Vol.2 - 2025
State of
European Film
Introduction
The second edition of the State of European Film platform presents a concise collection of reports that highlight the latest outcomes of the EU-Horizon-funded project CresCine—Increasing the Competitiveness of the Film Industry in Small European Markets. From emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain to critical topics concerning skills development and audience engagement, this publication offers a comprehensive overview of CresCine’s contributions. These include practical tools (e.g., the FIDA database), conceptual frameworks (e.g., our small European film-ecosystems model), and educational resources (e.g., the entrepreneurship toolkit). Together, they provide a unique perspective on our results and the policy recommendations that arise from them.
The volume is organized to mirror the structure of CresCine’s work program and the key areas that drive competitiveness and innovation within the European film and audiovisual sector. Each section distills the principal findings in its respective domain and sets out corresponding recommendations. Looking ahead, we will continue to systematize these insights to ensure they remain robust and ready to inform policy and regulatory initiatives that can strengthen the competitiveness of small European film markets.
We hope you find our assessment of the State of European Film both enlightening and inspiring.
Co-Authors
Executive Summary
The second edition of the State of European Film platform consolidates the principal outcomes and recommendations of CresCine—an EU-Horizon project devoted to enhancing the competitiveness of the film industry in small European markets. The report addresses seven interrelated areas: data infrastructure, ecosystem analysis, technological innovation (artificial intelligence and blockchain), skills development and producer training, distribution and exhibition strategies, and audience engagement.
Reliable, standardised data remain scarce—especially in small markets—constraining strategic planning and investment. To mitigate this gap, CresCine has developed FIDA (Film Industry Data Analytics), a data pool that ingests, harmonises, and renders accessible information spanning the entire film lifecycle, from festival selections through theatrical release to VOD performance. Interactive dashboards transform that data into a decision-making tool, encouraging evidence-based filmmaking and policy design.
CresCine’s “Small European Film Ecosystem Model,” explored in Chapter 2, distinguishes four orientations—cultural resonance, export, production service, and cinematic arts. Recent re-orientations include Denmark’s introduction of a production rebate and Croatia’s advances in cultural resonance through successful children’s films and biopics. Persistent obstacles nevertheless remain: Croatia faces funding-infrastructure constraints, and Lithuania lacks adequate cinema infrastructure for domestic films despite strong local demand.
Exploratory research with producers from small European markets reveals cautious optimism about integrating AI and emerging financing mechanisms. Most producers regard technology as an enabler of how films are produced (efficiency and post-production) rather than what is produced (storytelling). Expected AI benefits include advisory and validation services, time savings, and expanded opportunities for small markets. Key barriers comprise mistrust in AI’s creative competence, data-confidentiality concerns, insufficient small-market data, and internal constraints such as cost and limited expertise. Recommendations therefore emphasise curated AI services, data transparency, user guidance, and protection of creative rights.
Parallel experiments investigate blockchain’s capacity to reduce fragmentation and opacity in European film value chains. Pilot projects in rights registries, revenue management, tokenised finance, and blockchain-enabled distribution demonstrate incremental benefits in transparency and alternative capital formation, though none has yet scaled. Policy priorities include legal recognition of on-chain rights, interoperable data infrastructure, targeted support for small producers, and capacity-building programmes.
Building on CresCine’s widely cited work on skills, new qualitative research confirms enduring challenges in upskilling and career progression—particularly in smaller markets. Obstacles include barriers to elite film schools, the dominance of informal networks, discrimination, and structural disadvantages. Although demand for continuous learning is high, existing training rarely reflects industry realities; critical gaps involve business, management, and advanced technical competences. Career sustainability is jeopardised by precarity, the difficulties faced by parents and carers, and burnout. Leadership shortcomings, fragile funding models, and a lack of diverse decision-makers perpetuate exclusion. Our recommendations call for sustainable career pathways, revitalised training and mentorship, genuine diversity and inclusion, reinforcement of small-market capacity, and a strategic embrace of technological change.
Complementing the skills agenda, our producer-training study advocates adapting proven entrepreneurship practices. These include clearly articulating success metrics and roadmaps (strategy mapping), systematically testing project assumptions, and constructing resilient working structures. Such methods help manage production complexity and foster stronger creative and commercial outcomes.
