Serbia Film Commission is a private non profit association of film professionals dedicated to the promotion of Serbia as a destination for international film, TV, commercials and posptproduction projects thus fostering economic development, job creation, foreign investment and exports of services. Since its establishment in 2009, SFC has achieved significant success in international marketing  and positioning of Serbia as a viable filmmaking location. At the same time, the organization has expanded into an 80-member association of companies, professionals and institutions and is an ever growing strong representative and supporter of the film industry in the country.

The SFC management relies on strategic approach to industry needs and opportunities, innovation in marketing apporach and quality relationships.  Therefore the position of the communications specialist is of very high importance to our team and offers many perspectives and responsibilities.

Thus far, the SFC has developed excellent relationships with international clients and partners, regular communication with local and international media and has developed a number of platforms for communications and marketing. Now is the time for a highly skilled and motivated professional to take these to the next level through original and creative solutions.

The SFC is currently implementing a project funded by the European Union and the Austria Development Agency ADA and is seeking a communications and marketing specialist to join the project team.

In essence, this role is focused on the execution of strategic objectives via internal and external communications.

Job Responsibilities:

• Planning, development and implementation of all of the organization’s marketing strategies, marketing communications, and public relations activities, both external and internal
• Coordination and management of media and public interest to generate coverage and maintain awareness
• Handling and coordination of all media requests and enquiries in a timely and professional manner
• Development and creation of media releases, key messages, speeches, and presentations
• Co-ordination and management of events
• Press clipping archiving
• Development of periodic reports on all visibility activities
• Preparation and implementation of internet marketing campaigns
• Communication with partners and support to joint campaigns with commercial partners, SFC members and sponsors
• Web content development
• Preparation and development of marketing materials

Requirements:

• At least 3 years experience in public relations, corporate communications
• Excellent command of written English
• Extensive understanding of local media
• Ability to act independently and bring innovative ideas to the team
• Strategic thinking and good networking abilities
• Understanding of international cooperation, donors programmes and partnerships
• Higher education in marketing, PR, journalism or film  is preferable
• Resourcefulness, flexibility, integrity and responsiveness in dealing with people

What we offer:

Innovative, creative and highly motivating working environment
Highly professional approach and relationships
16 month full time engagment on a project financed by international donors

To apply please send your CV and cover letter to info@filminserbia.com no later than 6.10.2013.

“The Sky above us”, debut feature film directed by Marinus Groothof successfully finished shooting in Belgrade. Film was shot on locations in Belgrade downtown revolving around the lives of three Belgraders portrayed by the Serbian actors Nada Sargin, Boris Isakovic and Nikola Rakocevic. Set during the 1999 NATO bombing film is not questioning the political situation of that time but rather focusing on the life of each character and their relationships in vulnerable times.
Groothof developed the script elaborating the idea of his previous short “Sunset from a Rooftop” also filmed in Belgrade in 2009. Collaboration between the Netherlands LEV Pictures and Serbian coproducer Art&Popcorn, which is also handling executive production, was initiated during the EAVE workshop in Belgrade 2010. Belgium Entre Chien et Loup is also one of the co-producers.
“We started in late August and were shooting for over a month, but it feels like much longer period of time. It was great experience watching the characters coming into life together with the locations that are so essential to the story. Shooting is always an intense process, and I am honored to be working with this much dedicated crew. They made it all possible.” – said Marin Groothof.
Creative team was composed of DoP Ruben Impens, production designer Jelena Sopic and costume designer Dragica Lausevic.
The film goes into editing October 1st with premiere scheduled for beginning of 2014.

