Markets and festivals would combine face-to-face with digital

The future seems to belong to hybrid markets and festivals that combine face-to-face with virtual spaces when organizers must adjust their events to lower budgets. However, the gaze to the future is optimistic: audiences and borders are being expanded. A challenge would be to work on technological proposals for better user experience.  

These are some of the conclusions of the PRODU webinar The Return of Events and Markets: Digital, face-to-face, or hybrid? with Pavel Friedmann, founding partner at Tango360; Géraldine Gonard, director of Inside Content (Conecta Fiction and OnSeries); Angélica Lares, director of Industry and Market at the International Film Festival of Guadalajara and José Iñesta, Director of Pixelatl Animation Festival.
Both Conecta Fiction and the Pixelatl Festival are still in development in the digital version, whereas the International Guadalajara Film Festival is taking place in the digital version and will be face-to-face in November for local attendees.

“We are absolutely convinced that with the pandemic we have taken one step forward and not backward. Obviously, nothing will replace face-to-face events, but we can give face-to-face events an additional opportunity by integrating the virtual option”, said Friedmann. Iñesta added that the technological developments that they made for Pixelatl will remain for the next edition, and Gonard stated that the key to maintaining events in the future will probably be to compensate with the size of the audience. Lares said that “the pandemic marks a before and an after because it changed everyone´s paradigms.”
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