Interview with Ioana Belu: an insight into producing of promotional films

I met Ioana Belu at HavsVidden hotel on the Åland Islands while enjoying the beautiful view of nature and a delicious breakfast. Ioana Belu is Executive Director at Business Intelligence Unit. She has been working in the field for 7 years. Before she entered the media field she worked with financial management in banks until the credit crisis, when she found the opportunity to get into her passion for filming and taking pictures. Entering the field Belu started with writing country reports for e.g. The Guardian and Wall Street Journal. Belu loves spending time taking pictures. Today she focuses on finding creative advertising for the travel industry in the form of country branding.

Ioana Belu at HavsVidden on the Åland Islands

At the moment she is working with her team on a production for the CNBC about destinations in the Baltic. The filmed production will be 30 minute long. It is about the city of Helsinki, Tallin and Stockholm as well as the Islands of Åland, Gotland and Öland. The filming projects are about finding various destinations and particularities. Taking into consideration both regular travelers, business travelers as well as people who travel for another reason. The core of the production is to find diversity.

Belu describes her work from the point of view as a producer as supervising the whole process. Starting from creating and idea, finding the team and starting to network. The process continues with defining the idea, scouting for the location and selling the product. When this part is ready the actual pitching of the product starts containing traveling to different authorities to try to sell the product. Then taking a look into the budget and the possibilities to distribute it. At this stage Belu starts signing contracts with partners who are going to be part of the project. The company uses both in-house staff and freelancers. The actual producing part starts with filming. Usually there is more material filmed than actually needed at the end. This is to ensure that you have the material needed when starting the editing process. The process may even take up to one year.

Belu explains how much light fascinates her and what an important aspect it is when photographing. When filming, nature is absolutely the most important thing. She likes to capture the actual moment through the lens and not use too much editing. The natural colors are the most beautiful. Like this she is able to bring beauty for the viewer and in the end it is all about capturing something at the right time in order to bring value for the recipient.

Traveling as a producing team abroad, requires the team to bring equipment with them as well as sometimes renting from the destination of the shoot. For instance Belu explains that lights and sound mixers are usually rented since they are heavy and fragile to travel with. Belu’s partners usually travel with their own camera equipment.

Belu points out the importance of starting by building relationships with the partners and then trying to sell a catchy package that stands out from the competitors’. Even if companies first cut from the marketing and promotion costs when the economy is not strong, visibility is still an important aspect for any company. Through internet there are today a lot of possibilities in marketing with the use of promotional videos. The most powerful advertising is when the right media is used. In Belu’s opinions the best part of filming is when the team has the possibility to bond with each other, wake up with no stress, being able to sit down for a breakfast together joking, laughing and feeling relaxed and deciding on what needs to be filled up during the day.

An example of Ioana Belu’s production for British Airways:

Text and picture by Naomi Zino

Interview with Heini Haapaniemi from Porvoo Art Factory

I had a change to meet Heini Haapaniemi the Producer-ombudsman of the Porvoo Art Factory Foundation and hear some interesting insights about previous events but also upcoming new projects and ideas in the near future in Porvoo. Heini Haapaniemi is in charge of the artistic networks, collaborations, program proposals and partnerships as well as corporate co-operations. She studied theatre science in the University of Helsinki followed by one year in the Theatre Academy studying directing and dramaturge as an exchange student which opened contacts to the world of theatre. In 2014 she started working for the young Art Factory in Porvoo which gave many opportunities to be fresh and creative.

1. Heini Haapaniemi

I asked what has been one of the most memorable event or project for Heini Haapaniemi that created positive feedback from the people from Porvoo. Last summer in 2014 she was organizing an open doors carnival with chamber orchestra Avanti’s summerfestival Suvisoitto. The idea was that the artists from the creative industries from Porvoo Art Factory could show their work and expertise. The carnival took place in the Aleksanterinaukio Square which was targeted for families and especially for children. They had several activities such as a family show from Theatre Taruma, painting, clay workshops and a brass band where children were able to try different wind instruments and on top of that to try to lead the orchestra themselves. Similar events like this will be organized in the future.