Belgium docu reality show “Jobs without Frontiers”, originally developed by Sputnik Media, has decided to do an episode of season two in Belgrade. The show was first aired on Eén in 2012 and 2013. Producers describe it as raw reality with real stories of four colleagues set off to an unknown destination abroad with a mission to do the very same job in somewhat different conditions.
Belgrade episode takes four Belgium recyclers to work and live in city suburbs. The colleagues discover the specific and sometimes harsh working conditions of their fellow co-workers. The second series will be also filmed on locations in Canada, Peru, Brasil, Vietnam, Ivory Coast, Argentina, Thailand etc. Local production is supported by Belgrade Samaljot production that has recently serviced another reality for Israel TV “Sofa Surfers” produced by Artza.
“TV formats are developing fast and locations are important part that adds not only screen value but also propels the plot. That’s another great reason why international filmmakers chose Serbia. Collaboration with both Sputnik and Artza was great for us, as we worked with the world top class TV productions. But, we were happy and proud to hear from them that all local Serbian crew totally matched with their high professional standards. So, they are already planning to come back and shoot again here, which are great news for everybody in our TV industry” – says Marko Popovic, Samaljot Production.

House Hunters International, one of the most popular Home and Garden TV shows (US) is another case that has been coming back for the third time to shoot yet another family story in Serbia. The first two episodes featured Belgrade and Subotica, and the third one will be set in a small village of Stara Moravica near Backa Topola in Northern Serbia.

One of the important aspects of the SFC work is cluster development and strengthening the ties and partnerships between film industry actors and other organizations and companies that are important in running a successful film production. Screen value relies on creative force, but you can’t be creative without reliable partners that will support your logistics and professional environment while thoroughly understanding the needs of filmmakers. That’s why SFC is constantly expanding the benefits it provides to its members by partnering with companies outside of the core of film business.

SFC members and their clients enjoy preferable rates with top five-star Belgrade hotels. Hyatt Regency Belgrade and Belgrade Art Hotel have been the first to cater demanding film crews at exceptionally good rates approximately 50% lower than their off the rack prices. The newest addition to this exclusive hotel offer is recently completely refurbished Metropol Palace – Luxury Collection Hotel that has a long movies tradition dating back from 1960s when major stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Sofia Loren, Kirk Douglas and Orson Welles, among others, used Metropol as a hub while they were in Serbia.

On top of that, DHL has proved to be great partner of the Serbia Film Commission for a few years now and has recently increased its discount for SFC members to  35% on courier services for international outgoing and express deliveries. For insurance, ACB insurance broker, representative of AON in Serbia, is the go to partner for SFC members for best advice and assistance with different scale and types of insurances at the most competitive prices.

SFC is also able to provide legal counseling for its members with a great discount ranging from 30% for companies to 50% for freelancers on all legal services.

SFC is devoted to adding new benefits, so contact us for updates on how to use your membership benefits or discuss new ideas.

The annual Assembly of the Serbia Film Commission held in June brought the election of new Board of Directors and slightly different structure in board seating. The 9 member board will be represented by former president Miroslav Mogorovic (Art&Popcorn), Slobodan Jocic (Viktorija Film), Marko Popovic (Samaljot Production), Ivan Pribicevic (Digitalkraft), Vuk Marjanovic (Cyber Few Good Men), Milos Djukelic (Red Production), Barbara Sandic (PFI Studios), Dragan Djurkovic (Vision Team) and Andrej Ninkovic (Hyatt Regency hotel Belgrade).

The first Board meeting also brought change in the leadership. Milos Djukelic of Red Production was elected to preside and represent the SFC in the next one year period. Coming from the filmmakers family Djukelic and his company were well established in quality production of commercials for many international clients. Red Production has been growing dramatically in the past few years expanding its services in the SEE region. With offices established in Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and Greece Red Production services in average 70 projects per year acquiring recently film titles such Ironclad sequel in its portfolio.

Longstanding Board Member and one of the founding members of SFC Barbara Sandic Stetic of PFI Studios will serve as the vice president succeeding Ivan Pribicevic of Digitalkrat.

The association has grown to 80 members with more interest from vendors and suppliers to join the association and become integral part of the film industry network in Serbia. This has resulted in minor, but important changes in the Board composition having 1 of the Board members coming from the hotel industry. New SFC Board will continue to strengthen Serbia’s position in the international film friendly map with incentives, further partnership with local governments on adopting film friendly procedures and promotion of new attractive locations.