In a landscape reshaped by VOD expansion and the COVID-19 crisis, theatrical exclusivity remains pivotal. CresCine is developing learning guides on the evolution of release strategies, relations with VOD services, the challenges confronting arthouse cinemas, and the contribution of unconventional venues. Preliminary findings indicate a post-pandemic return to traditional windowing and underscore the growing importance of non-traditional spaces in promoting diverse European cinema.
Audience research presented in this volume shows that social dynamics—word of mouth and communal viewing—are crucial for engaging viewers with domestic films in small markets. Yet group-viewing decisions often prioritise risk avoidance, disadvantaging domestic titles deemed “heavy” or lacking perceived safety markers such as robust promotion or familiar genres. We therefore recommend enhancing cinema infrastructure, providing trustworthy information to mitigate perceived risk, tailoring communication to target groups, and cultivating audience familiarity through positive experiences.
Taken together, CresCine’s findings offer a holistic analysis of the challenges and opportunities confronting Europe’s film sector—particularly in smaller nations at a pivotal moment of transformation. We trust that the accompanying recommendations will guide policymakers, industry stakeholders, and educational institutions in building a more competitive, innovative, sustainable, and diverse European film ecosystem.
Introducing FIDA – A Data Solution for European Film Competitiveness
The Data Challenge
Strategic planning across Europe’s screen sector is frequently impeded by the scarcity of reliable, fine-grained information tracing a film’s journey from festival premiere to theatrical run and on-demand availability. In the absence of a shared evidence base, producers cannot benchmark performance, investors cannot assess risk, and policymakers must steer without clear insight. Consequently, marketing budgets are allocated on intuition, co-production treaties are negotiated without audience-overlap metrics, and export strategies rely on anecdote.
Standards and the Data Deficit
Underlying this opacity is a fundamental technical gap: Europe lacks a fully convergent vocabulary for describing works, rights, performance, and audiences. Existing data are captured in incompatible formats, accompanied by inconsistent or missing identifiers, and confined to proprietary “walled gardens.” The European Commission has acknowledged that the absence of harmonised audiovisual identifiers hampers efficient rights management and digital distribution, and it has therefore begun promoting interoperability between ISAN and EIDR within the Digital Single Market framework.
Small Countries Left Behind
Systematic metrics—box-office admissions, viewership ratings, VOD availability—are most rigorously collected in Europe’s largest territories. Many of the continent’s 46 film-producing nations appear only as statistical footnotes. Works from Estonia or Croatia risk invisibility next to titles from France or Germany. The blind spot is not peripheral: populations under 15 million constitute roughly 40 percent of EU inhabitants and represent a broad spectrum of linguistic communities. Ignoring data on Lithuanian documentaries or Irish horror films effectively discounts a significant share of Europe’s audiovisual economy.
The CresCine Intervention
Launched under Horizon Europe, the CresCine consortium unites 26 universities, institutes, and industry bodies with the explicit mandate to improve competitiveness and cultural diversity in Europe’s small film markets. A major component of its agenda is repairing the continent’s fragmented data landscape.
Why the Puzzle Is Solvable
CresCine does not begin from a blank slate. The European Audiovisual Observatory’s LUMIERE database aggregates theatrical admissions from 27 national sources; LUMIERE VOD maps catalogue presence across more than 400 services1. ISAN has provided ISO-compliant identifiers for two decades, and the European Commission now supports alignment between ISAN and the US-led EIDR registry,. The individual components exist; what is missing is an integrating framework that extends coverage to under-reported territories and translates the corpus into actionable intelligence.
Enter FIDA: Film Industry Data Analytics
CresCine’s answer is FIDA, the Film Industry Data Analytics pool. FIDA ingests data from public authorities, proprietary services, and CresCine field research, harmonises them through a unified schema anchored in recognised identifiers, and stores them in a secure cloud environment. It realises earlier policy calls for a data-driven European “State of Film” platform.
Scope of FIDA
FIDA covers every major phase of a film’s lifecycle. For festivals it records selections, awards, and attendance by territory and programme. The theatrical module captures showtimes, admissions, and box-office revenues. For television it logs linear broadcasts across Europe, while the on-demand module tracks availability and, where feasible, consumption on TVOD, SVOD, and AVOD platforms worldwide. Each entry is linked to a unique work identifier and enriched with metadata on genre, budget, themes, talent, and financing structure.