In the summer 2015 there will be #URBCULTt, an ongoing artprocess and the first Street Art project in Porvoo which will bring more life to Aleksanterinaukio Square and the westbank of Porvoo river, Länsiranta. The trustee of the Street Art project is Polina Ej, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Saint Petersburg who will choose the international street artist to create the street art works in Porvoo. The #URBCULT project will involve many types of activities, such as parcour, graffiti and spray painting, music, gardening, city orienteering etc. targeted for both visitors and people from wider Porvoo region. Last summer the Art Factory Foundation organised graffiti painting as part of the open doors carnival, but this summer #URBCULT takes it into a next level.

In October of 2015 a Mexican festival will be organised in at the Art Factory together with the Embassy of Mexico and several cultural houses of Helsinki and Espoo. There will be quite a few partners cooperating for this festival such as the Porvoo cultural office, individual artists with Mexican background, Porvoo art school (Taidekoulu), Porvoo music institution and hopefully even Haaga-Helia Porvoo Campus. These kind of large collaborations are meaningful for Heini Haapaniemi and the Art Factory because they create life and visibility for Porvoo.

2. Spring brochure 2015

Which are the events and happenings that draw the most attention and the biggest audience to the Art Factory? It’s obvious that the big names and stories which are known nationally draw the most attention. The genre can be anything once the quality is good. As we have seen during the winter, it can be a certain singer, a show from Aurinkobaletti or a famous story about the three little pigs as a new musical or a well-known actor, group or a stand-up comedian.

Every art organisation needs to have a number of variety so that there’s something for every taste. In these days the competition of our free time is tough because there’s so many choices you can make from the range of options. Porvoo Art Factory wants life and buzz into the area of Art Factory and Aleksanteri Street and to create a place and atmosphere where art and culture, this summer especially urban culture, can offer its best. Porvoo Art Factory is eager to get your insights as well as new people into the process of creating the next big ideas.

Text and picture no. 2 by Heli Laaksonen, Heini Haapaniemi has given a permission to use picture no. 1 in this blog

Internship with berlinerpool – part 5

The implementation of Culture Export Management in real life

berlinerpool team

As I mentioned in previous post, one of my biggest projects at berlinerpool was doing market research of art scenes in Southeast Asia. The project required a lot of works and the director at berlinerpool was worried to let me handle it myself. With confidence of a CEM student, I finally convinced him that I was capable for this kind of project.

Let’s talk about Culture Export Management study specialisation. I was one of the luckiest students who was hand-picked to this specialised study. I enjoy every lectures from my project co-ordinator as well as guests from different cultural industries. My class was also invited to different organisational visits, which were so informative and interesting to me. As the only Asian in this specialised study back then, I feel really happy to obtain all the knowledge about cultural industries such as gaming, music, festivals, movies in Finland. I also got the opportunities to participate in a project to assist Chinese delegations to Finland for a theatre export project. Needless to say, this study has prepared me great knowledge for the job market out there.

Going back to my project at berlinerpool, the initial idea is to create partnership between berlinerpool and other artists network in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. So for the thirst month of my internship, I started planning the project and conducting research on the art scenes in these countries. After finding relevant partners, I and the team sat together to discuss about the realistic elements and success factors of this project. After days of planning and discussing different possibilities and outcomes, we decided to contact the potential partners in these countries and prepared the next steps.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Cambodia was chosen as the first country for this pilot project. A country, with population of 15 millions and still recovering from wars and genocide, faces numerous challenges in terms of arts development. During my stay in Cambodia, I have met handful of young artists and attended many arts galleries, exhibitions and other activities. It was quite interesting to see a small country with so many young and talented artists. There are many things I would like to tell you about Cambodia, but I will let you discover this Kingdom of Wonder in your own way!

– Phung Banh

Internship with berlinerpool – part 4

Why Physical Documentation Archive?

Not only a networking platform for artists, curators, art managers and art spaces, berlinerpool is also a physical archive of its members. At berlinerpool’s physical archive, there are reading rooms for artists to read and research.