Serbia Film Commission organised a visit for journalists to the film set of the first Korean film production shooting in Serbia. The film is a true story of one of the most famous Korean opera singer Bae Jae Chul called Lirico Spinto for his peculiar voice, who at the peak of his career sufered from tiroid cancer and lost his voice in 2005. The story is set in Korea and Japan where he went for treatment and recuperated his voice.

Locations in Serbia are doubling for German where he spent golden age of his career. Locations that were used to depict city of Saarbrucken are Serbian Parliament building, White Palace, KUD Lola and Belgrade borough of Zemun.

The filming started in mid January. The Korean of crew 48 members was shooting for 3 weeks, and the whole production should be finished by end of April. The premiere is planned for the Venice Film Festival.

This is the first opera movie in booming Korean film production, and music for the movie was also completely done in Serbia last year. The orchestra of 60 philharmonic musicians and sound designers did the complete orchestration and choirs. Serbian actors Natasa Tapuskovic and Dragan Micanovic are also playing the leading roles of young opera diva and Jae Chul’s manager.

Production: More In Group, Korea/Japan

Director: Sang Man KIM

Cast:

Yoo Ji Tae – Bae Jae Chul

Cha Ye-Ryun – Bae Jae Chul’s wife

Nataša Tapušković – Melina, opera singer

Dragan Mićanović – Peka

Epic medieval action movie Ironclad just wrapped a final day of shooting for the sequel under the title IRONCLAD BATTLE FOR BLOOD in Serbia. The filmmakers of the worldwide hit choose to use medieval fortresses of Belgrade – Kalemegdan, Maglic near town of Kraljevo and Golubac on the river Danube to portray medieval England and castle fights with Celtic raiders. Beside extraordinary nature and fortresses, a large part of the movie was also done in the sound stages at the brand new and state-of-the-art PFI studios, in Belgrade. Impressed by the charm of the emerging film locations of Belgrade, sophisticated local crews and competitive prices, they awarded local production in Serbia to RED PRODUCTION and its founding producer, Milos Djukelic, well known for servicing advertising productions in the region.

“All the heads of departments and crew are local which proves how developed the film authors and industry here in Belgrade has become. We are thrilled to have brought this international production to Serbia”. Djukelic said,

Serbia also has so much to offer in postproduction and this is the second US movie Red has done this year. BlackJacks (2013) directed by Nicolas Mezzanatto is currently being completed by Red Production as its local partner. The action thriller is taking advantage of local CGI animation, visual effects and the audio and video postproduction will be completed in Belgrade.

FMX was first held as an event for students titled “Film and Media Exchange” in 1994. It soon became an annual event attracting the largest world studios and companies operating in the world industry of digital imagery. FMX is the largest European conference of its kind, and together with Siggraph, which is held in the USA, one of the most important in the world.
Alongside world renowned visual effects and animation studios like Weta Digital (The Adventures of Tintin, The Lord Of The Rings, Avatar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes), DreamWorks Animation (Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda), Sony Pictures Imageworks(Alice in Wonderland, The Smurfs), the conference hosted a large number of smaller studios working on visual effects for film and gaming.
3lateral, a studio from Novi Sad that specializes in the creation of advanced models and rigs for computer generated characters for film and video games, presented its work at this conference. Together with Crater Studio from Belgrade, 3lateral had worked on the visual effects for feature films The Other Guys (2010) and Shark Night 3D (2011). 3Lateral’s team’s portfolio includes involvement in few major character driven titles such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption from Rockstar Games. 3lateral crew comprised of Vladimir Mastilović, founder and CEO, Aleksandar Popov, art director, and Vojislav Pavkov, character rigger, held a two hour workshop for about a hundred students and professionals from the industry of visual effects.

