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Thank you Justin, good to be back, thank you for having me again this year. Not at all, well I enjoyed last year's event so much that I'm keen to be back myself but for those who haven't been to sunny side of the dock in La Rochelle and haven't come across the event, can you give us an idea of the size and the scope and the objectives of the event? Well sunny side of the dock is a documentary market and market only there's no festival attached to it which makes it very special if you look at the various industry events dedicated to a documentary. Naturally as a market we have a venue, Exedition Hall with stands, the stands are held by producers, sales agents, broadcasters, a lot of umbrella organizations representing international delegations or French regional delegations as well.
Obviously like any market we have a whole range of panels, sessions, workshops, teaching sessions as well, we'll talk about them later on I think. Networking activities, that's very essential because bear in mind that although sunny side of the dock is a market we try to be as casual as possible, sunny side of the dock is hosted in La Rochelle, France, seaside town on the west coast of France, it has a very charming and casual atmosphere, it's the end of June, June 19th to 22nd, usually the weather is beautiful and that's really part and parcel of the sunny side experience. People are happy to get together coming from all walks of life and different continents, we have about 2000 people attending, a good majority coming from Europe but we have people coming from the Americas, from the Middle East, Africa and from Asia as well including a pretty large Chinese delegation which will be back in this year after the three years of pandemic. Of course it's a market, it's very business oriented but in a casual setting let's say and quite frankly having a drink, a glass of rosé or some oysters with your peers, colleagues, clients, prospects is part of the game of coming to sunny side as well.
The main conference area is situated right on the dock in La Rochelle, it's a really nice place to be able to have meetings and seeing a lot of these co-production discussions going on because that's really key to the international documentary industry, the aspect of co-production. Absolutely and international co-production is really the DNA of sunny side of the dock. As I quickly mentioned we have pitching sessions which are one of the core activities of sunny side because we're really there to make sure that producers can find international partners, are there artistic partners, fellow producers in different countries or of course funders pre-sales co-production and we do offer seven pitching sessions, five in specialist factual, the traditional categories of science, arts and culture, history, wildlife which we call nature and conservation to go more on the environmental issues and global issues as well. And we have two specific pitching sessions this year, one dedicated to new voices for first and second time filmmakers and the other one to impact campaign.
There's three key objectives as well aren't there that sunny side is built around. Can you talk us through those just to give us a really good indication of the purpose of sunny side? So one of the main purposes which I just mentioned is international production, finding partners for international co-pro, that's really one of the key objectives. Link to that's also helping with the distribution of completed programmes, we do have a high number of sales agents attending and buyers as well, so we're both on the international circulation of programmes as well as international co-pro.
I would say the second objective is also to give some ideas of the trends in the industry and to accompany the trends and anticipate the changes that are taking place as well and we do that through our sessions workshops, we're at the market, so we try to be as concrete as possible but obviously our aim is really to give an idea what's going on and anticipate the changes in the industry. And I would say the third objective is really to help professionals build a network, sunny side is a good place to first of all see the people you're in touch with all your long and you work with but also to expand your network and we take good care of people who come from the first time, we want to make sure they feel welcome in the documentary industry, we want to make sure they find their place but for us all the networking activities are really key because that's part and parcel of the international co-pro, it's impossible to do business if you don't know the people, if you don't trust the people, if you don't share this ambition and in order to do that you just have to meet and exchange and that's a very important part of sunny side. What I found last year is that the documentary community, they're a pretty welcoming bunch aren't they? It's pretty friendly community that you foster over there on Landrich Schal.
Well I think generally speaking it's a very friendly community because it's very people who are undocumented are very committed. Of course there's all sorts and all ranges of documentaries but usually you have people who are really committed who have certain values who believe in what they're doing, a lot of them are doing documentary because they want to be a game changer, they want to influence people, they want to show facts, it's quite important in this day and age and I think people are very very helpful towards each other, they're very very diverse community I would say. Let's talk about who's coming this year, I mean obviously you will have a regular sort of hardcore of documentary channels and commissioners and distribution companies and sales agents as you say but can you give us an idea of who are the major players that are going to be coming to sunny side this year? We cover a fairly wide range of decision makers going from public broadcasters which are still very important in documentary making, it's coming from all over Europe and the rest of the world as well obviously our main partners such as France, Rhodes and Arte but also all the French broadcasters will be attending and doing some presentations but we have people of course from the BBC from Channel 4 in the UK, from the German public broadcasters, from Rive, from Italy, PBS in the US, NHK from Japan, I want to name them all but most of our most of the public broadcasters will be there.
