Strategies for marketing The High Sun in Croatia and abroad: A case study

Lecturer: Ankica Jurić Tilić, producer – Kinorama, Croatia

Each new film has to fight with several tens of thousands new films released every year - ensuring visibility is a near impossible task. This is why there is a need to create awareness of the next film while it’s still a work in progress. With the task of developing and producing projects, which is not at all easy, comes the task of systematic work on the visibility of the film, both on the domestic and on the international market. The High Sun by Dalibor Matanić is a film with an extraordinary path at festivals, exceptional visibility, and significant international sales.

Ankica Jurić Tilić opened the second day of Pula PROfessional Programme 2017. She presented a case study of The High Sun, showing the processes of developing a reputation of a project in practice - from an idea for a film to its making. Using Matanić's film as an example, Jurić Tilić presented the entire path in an interesting way, covering development and financing, production, festival promotion, and distribution. She also presented the way in which key materials serving the promotion and distribution of the film are developed.

She highlighted the role of producer in the promotion and distribution of films, emphasising to future professionals the importance of their initiative and effort in promotion in all production phases.

Nikša Sviličić: Programiranje igranog filma 1 and 2

The promotion of Nikša Sviličić's book Programiranje igranog filma 1 and 2 was held at noon today at Giardini. The book is a communication study providing an innovative overview of the semiotic-narrative elements of the screenplay that encourage the audience numbers of a feature film. By setting and testing hypotheses, which correlate the expressivity of the semiotic-narrative screenplay expression of Croatian feature film with the reception by the audience, Programiranje igranog filma 1 and 2 provide a scientific answer to the question of how to make a feature film to 'win over' audiences.

Sviličić has explored and analysed to what extent certain motives and emotions influence the number of audiences and the success of film in terms of awards at Pula Film Festival. The books show to what extent the narrative-semiotic film motives are in direct/indirect correlation with the certainty of success of Croatian feature film in TV and cinema distribution.

The author has explored more than 100 different motives, such as love, suicide, global issues, wealth, poverty, basic film emotions (happiness/grief/fear/anger), order of screening at Pula Film Festival, and financing and production aspects.

The books were presented by author Nikša Sviličić, representative of the publisher Tajana Obradović (Funditus), and moderator Mario Gigović.