Archive collects works of art and preserves the gathered materials for researchers. In other words, archive includes the original materials such as brochures, videos, catalogues, sketchbooks, or any materials related to an artist’s work. Focused on visual arts, the majority of materials at berlinerpool’s archive is catalogues and videos of its members.

berlinerpool keeps documenting its members art works and sharing it for research purposes. With technology advancements, archives now can contain the piece of art works under two forms, which are physical and digital. Beside physical archives of different artists organisations, museums are also archive with massive records of art works through their permanent or temporary collections.

To offer artists in Berlin a place to keep their works, berlinerpool has created the most comfortable physical archive with great facilities such as stationaries, video player/rejector, good coffee and wi-fi. Also, berlinerpool has done several tours to showcase its physical archive in different locations within Germany. One of the prior projects in berlinerpool is exporting the physical archive abroad in the near future.

As being said in a recent article, ‘the life of a work of art continues far beyond the life of an artist’. I believe that explains the importance of development and maintenance of physical archives.

– Phung Banh

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Finnish export: history, present and future

Johan Storgård gave us a lecture about Finnish export and it`s state now but also about history and future. And this is what we learned..

Background

Culture is one of worlds biggest and fastest growing industry field in the world but also in Finland. In Finland almost everything related to culture in supported by government which tells much about the state cultural field is in nowadays. We have many talented artists and all areas in culture are represented in Finland, but something is still missing.

Finland is definitely a culture consuming country! Finnish state budget is approximately 54 milliards and Finnish people consume culture for 10 milliards. So, it is indeed very important for us. The average person in Finland spends about 10% of his incomes on culture. Actually, people spend more money only on groceries.

In total people spent over 5 million euros to culture ( in year 2005) and that is more what they used even on their own health. Culture industry has also strong impact on employment and over 4% of labor force work within cultural fields.

All this sounds so good and promising. What is then what we are missing? Why do we need government support so much?

Cultural field in Finland now

At the moment there is no room for expansion on home market. The market is full and we are competing with each other. Like I wrote earlier, every field of culture is represented in Finland right now. The problems we need to solve are how to export culture abroad and how to get foreign audience for our cultural products in Finland. Well, how does that happen then?

Firstly, we need to stop looking to the west and instead we need to focus on east. East is the future, China and Russia are where the money is at the moment. We also need to stop thinking that our location is somehow difficult to achieve. After all, coming from the east, we are the first European country and thanks to Finnair Finland are very easy to reach at the moment. In order to be prepared to collaborate and cooperate with east, we need start learning languages: Russian and Chinese.

We also need: supporting structures for production development, innovative commercial approach and working methods marketing, remarkable promotion and co-operative bodies.

In order to support the efforts of culture industries in export,  Finnish government invented Luovimo, an internationalization program for creative industries. Luovimos tasks was to create a national development program for the cultural export for the years 2007-2011.

The aim was that the cultural sector would get equal support than the other export industries. This support includes consulting, working opportunities and new business opportunities.

Participants in this project was such as Ministry of Education, Ministry of Trade, Foreign Ministry, tourist board, technology board and Finnpro.

With Luovimo we were able to create new work possibilities and the number of business has grown but not sure if the sales has gone up.

Future

Finnish culture field should get a “winner”. Someone, who would achieve success and be able to create new work places. A good example is the game industry where Rovio and Supercell have achieved something which was 10 years ago considered as impossible.

Text by Senja Hämäläinen & Sari Jagielski and pictures by Päivi Kettunen

 

Gallissas – the German Theatre Agency

Gallissas was our last but not least excursion during our study trip to Berlin. We were greeted by Eva Theresa Beck and Michel Honold who told us about Gallissas, a German Theatre Agency. The company develops new plays and musicals, they represent plays from international producers and international partners and resell German authors works internationally via their partners. They focus on musicals especially. Eva is the dramatic advisor and Michel works with the production parts for/at Gallissas. ACE-prododuction and Johan Storgård cooperate with Gallissas. They present some of the Swedish Theatres productions in Germany. The most successful play exported from Finland to Germany through Gallissas was PlayMe. The company was founded in 2005. The facility they work at is beautiful. The presentation started by looking at their facility, there were both offices and rooms for other events.