Obviously private broadcasters as well whether they are free TV, pay TV, specialty channels, once again covering a pretty wide range of countries, we do have platforms attending sunny side as well from the platform activities of traditional broadcasters which is very important of course to the likes of Netflix which will be hosting a session actually on how to write and produce documentaries with the audience in mind. And I believe you've got a few NGOs coming along and there's a focus on impact campaigns this year. We've already done some focus on impact campaigns but this year will be particularly strong with actually two dedicated sessions. One is the impact campaign pitching session which is really aimed at helping producers who are looking for impacted partners to find some and we will have some NGOs, some foundations as well that can support impact campaigns.
Interestingly enough we also have the impact producer from ABC in Australia and I think it's really one of the first broadcasters to have a full-time person dedicated to impact campaigns and we will also have a session on impact and distribution because sometimes they are opposed and we think they're very complimentary. We will have a presentation of some of the NGOs attending the event just before the impact campaign pitching session. So when we talk about impact campaigns this is about bringing programming that's going to affect change essentially and this presumably is much more about eco-conscious issues but probably not just that. No, not just that.
I mean eco obviously is very very important and we've seen many many submissions with climate change and the impact of climate change and more generally about the sustainable goals of the United Nations and we did a global pitch online on climate change in February so the theme is so extremely prominent but when we talk about impact it could be social issues. We have a very strong project from India for instance on the Me Too movement in India and the role of women in a very patriarchal society. We have a project which is called The Peakers on Workers in Spain who make sure that you get fruits and veggies on your plate all year long and the way they are treated. Right, yeah okay so it's not just environmental sustainability sustainability.
Sustainability is a whole essentially is an overall umbrella. Yes, right definitely. And your overall theme this year is around the audience isn't it? It's putting the audience in a spotlight and looking at audiences first as opposed to perhaps you know programming first.
Tell us a bit about that. Yes, we've had a high time to put viewers and audiences in the center because after all as everybody writes, develops, produces and airs programs for an audience or for various audiences and we had the feeling that audiences maybe were not always the top priority in the documentary world. Also because traditionally I think legacy broadcasters have their relationship with the audience which means that producers and sales agents were maybe less inclined to think in terms of audiences but with all the changes happening and with the change in the behaviors of our audiences and the way people consume content on platforms, we feel that it's more and more crucial to know exactly who you're dressing and to know basically who's watching what and where and why and therefore it's a good time to go through some of the burning issues in the industry but always putting audiences in the center of these reflections. To give you an example we'll be dealing of course with younger audiences, people who are not watching linear TV on TV set anymore, the let's say 18 to 40 years old and trying to understand how to reach them with what kind of storytelling, what formats, what's topics as well, who tells them stories, where to reach them and we will have a dedicated session on that with traditional broadcasters who also have their platforms with platforms that's one in France called Brute dedicated to the 18 to 35 years old.
We'll be looking at serialized documentaries as well which is a new way of reaching a broader audience I would say people who are used to watching fiction serialized series and which really changes the way documentaries are written today. So it's really the idea of trying to understand what makes the audience sick and how you reach this and how you roll in your audiences. And this is obviously reflective of major changes going on with a lot of producers and also other businesses within the TV industry and the documentary industry as well going direct to consumer which is not necessarily a skill that they've had before you mentioned earlier on. It's about changing businesses going from business to business to actually direct to consumer which is a very different skill set isn't it?
It is, it is and as you rightly point out it's not necessarily something producers or distributors have done in the past but I think now you really have to think B2C or at least B2B2C but really include the scene much more than than than ever before and also I think it has an impact on the way you're dealing with it and hopefully Justin will be working together on the session on producing 360 content. I think more and more people are developing IPs and thinking from the beginning on how these IPs will be adapted to different formats and with the same idea, with the same universe you can create a documentary, a drama, a podcast, a immersive experience, a VR experience why not publish a book or having a live show for instance. So I think it really changes the way you write, develop stories, it changes the business models as well and that forces you to include acting the audience and the audience as I would say of these various adaptations much more than before. And obviously social media platforms you're getting live feedback essentially from your audience and that's something that we've always been speaking about in telecast, the ability for a lot of digital first producers to test and learn and adapt to audiences feedback which is we mentioned earlier not really the gatekeeper to the audience has traditionally been the broadcast but that's no longer the case and also the monetization of that content working across as you say you know lots of different mediums not just social media platforms but in the live environment etc.