New Analytical Horizons
With interoperable layers, analysts can trace causal chains: Does winning the Critics’ Week prize at Cannes boost admissions in Nordic cinemas? Do mid-budget comedies led by female protagonists secure faster SVOD acquisition in Germany than in Spain? How does a shortened theatrical exclusivity period affect subsequent TVOD revenue in English-speaking territories? Such hypotheses can finally be tested, not merely discussed.
From Data Hoarding to Data Democracy
FIDA is not a closed research warehouse. CresCine is releasing user-friendly dashboards that allow filmmakers, exhibitors, policymakers, and film-school students to query patterns without coding skills. Users can filter by country, genre, budget, or distribution window and immediately visualise correlations—transforming annual statistics into an everyday decision tool. The approach aligns with the European Commission’s ambition to broaden data access for SMEs and cultural organisations lacking in-house analytics.
Timeline and Rollout
An initial public demonstration of FIDA will take place at the Cannes Marché du Film’s Cannes Next innovation showcase, where consortium experts will guide stakeholders through live dashboards and gather feedback. A fully open beta, complete with documentation, is planned for autumn 2025.
Conclusion: A Strategic Inflection Point
In a global market where Hollywood studios and streaming platforms base green-light decisions on terabytes of behavioural data, Europe’s film industries cannot afford to operate in the dark. By uniting existing standards, extending coverage to small markets, and democratizing access, CresCine’s FIDA initiative replaces conjecture with evidence. While FIDA will not, by itself, resolve funding constraints or distribution bottlenecks, it equips every stakeholder—from a Lithuanian producer to an EU media desk—with the diagnostic tools required for smarter, more targeted strategies. In a sector where cultural diversity is both an asset and a structural challenge, standardised and inclusive data may prove Europe’s most powerful competitive advantage.
Small European Film Ecosystems
By Jakob Isak Nielsen and Marius Øfsti
The last volume of State of European Film highlighted key take-aways from the research report “Small European Film Markets: Portraits and Comparisons” (2024). One of the key take-aways was the Small European Film Ecosystem Model, which identifies four main orientations in small European film ecosystems: cultural resonance, export, production service and cinematic arts.
As we move further along in the project, continuously building on the knowledge we have, the model is proving useful in many ways.
Avenue Re-orientations
An interesting insight is that we already see examples of eco-system “re-orientations” in our select markets. One example is the case of Denmark where a production rebate was announced by the Ministry of Culture in November 2024. The measure is to take effect starting as of 2026 with an announced yearly cap of DKK 125M/EUR 17M. The finer details have yet to be decided. Being a latecomer to incentive schemes allows Danish stakeholders to take measure of existing initiatives but also to consider different measures in relation to the specific circumstances in the Danish ecosystem. Outstanding issues concern the relative distribution of the measure across different spheres of production such as live-action, animation and SFX, as well as the extent to which the production rebate is to orient itself towards attracting incoming productions versus preventing Danish productions from going abroad. Another concern includes how to align such an initiative with existing policies regarding sustainable film and tv production. Regardless of how the details are settled, a production rebate as such represents a significant re-orientation.
In other ecosystems we are witnessing different forms of re-orientation. One example is Croatia that has traditionally been a cinematic arts- and production service-oriented ecosystem. However, recent films show incremental steps towards cultural resonance. A recurring challenge in many CresCine ecosystems is the precarious status of films oriented towards children and young audiences. This is true even in ecosystems such as Lithuania that have a relatively high domestic market share. In this light, it was remarkable that 2023 saw the production of two Croatian films successful in reaching children and young audiences, namely the 3D animated film Cvrčak i mravica/Cricket and Antoinette (2023) and Dnevnik Pauline P./The Diary of Paulina P. (2023). These two films gave a welcome boost to domestic admissions in general, but it is also worth noting that The Diary of Paulina P. is adapted from a popular local children's novel by Sanja Polak, which features prominently in the school curriculum. This enhanced chances of a built-in audience of children who recognize the story, teachers who might support incorporating the film into the curriculum, and parents familiar with the book themselves. Basing stories in culturally specific terrain also proved significant in the case of biopic Dražen (dir. Danilo Serbedzija), by far the most watched Croatian film of 2024. Bookended by scenes alluding to his early tragic death, Dražen portrays the life of Yugoslav and Croatian basketball legend Dražen Petrović, chronicling his childhood and subsequent rise to stardom in Europe and the US across the 1980s into the early 1990s, focusing as much on relations in his private life as his on-court career and with the occasional reference to the backdrop of the Yugoslav Wars that started during the latter part of his life. We will return to Dražen below.
