The Luxembourg animation film production industry was the focus of the main afternoon session on Wednesday at the 3-day CARTOON conference held at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Luxembourg-Dommeldange.
Christophe Erbes in his role of Moderator explained that Luxembourg has the capacity to be a top producer world-wide of animation films. Norbert Laporte of Film Fund Luxembourg introduced Luxembourg as an attractive country for co-productions and screened a compilation of excerpts from a number of animation films, both shorts and feature films, including Mr Hublot, Song of the Sea, Ernest and Celestine, The Congress and many more.
He walked through the funding mechanism offered by Film Fund Luxembourg where up to €2m funding can be made available to individual film production projects, representing up to 30-40% of total funding, with up to €300k of that at the development stage. At the end if 2014, Film Fund Luxembourg introduced a new funding mechanism for animation films. He described Film Fund Luxembourg as a one-stop-shop for film production support, with eligibility based on a points system, with projects worth €7m needing 20 points, and projects worth €10m needing 50 points. The Selection Committee meets 4-5 times/year, examining dossiers based on artistic, technical and financial criteria.
For 2015-2017, the total budget amounts to €100 million, of which €25 million available for animation projects. He also mentioned the concept of Transmedia which is based on various types of content made available on different platforms or media.
Stephan Roelants introduced the event's first case study, addressing Melusine Productiins and Studio 352 based in Contern, highlighting fulm production projects such as Pachyderm and Extraordinary Tales.
Pierre Urbain introduced the FMAIV (Fédération des métiers de l’animation et de l’image virtuell) association and the Technoport business incubator in Esch-Belval, as well as Doghouse Films and some of its projects such as Walking the Dog, Little Luke & Lucy, and Zoli & Pokey.
Frédérique Vinel of Fabrique d'Images / Picture Factory presented the 3rd case study of her company whose productions are aimed at producing original content aimed at children and families, for big and small screens as well as new digital media. Some of their productions include Le Petit Prince, Iron Man, Robin des Bois and Chaplain, which then gave them the experience to develop their own projects and test their creative talents with short films such as The Panic Show and The Light Eater, before projects in which they took the lead such as Percy's Tiger Tales, Ice Breakers, and Ziggy and The Zoo Tram, as well as the highly-successful Two by Two (Ooos Noah is Gone), plus The Christmas Vandal...
The Cartoon Digital event continues until Friday in Luxembourg.
Photo by Geoff Thompson (L-R): Stephan Roelants, Pierre Urbain, Norbert Laporte, Frédérique Vinel, Christophe Erbes.