So there's lots of different skill sets that producers have got to learn and adapt as they go forward to create different types of content so it's going to be fascinating discussion and as well as all these different areas we're also looking at this term XR which is extended reality which is a bit of a capture term for AR, VR and all the other sort of immersive experiences. Tell us about how that's involved with Sunnyside this year. Well that's very much involved. Sunnyside used to run a parallel event called PC Festival which was dedicated to immersive content.
There's a slight change this year because we're going to do a PC Festival in the fall at the end of October as the B2C event only and we're really 100% focusing on B2B activities at Sunnyside in June so including this innovation and immersive content. So the idea is really to bring studios and production companies that are involved in all this immersive content and we take a very broad view. It can be VR, it can be AR, it can be domes, immersive content. We're really including them all.
I'd like to call them all the non-linear activities which also include podcasts and story develop for social platforms from YouTube to TikTok and others. So they will have dedicated sessions once again very hands-on because we are a market. On the business models we'll have some case studies, we'll have some sessions on distribution of the business model of distributing immersive content which is still on a learning curve I would say and the idea is to bring production companies, to bring decision makers, to bring museums. That's a very strong point that we have at Sunnyside and it's interesting because museums cover both the linear and non-linear world so there will be a session on new storytelling in museums for instance and how museums offer a different experience to their audience through immersive or digital content and we'll have no key museums such as the Met in New York, Prado Museum, the Louvre Museum attending.
So it's going to be very very exciting and the idea is of course to merge these two worlds of linear and non-linear worlds but also to have some specific activities for people involved in immersive content. And finally looking back at perhaps more traditional documentary making, there's a focus on Australia isn't there this year which is one of the key co-production partners globally of documentary content. Tell us about the focus on Australia. I would actually call it the pre-focus, we'll have a main focus on Australia in 2024 but we like to take a long-term approach so we're starting this year with a couple of sessions, one which will be very basic, how to work in Australia with people from Screen Australia, from some of the state funding agencies as well, with the True Broadcasters public broadcasters, SDS and ABC and with AIDC which is the main event dedicated to documentary in Australia.
So the idea is to say it's the main production partner to see what the opportunities are, how it works basically, what it entails to work with Australia and we're really happy to see that so we have three Australian projects that have been selected in the teaching sessions and we will also have two sessions which we call Meet the Executives with the two public broadcasters I mentioned SDS and ABC with representatives coming from Australia. For us this is really kind of a bit of teasing for the main focus which we'll organise next year. In 2022, Australia was just coming out of a pandemic and it was quite difficult for Australians to travel so this year is really kind of a reopening the gates to Australian producers, sales agents and broadcasters and this is kind of pre-used as I was saying to a bigger focus next year. Talking about restrictions and travel that are now over with, you mentioned that you've got a delegation coming from China, how about Asia, the wider Asia, if you've also got delegates coming from further affairs outside China?
Well, as usual I would say a delegation from Japan with a pretty strong representation from NHK. It's great because last year there were just a lot of pandemics only a couple of people could attend and it was their first international trip in three years. We now have about a dozen people coming from NHK, a few producers as well. There's a few people coming from the rest of Asia, not strong delegations I would have to say but also because we are planning on restarting an Asian side of the dock probably towards the end of 2024 so we are talking to a lot of people in Asia whether it's Southeast Asia, China of course because we are planning on having this event in China so having a strong Chinese delegation is also a way of sending a message that we will be back in Asia and we are working on rebuilding these relationships.
I have to admit that the situation for documentary makers in many countries in Asia is not that easy. You don't have too many broadcasters who actually finance production so it's always very very challenging to be on the creative side of documentary in Asia but we see so many great stories, we have quite a few documentaries coming from India two of them were selected for the impact-making session for instance so we are really we're working on rebuilding our relationships that have been, I mean they've always been there but let's say it's the pandemic took a curve toll on the way people could meet for the last couple of years so we're restarting the swing of the pendulum towards Asia. Well I'll look forward to hearing more and seeing more about that in Lara Shell in June. Give us the dates Matty over the dates of Sunnyside this year.
June 19th to 22nd make sure you get there on the 19th because we'll have an opening reception at the Museum of Natural History in the Gardens of the Museum. It's going to be lots of fun that's also part of Sunnyside of the Dock and networking is key as I said before. Okay fantastic thank you Matty. Good luck with the event.
I will see you in Lara Shell looking forward to that for the panel we're going to be moderating so all the best I'll see you in a few weeks. Thank you Justin looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks. Well that's all for another week's show. As always thanks a lot for listening.
Telecast was edited by Ian Chambers and recorded in London. We'll see you again next week and until then stay safe.