions prove the rule, of course, as you can imagine. Film producers should feed us digitally in advance with a fact sheet, synopsis, top sheet of the calculation including regional effects for Berlin-Brandenburg, as well as a financing plan that shows the status of the individual components, and at least one deal memo with a German distributor. If we know all of this, it becomes a genuinely qualified application meeting.
DP: The funding aims at a regional effect for the film industry. How far does this region extend? And what must be considered with Germany-wide co-productions?
Christian Berg: Like all other regional funding bodies, Medienboard naturally has a sacred cow: the regional effect. What we commit in funding must also be spent here. Anyone combining funding from several states must ensure that exactly these sums and percentages are contractually signed for each funding body. Anyone who achieves less of an effect with us will have the amount of the shortfall deducted. That is tough. It is best, however, if funding recipients communicate the reasons and constraints behind such shifts to us in good time so that we can take them into account during the final audit. If it only becomes obvious without comment at the very end, there is almost nothing we can do. So beware of the daily cost reports!
DP: If we now look further – what are the funding conditions for connecting to European funding?
Christian Berg: Many of our applicants from the capital region have now completed European training programmes and finance their projects predominantly on a European or international basis. They are usually very familiar with European funding programmes and know how to combine them with national ones. Medienboard is also integrated into an international network with other funding regions such as Île-de-France / Paris, Rome or Madrid, but also into co-production platforms with Turkey, Poland, Israel and other countries.
DP: In collaboration with Amazon, you recently funded the Prime series “You are Wanted” – do you see opportunities here for the future to build another market worthy of funding outside the cinema and TV landscape, or will it be limited to the existing pay-TV players?
Christian Berg: Series are the new cinema, one often hears. Medienboard has indeed opened itself up to funding high-end drama series and is having interesting experiences with the Amazons, Netflixes and Skys of this world. They not only mean new production, business and revenue models for the producer landscape, but also the opportunity to develop the already strong capital location even further. We are naturally particularly excited about the international appearance of the Medienboard-funded series “Babylon Berlin” in autumn 2017.
DP: In your experience, what should one have ready after submitting the application?
Christian Berg: In most cases, Medienboard is not the only funding body. Projects therefore often change during the financing phase. There are many questions to answer: Which funding exists before the Medienboard meeting? What do the applicants do if Medienboard only funds half of the requested amount? How do the pre-sales required for financing develop on larger projects? Who provides the GAP financing? Do the director or lead actors have to be replaced? In principle, the most important thing in this phase is also communication between the applicants and the funding body. And do you have a plan B just in case?