The office area at Gallissas

One of Gallissas’ major parts of what they do is to produce about 6-7 plays/musicals every year that they commission to authors. Gallissas is the connection between the theatre world and the author. At some point when you write the script you do not see your own mistakes anymore, which is the stage when it is good to have the producing company’s help. Gallissas organize readings where actors have two day of rehearsals. During this rehearsals you see what works in the play and which parts still need adjustments. Some scenes are rewritten after the rehearsals. The idea is also to sell the script, this meaning from a producing company’s view that you invite potential buyers. In a musical theatre one usually has a musical director who composes the melody and separately a musical director for the instrumental part. The readings are a lot about voice acting. Thus, it is important to find good singers for the few rehearsals. They usually have only two weeks time to learn the script before rehearsals. Normally in Germany actors have six weeks time to learn the script. Internationally it depends on where you are what the customs are for the actors to receive the script of a play. If you start by working with a play that already exist it is all about translating in at the beginning. You have to think about syllabuses, jokes, different generations, dialects and cultural differences. Every translation is more of an adaption of the play, but still to bearing in mind the original play. If something goes wrong in the play, we usually blame it on a bad translation.

Eva Theresa Beck and Michel Honold

When you finally have the play in your pocket it is time to start marketing it. Before the premiere you can easily have an impact on the ticket sales but after that there will be a reputation of the play. To have remarkable people with you in your theatre can help in the beginning. However the best way of selling your work is by knowing it well.

CEM students at Gallissas

Text & pictures by Naomi Zino

Bridge Builder in Germany

Finnish Institute in Germany was founded in 1994. It is located in the center of Berlin near Friedrichstrasse Station. The Institute works as a forum for Finnish culture, science and the economy in German-speaking Europe. It offers collaboration and networking and organizing various cultural events.
We gather together in Institute’s bright and modern exhibition space. Marimekko textiles in interior design and the Moomin topics on the wall make us feel at home.  Our hostesses at the Institute welcome us in a friendly and warm way, and the sun broke through the clouds to add a bright atmosphere. We are meeting Emma Aulanko, Manager for Cultural Affairs, Anna Kondracka, Intern for Arts and Anna Saraste, Intern for Study & Internships abroad. They tell us about the exhibition which is currently on display. Soon ending exhibition “Buchstäblich” (Literally) presents photographs of the diversity of reading, and the Finnish typography.

The “Buchstäblich” is a traveling exhibition and it is a part of literature related theme. This year, one of the biggest events of the Institute has been COOL2014 satellite program. Finland was the theme country at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2014. Activities around the Guest of Honor project began in March. The program’s core themes are reading, as well as education and culture. Finland was decided to present through reading, which is very typical thing for Finns. In Finland reading is not a definition of a social class. Reading is pleasure and it is for everybody and it is having an active role in a society. This idea is presented in German-speaking countries this year. Traveling exhibitions are a great way to organize Finnish-themed events in a library, museum, school or other public space.

This year, the Institute’s projects are focused on literature but a lot of other areas are also represented. The projects and exhibitions aim is to give priority to young artists’ input. Institute is a bridge builder and a support network in German-speaking countries. Anna Kondracka and Anna Saraste consider the diversity, creativity and variety are the best parts of this work. It is refreshing and challenging to work in many different cultural fields. Emma Aulanko’s favorite things at work are planning, and the feeling that new things are happening.

We also talked about living in Berlin. The atmosphere in Berlin is relaxed and the people there are tolerant. The city itself is in a constant state of change, which is one of the most inspiring things in Berlin. Your Kiez is never sleeping, but recreating itself again and again. This continuous change and increasing property values and rents make the artists to search cheaper locations and new Kiez and gradually the others will follow.

Text by Päivi Kettunen

Pictures by Naomi Zino and Päivi Kettunen

Meeting Mirka Flander from Suomesta Galleria

During our study trip in Berlin, our group visited Suomesta Galleria; a project gallery in Berlin for Finnish media and video artists, sculptors, photographers, graphic artists and painters. Suomesta Galleria was originally curated by Finnish media artist and film director, Jari Haanperä.
So on Wednesday 5.11 we got a chance to have a chat with Mirka Flander, the Co-Ordinator of Suomesta Galleria, and here’s what we got to discuss with her.