Similar challenges, different policy solutions
The Small European Film Ecosystem Model has also proven a useful framework for analyzing and discussing challenges and solutions to topics such as funding, distribution and exhibition. Within the cultural resonance avenue, the core objective is to reach wide domestic audiences. One of main advantages of pursuing this avenue is that the domestic industry has relatively modest external competition in terms of conveying these stories to local audiences. However, since the task at hand is to appeal to larger audiences, there will likely be above average budget and marketing requirements - particularly since these movies also speak to low-frequent cinema goers. This was also the case with Dražen with an estimated budget of EUR 1.7M that required significant private co-funding in addition to that supplied by the national funding boards, the Croatian Audiovisual Center (HAVC), Film Center Serbia, and the Slovenian Film Centre, and presales from the Croatian public broadcaster, HRT. In the case of Croatia, there is the added problem of addressing the bias against domestic films that Jaka Primorac addressed in Small European Film Markets: Portraits and Comparisons and which was echoed by Ivor Šiber the producer of Dražen, in an interview conducted a few weeks after Dražen had premiered (Nielsen & Østi 2024).
For cultural resonance to constitute a viable avenue for an ongoing slate of productions that can help uphold a high domestic market share across multiple years, there has to be a strong domestic infrastructure in place across the spheres of training, funding, production, distribution and exhibition. Biopics on local celebrities constitute a well-established tradition in cultural resonance-oriented ecosystems but our interview with Šiber suggest that the main challenge in this case was that the funding infrastructure was not geared towards a type of production such as Dražen (“completely non-existent” according to Šiber) and thus involved high-risk producer investment and a complicated patchwork of commercial partners (Nielsen & Øfsti 2024). On the other hand, Šiber was very pleased with the cinema infrastructure in Croatia for a film such as Dražen (ibid.).
Interestingly, this latter point runs counter to another recent example of a cultural resonance-oriented film, namely Lithuanian Pietinia Kronikas (The Southern Chronicles, 2024, LT). The Southern Chronicles (dir. Ignas Miškini) is a coming-of-age comedy-drama set in the 90s a few years after Lithuania’s independence. Significantly, the film is based on Rimantas Kmita’s renowned cult classic of a novel, Pietinia kronikas (The Southerner’s Chronicles, 2016), written in the southern dialect of Šiauliai. By mid-March 2025, approximately two months after the film’s Lithuanian premiere, it had reached more than 362.000 admissions, making it the best attended local film in the history of independent Lithuania. Comedies have historically performed well in Lithuania, but The Southern Chronicles also received critical acclaim, in part for its nuanced and affectionately ironic portrayal of Lithuania’s early years of independence. Nonetheless, questions remain as to whether a film such as The Southern Chronicles could have performed even better had Lithuania possessed a cinema infrastructure more attuned to culturally resonant films. At a CresCine workshop in November 2024, film producer and industry expert, Kestutis Drazdauskas, summarized the situation thus:
“In Lithuania we have an issue of limitations of available screens. You make a film in Lithuanian, you will be fighting against Hollywood productions, against other countries’ productions on the same premises. (…) You just don’t have a wide enough pipe. (…) The cinema infrastructure in Lithuania is run privately. It’s mostly multiplexes. They have their owners outside of Lithuania and they are programmed to cater to Hollywood masters essentially. I brought up this issue that we are financing - publicly – Lithuanian films but we don’t have the right tools to actually show them to the audiences because most of the screens are concentrated in the biggest cities and although we have like 50 municipalities in Lithuania, only around ten, I think, were showing films on a regular basis.”
