The film academy explores the role of new television series

Cinema and series professionals discuss the institution on the formats and the new audiovisual context.

"The Film Academy does not want to remain oblivious to the debate that is convulsing audiovisual production. Our academics are also oriented to the series. We have to look for answers. We ask ourselves how we place ourselves as filmmakers, as a collective and as an academy." Thus began Mariano Barroso, president of the institution, the round table that addressed on Wednesday the changes that the celluloid has lived in recent years and the emergence of new formats and digital platforms. In this meeting, a moment was staged when cinema and series look at you, and share space in the main international and professional festivals that translate between both media.

Moderated by screenwriter Isabel Vázquez, the executive producers Teresa Fernández-Valdés (bamboo) and Fernando Bovaira participated in the forum; the television specialist Conchi Cascajosa; scriptwriters Ángela Armero and Alejandro Hernández; the film critic and journalist Fernando Lara; and the filmmaker Ramón Salazar.

Analyze and disassemble the title of the meeting New series: cinema or television? It was the first task of the speakers. “We have been watching great series for twenty years, like The Wire. Television has its own language. What made the difference was the incorporation of author voices, ”said Armero, while Fernández Valdés said that“ today we produce with money that we have never had. For me the new translates into a budget ”.

Innovation lies "in quantity, in the production bubble," according to Bovaira, and "the search for new audiences and risk", for Hernández; While Cascajosa spoke of "Reunion" with the firm of filmmakers such as Alberto Rodríguez, Enrique Urbizu, Mar Coll, Juan Cavestany, Álvaro Fernández Armero and Paco León in Series. "We have already been here. In the past we had Antonio Mercero, Pilar Miró, Mario Camus ... This relationship is from the beginning and also from education in film schools," he said.

Cinema Defense in Salas

Supporters of the hypothetical future inclusion of the series between the awards granted by the Academy, the speakers staged the difficulty of categorizing and assessing stories, ranging from the miniseries to the daily fictions and that is present on open television, in cable and on platforms. And it is that the debate could not be demarcated in the way in which today we consume the audiovisual content, a space that Fernando Lara took advantage of to defend the exhibition of cinema in Salas.

Cascajosa and Fernández Valdés thanked the Academy for this initiative and their sensitivity towards what happens beyond cinema. "This moment in which we can look at you to recognize that for a long time it has not been so," said the bamboo co -founder.

The change in production

The meeting also put on the table the shadows of this new audiovisual context. "The question of immediacy affects authorship. Television has larger equipment and has to do with what the producer wants, rather than with you," said Inés Paris. For their part, Bovaira and Salazar warned of how traditional production mechanisms change when a product is conceived for platform visualization.

"I am worried that the general planes and that certain genres, such as drama, will disappear, from the rooms move to the platforms," Bovaira explained, while the person responsible for several elite chapters and the film Domingo's disease broke off his experience. "For the movie I had no restrictions, for the series yes. I was clear that I was planned to look in a day and a half," said Salazar.

The absence of audience data by the platforms, which prevents knowing the true impact of a series beyond marketing, the protection of the cinematographic exhibition in Salas, and the control of the copyright and image of scriptwriters and actors in a global market were other concerns exhibited.

In a debate open to all facets of the audiovisual industry, the screenwriter and writer Virginia Yagüe and the television specialized journalists David Jabonero, Alberto Rey and Fernando de Luis-Oureta were also spoken. Likewise, the Vice President of the Rafael Portela Academy attended the event; the filmmaker and creator of the series shame, Juan Cavestany; the elite protagonist Omar Ayuso; the general director of Alma Ana Pineda; The Director of Content Development Viacom Spain, Cristina Alcelay, and members of the Board of Directors of the Academy, among other professionals of the Spanish audiovisual industry.