Could you tell us a little bit more about the upcoming exhibition? Are all the artists from Finland?

Most of them, yes. In the upcoming exhibition there will be two. When it comes to our exhibition someone is always a Finn.

So the upcoming exhibition is by Jyrki Markkanen and Emma Lappalainen. They are both graphics artists. Jyrki is extremely established outside Finland, but for some reason nobody seems to know him in Helsinki. He’s actually one of the very few Finnish artists who’s got his work in the collection of MoMa (the Museums of Modern Art) in New York.

How do you select the artists you feature in your exhibition?

There are certain qualities we are looking for. It doesn’t matter whether or not you are an established artist or a young, beginning artist. What we are looking for is the opposite of “princesses”. When I say princesses I mean people who don’t touch anything their selves when it comes to putting the gallery exhibition together. We want artists who are ready to work for it.

Most importantly we are looking for people who are able to promote them selves. Seems odd but this is how art is these days; you have to be socially outgoing, you have to be able to write about you’re work and yourself. You really can’t be too modest.
This is kind of a pity, since the people who are visually talented aren’t necessarily socially and verbally as talented.

So you are a galleria that shows mainly Finnish art, what kind of audience do you have?

 Well, of course Finns who live in Berlin visit us, and for some reason we have people visiting the galleria who have been in Tampere or Lapland before. People who know something about Finland and because of that are interested in Finnish art when they happen to find it.

 

What is it in for the artists who work with you? Do they find new contacts or become more known? Do they get support from other sources?

 So what we take is the rent, and for that we cover all the other expenses:  internet, supervising, promoting and everything included.
When it comes to grants and supports it’s almost a political thing, if artist number one gets grants from somewhere, why shouldn’t artist number two? But something that we are very happy about is that many artists have usually got good money or grants afterwards, because they were exhibiting in our gallery.

Text by Hanna Lehto

Pictures by Päivi Kettunen and Naomi Zino

 

With Riikka Hakola in KaDeWe Berlin

While we were having an adventure in Berlin we took one afternoon to sit down with a very charming lady: the Finnish opera singer Riikka Hakola. Riikka is originally from Finland, but currently living in Berlin with her family.

Riikka Hakola is a soprano who has done a great international career. She started out as a young girl, graduated from Finnish music school Sibelius academy, and has worked in many projects ever since all around the world. She has performed for example in Helsinki Finnish National Opera, In New York at Metropolitan Opera, and also has she been performing in various exotic locations. In New York she was performing in War & Peace opera with Anna Netrebko, who is one of the leading stars in Opera industry. Riikka told us a lot of stories about living life in New York, which many of them made us laugh. Riikka has performed a wide range of different operas, which include many classics such as Violetta, Anna Bolena, Donna Anna and Tosca.

We asked Riikka`s opinion about the industry and how she sees that we future Culture Export Managers would fit into industry. This was a question that we asked from everybody we met in Berlin. And the answer was every time the same: there is plenty of work for us, the industry needs people with enthusiasms and passion, but it will not be an easy road. Like every cultural field, also opera has faced some difficulties in the past years. But obviously CEM students are up for a challenge.

We also asked from Riikka how she takes care of her health, after all voice is the biggest tool she has. Her answer was really down-to-earth and practical. She told us that she just simply tries to keep her in good shape, and tries to avoid overreaction like sleeping in oxycen tanks or avoiding speaking days before shows.
Riikka was really fascinating persona and time just flied by when talking to her, and unfortunately too soon we had to already rush into our next meeting… But hey, did I already mention where we met her for lunch? In the finest department store there is in Berlin (and also oldest: KaDeWe was opened in 1907). We had lunch in the top floor, we there was an incredible restaurant with breath taking views.
Great day, great people and good memories from Berlin!

Text by Senja Hämäläinen

Pictures by Naomi Zino & Päivi Kettunen