3Lateral Workshop (left to right: V. Mastilović, V. Pavkov, A. Popov), Photo by: Reiner Pfisterer

The key subject of the workshop was a deconstruction of the production process of a two minute animation that was presented for the first time by 3Lateral at FMX conference. In line with their primary focus, high quality digital characters, 3Lateral created a fictional character – Athanasius, a ruler from ancient Greek myths, whose power is weakening in a world that is becoming too complicated for his uncompromising attitude. The workshop was laid out in such a way that it imitated the production, so the story about the character design opened the workshop. Aleksandar Popov explained the motives for articulating the initial idea, which was a nice illustration of the influence of media expansion in the last couple of decades, even on the character design process, since the final design was a fusion of works of the famous fantasy artists of the 80’s from the last century, with popular national sportsmen, and of course, with characters from the movies like Caligula and Gladiator.

Athanasius digital model by 3lateral.com

Vladimir Mastilovic built upon Aleksandar’s presentation explaining the approaches for “breathing life” in to the designed character. 3Lateral has a bit specific focus in their portfolio, predominantly on the creation of rig systems for facial animation. With the advancement of the gaming industry, there is a growing interest for complex characters, and with it, for characters’ faces as the main means of communication. This enabled 3Lateral to emerge in the international market of the entertainment industry, both gaming and feature film. During his part of the workshop, Vladimir explained the options for the creation of the systems for animation through examples, emphasizing advantages and disadvantages of every principle. At the end, Vladimir presented an interesting research performed in 3Lateral studio, which is based on the idea of creation of a virtual double by means of 3D scanning technology. Application of this technology are numerous – from the obvious ones like creation of digital doubles for scenes and actions not possible in reality, over rejuvenation of an actor/actress, to complete replacement of a person, etc. Vojislav Pavkov, facial rigging specialist, continued by deconstruction of the design into concrete steps for the reproduction of an important part of the overall system, the subsystem for combining basic facial expressions and the protection from the impossible combinations. It is significant to mention the participation of dr Steve Caulkin from Cubic Motion company from Great Britain. 3Lateral is cooperating with Cubic Motion for years, combining their systems for facial animation with own solutions for human facial recognition from a video footage, and transfer of the animation to digital characters. This proved to be a great complement to the systems produced by 3Lateral, because the whole process focuses on the preservation of the actor’s performance, and it perfectly fits within the logical production evolution – i.e. going back to the traditional recording methods, where the emotion and the intention is determined on the set, and not in the post production. The animation can be viewed at http://3lateral.com/projects/Athanasius/

This year the 3,300 attendees of FMX from 50 countries were comprised of approximately 60 percent professionals and 40 percent students. 329 speakers from 24 different countries offered presentations. 75 companies from a total of 15 countries presented their products, services and achievements. FMX 2013 is held from April 23 – 26 in Stuttgart, Germany.

Cannes – May 19th 2014. Serbia Film Comission representatives are currently at the 2014 Cannes Film Market. During their stay in Cannes, the SFC members have meetings with producers from Europe and the United States, and important meetings with partners from new markets, especially India and the Far East are also organized. Preparations for the Danube conference are carried out simultaneously with the presence at the most important European film market. On this occasion, Ana Ilic, Executive director of the Serbian Film Commission and Milica Božanić, Operations Manager have meetings with colleagues and producers from the Danube countries. The SFC representatives traditionally participate at the meetings of the European Film Commision Network. The SFC members are also in Cannes – DigitalKraft, Viktorija Film, Red Production, Art&Popcorn, Gargantua Films. Representatives of Viktorija Film and Gargantua Films promote their films in Cannes – Nymph and Little Buddho. The production company More In Group is also being promoted in Cannes. In cooperation with Viktorija Film, last year they have finished shooting the film The Tenor in which prominent roles achieved Natasha Tapušković, Svetozar Cvetković and Dragan Mićanović. The film will premiere at the festival in Shanghai, and producers expect particularly great success in Japan.