-(Drazdauskas in Øfsti & Nielsen 2024)
Facts and Figures supplied by The Lithuanian Film Centre show that there were a mere 22 cinemas in all of Lithuania in 2024. Cultural centers in rural areas may to some extent also service domestic audiences with domestic films, though they often offer only a single screening per month. In other markets, we can see that domestic films perform significantly better in smaller community-run cinemas. If a similar logic operates in Lithuania, a cinema infrastructure-initiative stands as an obvious policy objective in this case.
It is still to early to say if The Southern Chronicles will remain a mainly national phenomena or if it will reach significant export markets, if not in theatres, then on VOD. Winning last years’ highly competitive Baltic Film Competition, The Southern Chronicles may prove to have longer legs in international theatrical markets and international VOD catalogs than Lithuanian films have traditionally had.
In the case of Croatia, the recent introduction of an investment obligation has helped Croatian films reach greater visibility on SVoD both domestically and internationally. Both Dražen and The Diary of Paulina P. reached the top of Netflix’s Croatian Top 10 lists and stayed in the top ten for four and seven weeks respectively. Such performance metrics may begin to alleviate the more substantial issues that Croatian and Lithuanian stakeholders are facing when negotiating licensing fees with major streaming services. Not only are they geo-linguistically small markets but their less developed SVOD markets and the – comparably - limited purchasing power makes it difficult to license titles to the major streaming services at meaningful rates relative to the budget of the films (Nielsen & Øfsti, 2024; Østi & Nielsen 2024).
References
Nielsen, J.I.; Øfsti, M. (2024). Interview with Ivor Šiber, Zagreb, November 6.
Øfsti, M.; Nielsen, J.I.; (2024). CresCine workshop with Kestutis Drazdauskas, Romanas Matulis, Marta Materska-Samek, Jakob Isak Nielsen & Marius Øfsti, Zagreb, November 4.
Piloting Innovation: Impacts of AI
Introduction
This chapter extends CresCine’s investigation into the forces driving innovation and transformation across the film industries of small European countries. Earlier research identified technology—especially artificial intelligence—and novel financing models as decisive catalysts for change in business models and industrial practices. Against this backdrop, we conducted a six-month exploratory study with producers from six small European film markets (Lithuania, Croatia, Portugal, Ireland, Flanders, and Estonia). The pilot programme examined (i) how producers incorporate AI-based tools and alternative financing mechanisms into their workflows and (ii) the extent to which these innovations can stimulate broader industry evolution.
Methodology
The study combined desk research and secondary data analysis with primary data collection. Primary data were obtained through structured interviews and observational sessions embedded in eight pilots, as shown in Table 1. Each pilot paired one producer, one fiction project in development with international potential, and one targeted innovation, as illustrated in Figure 1. The sample was drawn from the 61 producers participating in CresCine’s Producers Club, using country of origin and project maturity as selection criteria.
Table 1: Profiles of producers who participated in the Innovation Pilots
Figure 1 - Conceptual model of each pilot
We employed a straightforward pre-test/intervention/post-test design:
O₁ – Baseline interview to gauge willingness and initial familiarity with the innovation;
X – Intervention phase during which the designated innovation was applied;
O₂ – Follow-up interview to capture outcomes and shifts in attitude.
Six pilots centred on AI; the remaining two focused on innovative financing. For the AI strand we partnered with Largo.ai, a Swiss platform that leverages AI for script evaluation, market-viability forecasting, and budgeting support. The financing strand explored alternative capital-raising models.
Throughout the programme participants received tailored coaching on integrating the selected tools into their active projects. These sessions formed the core of the intervention (X). Data collection concluded with O₂ interviews designed to assess impact and evolving perceptions of innovation.
Preliminary Findings
The pilots yield critical insights into how AI applications and alternative funding mechanisms are reshaping production practices in small European markets. They also underscore the transformative potential—and attendant challenges—that these innovations pose for the broader European film industry.
1. The Key Role of Emerging Technologies in Shaping Innovation in the Film Industry
Technological advancement is central to CresCine’s assessment of innovation within small-market film ecosystems. To gauge its current significance, we adopted a deliberately open framework: professionals were encouraged to define “emerging technologies” in their own terms during the early design of the pilots. This approach avoided prescriptive definitions and prompted broader reflection on how producers actually relate to new tools. While topics ranged from virtual production and Gaussian splatting to prospective 6G networks, artificial intelligence dominated the discussion, often raised by participants before interviewers introduced the subject. Accordingly, AI became the focal point of the pilots as an emblem of ongoing technological disruption.
