Mediaset España and ESCAC join forces to train the fiction creators of the future

Both companies launch 'Showrunner: Fiction Classroom', a complete training and professional space aimed at providing the best creative talents with the necessary tools to become the future showrunners of national fiction.

Mediaset Spain and the Higher School of Cinema and Audiovisuals of Catalonia (CHESS) They launch an interesting project to search and train young creative talents, providing them with the tools to become the future showrunners of national fiction.

Showrunner: Fiction Classroom It will offer a training and professional space taught by active professionals in the film and television sector, with the participation of the best showrunners from Mediaset España and other collaborating companies.

The course will last two school years, made up of three semesters of training at ESCAC and a fourth and final, eminently practical semester at Mediaset España or in one of its investee companies.

National fiction in Spain is experiencing one of the brightest and most mature moments in its history. After the beginning of its heyday in the 90s, the genre has become the driving force of the Spanish entertainment industry, positioning itself as one of the most prominent audiovisual leisure options in our society, as well as one of the main pillars in the offering of television and new content distribution platforms, reaching among the former a weight of more than 40% in their global content proposal.

Thanks to constant reinvention and the opportunity provided by new advances at a technical and production level, fiction has been able to adapt like no other genre to the tastes of the public, to the challenge of accompanying the viewer in the dizzying evolution towards new distribution systems, new devices and new forms of consumption, drawing in this new scenario a unique opportunity to become universal and make the leap to another dimension within the content industry. Adapting their narrative language, Spanish series have entered hitherto unknown universes through innovative proposals that have been attracting new artistic and technical talents, conquering with their quality, their originality and their workmanship not only national viewers, but also the international market, with the sale to other countries of numerous productions for broadcast or adaptation, which places Spain among the five most important territories in the commercialization of fiction worldwide.

Paolo Vasile, CEO of Mediaset España, has pointed out that "there are so many opportunities and needs for fiction that we have to reinforce the pillar of production and what better way to do it than with the ESCAC, which combines didactics with practice and understands fiction as the sum of the work of many."
Sergi Casamitjana, director of the ESCAC, considers this "the minimum time to do in-depth training" and has pointed out the importance of the search process for the 12 students who will make up the classroom: "It will be an exhaustive process that will last about five months to find people with other points of view, other ways of seeing the world, we seek transversality. We are looking for kids with potential, to give them training that allows them to acquire the necessary knowledge to join the industry as showrunners."

In the course they will participate showrunners such as Aitor Gabilondo, Daniel Écija and Alberto Caballero, who also participated in the presentation today. According to Caballero, "we are looking for people capable of creating new fiction products and this course is the fishing ground in which to find this new talent, open-minded people, not necessarily with technical preparation, capable of developing an idea and above all with a point of view. We need to work a lot with the characters, but the characters ultimately reflect those points of view and the plot is just the skeleton, the thread that maintains the story. That is why it is very important for the showrunner to be a good observer, to know how people act and think. This profession requires you to be alive.”

Daniel Écija, for his part, has pointed out that "our challenge is to know how we can interest the viewer and for that, empathy with them is essential because we work for them. Despite the new ways of consuming content, we have to achieve audience loyalty based on a story and characters. There is no shortcut in this job. We have to be able to create something that generates the viewer's attention. In this extraordinary moment that the industry is experiencing with new operators, we need many very good creators."

Finally, Aitor Gabilondo has assured that "in the long path of the showrunner, the point of view, his strength and his resistance are key. It is essential to focus on the audience, on the viewer. We have to work for the people, tell stories and in a moment like the one we currently live in we must keep in mind that we tell things for the audience through the heart, stories to entertain and alleviate the day to day. This is why the motivation and passion for wanting to tell stories has to be sincere."