CINEROMA
“Ours is one of the few jobs that aims to bring foreign capital into Italy”. This is the most important part of the line and executive producer’s work according to partners David Nichols and Francesco Marras of Cineroma, the company Nichols set up in 1998, bringing his experience as a line producer with the Hollywood majors to Italy. “Bringing the Anglo-American audiovisual industry to Italy also means getting a chance to work with the type of budgets that are not usually available to our film industry, with all the ensuing benefits in terms of acquiring technical know-how”.
Two of the movies Cineroma has worked on are “The Tourist” and “To Rome with Love”, the latest work by Woody Allen. With regard to Allen’s movie, Nichols says: “Helen Robin, who has been Woody Allen’s producer for 35 years, said that the experience of working with an Italian crew was the best of her whole career”.
The projects Cineroma is currently developing include “Antonia” , set between the two World Wars in Tuscany, on Lake Garda and in the UK, directed by Marc Jobst (UK), a romantic comedy “Condemned to love”, written and directed by Barry Morrow, based on a legend from the Alto Adige, and a project about the “cursed” artists and poets of the early ‘900s in Paris and Tuscany
EOS PRODUCTION
Eos Production was founded in 1986 by Enzo Sisti who, in his longcareer as a line and executive producer, was involved in a number of international successes such as ‘Mission Impossible’, ‘The Passion of the Christ’, ‘Life Aquatic’ and ‘The American’. The last title, filmed in Abruzzi and starring George Clooney, inaugurated the tax credit system in Italy. “I was the first line and executive producer to get a Tax Credit for ‘The American’”, says Sisti, who is currently involved in the executive production service of the second season of the very successful TV series, ‘The Borgias’. This series came to Italy because of the possibility of accessing the new fund providing incentives for audiovisual productions, set up by the Regione Lazio. “Being able to add this fund to the tax credit means that filming in Italy is very good value, particularly for theatrical productions, as the tax credit cannot currently be accessed by TV companies. Many Film Commissions have already set up funds which, despite having a lower level of financing than the Lazio fund, still work very well. I am referring to Apulia, Trentino, Alto Adige and Piedmont. It is essential to attract foreign productions, not just because of the important amount of business they generate, but because the exchange of different working methods contributes to a global growth of professionalism”.
FILMMASTER PRODUCTIONS
Filmmaster Productions has been a leader in the advertising commer- cials production market since 1976. In over thirty years it has made more than 3,500 commercials, and was involved in some of most impor- tant campaigns of the last few decades, winning hundreds of national and international awards (including a total of 27 Lions from the most prestigious advertising festival in the world, 8 of which are Gold). Filmmaster Service, the Filmmaster unit dedicated to advertising as well as theatrical production services, contributes to the production of com- mercials and feature length movies, working with many of the top Italian and international directors. Filmmaster Service has recently signed up for “Believe 2012”, the promotional film for the 2012 London Olympics, directed by Wade Sherman, which was shot in Italy, as well as Jamaica, Poland, Portugal, England and Scotland, as well as the new “Esso” cam- paign, directed by Paul Goldman, filmed in November 2011 in Rome and, this year, the Softbank commercial for the Japanese market, retracing all the central Roman locations featured in “Roman Holiday”. Fabrizio Razza is the Line and Executive Producer of Filmmaster Productions and Vice President of the APE. Today Filmmaster Productions has executive offices in Milan, Rome and Madrid. It is also present in the Middle East with Filmmaster MEA (Middle East & Africa).
PANORAMA
From “The Portrait of a Lady” to “Jersey Shore”, passing through “Angels and Demons”, “Letters to Juliet”, “Rome”, “The Amazing Grace”, “Eat, Pray, Love” and “The Sopranos”, as well as photo reportages, music videos and commercials. Panorama Films, founded in 1997 by Marco Valerio Pugini (bringing together two of his previous companies, Panorama Productions and Produzioni Corsare) in partnership with Ute Leonhardt, carries out a wide range of production activities. “We are working on different kinds of productions and”, says Pugini, “and, in that way, we try to increase our experience”.
According to Pugini, the role of the line and executive producer is to “restore confidence in Italy”. For foreign clients, the line and executive producer is a person who knows how to translate their working method to the territory, in professional terms. “We are exporters of images and importers of currency and work”. The image of the “Italy product” is beginning to circulate, and is doing very well in the movie world, but “we also need to think about documentaries and TV series”. In March Pano- rama Films made “The Spirit of the Marathon”, “a documentary about the Rome marathon that will be shown in 250 US movie theaters”, and it is currently filming the Spanish TV series, “Imperium”, also in Rome.
MESTIERE CINEMA
Founded in 1986 by Guido Cerasuolo, Mestiere Cinema defines itself as a “cohesive and compact group that believes in diversification and works simultaneously on several fronts”.
Big productions: the company has worked on successes such as the James Bond and Twilight sagas, “The Italian Job” and “Gladiator”. In- dependent productions: “this year should see the release of the movie “Effie”, written by Emma Thompson and set in Venice”. TV series: “we have a steady working relationship with Germany and are currently filming “Kig -kreuzfahrt ins Gluck – Sizilian” in Sicily, in Taormina and Catania and, in the fall, we will be filming the latest chapter in the Commissario Brunetti saga which is very successful in Germany”. Advertising: “We are trying to bring international clients back to Italy, to convince them that we are competitive. Thanks to the experience accumulated over the years, we are becoming more competitive again: for example, we are filming a commercial for “3” with James Bond style action scenes at a very modest cost: quantity generates quality which it is possible to maintain even on a reduced budget.”
TEATIME
The core business of the newly created TeaTime is the production ser- vice of commercials mainly for the Japanese market. Tea Time is an executive production service company that was set up in 2011 based on the experience of three partners who had already worked together in the past: Taku Komaya and Kasumi Usui from Japan, and Marcantonio Borghese.
Their first productions include many commercials featu- ring the Japanese soccer star Nakatomo who plays for Inter Milan, and the comedy “Hotaru no Hikari” (filmed in and around Rome between August and October 2011 for Fuji Film), a kind of Japanese version of “Roman Holiday” that has great movie tourism potential. Borghese says: “The Japanese want to visit fictional places from both the big and small screen. That is what happened with “Amalfi”, a 10 million Euro movie we made (as freelancers) three years ago and thanks to which Rome and Amalfi became part of the major Japanese tour operators’ circuit: the mayor of Amalfi has said that his city has not felt the effects of the economic crisis because of the amount of tourism generated by the movie. We expect the same outcome for “Thermae Romae”, another movie filmed in February 2011 and set in ancient Rome and modern day Tokyo: I know that Japanese tour operators are already negotiating with Cinecittà to organize tours linked to the movie”.