We also asked producers to position each technology on an innovation–disruption continuum. The distinction enabled us to capture both functional expectations—efficiency gains, cost savings—and more subjective concerns about career sustainability and creative control. The findings, outlined below, reveal a shared perception of technology primarily as an innovative force, albeit one capable of disruptive side-effects.
1.1 “How,” Not “What”: Innovation of Production Tools, Not Stories
Across the pilots, producers consistently framed innovation around how films are made rather than what stories are told. They perceive AI and related tools as mechanisms that expand opportunities for companies in small European markets by enhancing execution, utility, and efficiency—while leaving narrative originality to human creativity. Formulas may guide format-driven content, but visionary storytelling resists automation.
Technical innovation, they argued, “helps to tell stories” (Int-L-2). Post-production emerged as the phase where AI currently delivers the most tangible value. Other points in the pipeline—crowdfunding, data-driven audience targeting, workflow optimisation, and performance forecasting—were highlighted as ripe for further technological enhancement.
1.2 Moving Forward: Preference for Evolution Over Disruption—With Caveats
Producers generally view technology as an evolutionary rather than revolutionary force. The prevailing metaphor is movement—moving forward—creating new opportunities and meeting emerging needs without dismantling established practice. Past industry shifts, such as the rise of streaming, bolster their confidence in gradual adaptation:
Nevertheless, ethical and socio-economic considerations temper their optimism:
Several participants described a potential “healing” effect: judicious disruption can reinvigorate stagnant workflows and impose competitive pressure on inefficiency. The challenge is to harness innovation’s benefits while safeguarding professional livelihoods and creative integrity.
The next section will examine the expected impacts of these technologies as identified by the pilot participants.
2. Expected Impact
This section synthesises the expectations articulated by pilot-programme producers regarding the influence of emerging technologies—chiefly artificial intelligence—on small European film markets. Their insights coalesce around five principal impact areas.
2.1 Advisory, Adjustment, and Validation
Producers anticipate that AI will function as an external supervisor and analytical assistant, capable of evaluating a project’s strengths and weaknesses and prompting unconventional performance strategies:
They also see value in AI-driven audience analytics, particularly for refining release and marketing strategies:
“That’s part of innovation; it is important to understand what we are doing because I don’t produce for myself. […] I need to know and understand who they are, where they are, what they want, what they need, and I know innovation in that.” — Int-L-8
When the underlying databases are perceived as credible, AI outputs can strengthen negotiations with distributors and investors:
2.2 Opportunity Creation for Small Markets
AI is viewed as a catalyst for creativity and international reach, enabling unconventional projects and reducing dependence on strictly local audiences:
Cost efficiencies generated by AI and alternative funding mechanisms are expected to alleviate financial constraints that often curb creative ambition in low-capacity markets.
2.3 Time Efficiency
Automation of labour-intensive administrative and technical tasks should release producers to focus on core creative activities:
“…spending more time making the movie and less time processing.” — Int-F-6
2.4 Labour-Force Transformation
Participants foresee a dual effect on employment. Certain technical, support, and sales-agent roles may contract, while new specialisations—such as multi-language voice-over services for actors from small European markets (Int-L-3)—could emerge. The challenge will be balancing cost savings with responsible workforce management.
2.5 Environmental Sustainability
Finally, producers recognise AI’s potential to reduce travel and resource consumption, thereby lowering the industry’s environmental footprint and supporting broader sustainability goals.
The next section examines the external concerns and internal constraints that may hinder the implementation of these technologies.
3. Barriers: External Concerns and Internal Restrictions
Expectations that emerging technologies will streamline workflows and expand creative possibilities are tempered by a variety of obstacles. These fall into two broad categories: external concerns—factors largely beyond a producer’s direct control—and internal restrictions rooted in the operating realities of small-market production companies.
3.1 External Concerns (AI as an External Agent)
3.1.1 Under the “Human” Eye: Mistrust in Creative Competence
Many producers maintain that technology cannot be trusted without human oversight. They question the opacity of data sources and insist that professional expertise must validate AI-generated recommendations:
AI is therefore welcomed primarily as an assistant rather than a creative author (Int-L-1). While some producers use textual tools for brainstorming—e.g., refining a character arc—others worry about analyses that appear arbitrary or excessive:
The prevailing view separates technical tasks that can safely be delegated to AI from inherently human creative judgments:
3.1.2 Confidentiality: Where Does the Data Go?
Producers expressed acute anxiety about losing control over intellectual property once scripts or rough cuts are uploaded to AI platforms:
Uncertainty about data handling leads to cautious experimentation—and a recognised need for better education:
3.1.3 Lack of Data on Small Markets: Uneven Comparisons
The global datasets powering most AI tools seldom include sufficient examples from smaller territories, limiting accuracy and eroding trust:
“Maybe the one thing that I kind of think that it will not be so precise as it would be from some other market because we are a small market with a very small number of cases […]” — Int L 2
Although this deficiency weakens local projections, producers remain willing to experiment in order to build a knowledge base for their markets.
3.2 Internal Restrictions (Within the Profession and Industry)
“You know, all the classic things.” — Int L 1
Internal constraints manifest as an interlocking trio of money, time, and knowledge. AI applications introduce additional costs that must be budgeted up-front—often a daunting prospect in low-capacity environments:
“Also, every AI application nowadays asks you for a cost. […] Is it worth it? I think it’s not necessarily on our scale.” — Int F 7
Knowledge deficits arise both in access to reliable advisors and in understanding tool functionality. Even well-informed producers struggle to allocate the time required for due diligence:
“We are always very busy with the productions themselves […] so to inform yourself, to know what AI tool would be performant and how to use it, devote your time and money to it and what it will bring.” — Int-L-4
The market is crowded with products that promise transformational benefits, raising the risk of over-cluttering and over-promising:
“[…] You are getting a lot of promotion from all sides promising you that the tool will do everything for you […] If it’s cheap, you can easily try it. If it’s expensive, then you really should inform yourself and try it before you buy it.” — Int L 4
Section 4 will explore how these barriers shape two distinct producer mindsets: Adopters versus Awaiters.
4. Producers’ Views on Technology: Adopters vs. Awaiters
The preceding sections outlined shared expectations and common barriers surrounding AI adoption in small European film markets. Yet producers diverge markedly in when and how they integrate new tools. Drawing inspiration from Rogers’s diffusion-of-innovations framework (1962), we observed two discernible mindsets among CresCine pilot participants (see Figure 2):
Adopters – proactive practitioners who experiment early with emerging technology.
Awaiters – cautious professionals who prefer to observe further development before committing resources.
Figure 2 - Levels of technology adoption
4.1 Adopters
Adopters readily incorporate new solutions into existing workflows, viewing professional practice as fluid and continuously evolving. Although mindful of cost, data security, and creative integrity, they exhibit a pronounced fear of missing out and therefore track constant updates to ensure they leverage the most advanced options available.
4.2 Awaiters
Awaiters remain sceptical of unproven technology, questioning quality and reliability until a tool has matured. Their restraint stems from professional habit and from production timelines that demand dependable, readily available solutions. Although many of their concerns mirror those voiced by Adopters, Awaiters prefer evidence of tangible benefits before altering established routines.
Conclusions
The CresCine Innovation Pilots confirm technology—particularly AI—as a crucial driver of incremental progress within small European film ecosystems. Participants regard AI principally as an efficiency enhancer that optimises how films are produced rather than what stories are told. Post-production, marketing analytics, and administrative automation are the immediate beneficiaries, while authorial creativity remains firmly human-led.
Producers articulated realistic expectations: AI can boost productivity, expand international reach, and democratise certain aspects of production. Yet substantive structural barriers persist: mistrust in opaque data sources, confidentiality risks, scarce market-specific datasets, limited budgets, time constraints, and fragmented knowledge networks. These hurdles temper enthusiasm and shape divergent adoption strategies—Adopters seek early advantage, whereas Awaiters prefer proven stability.
Notably, some interviewees view targeted disruption as a corrective to entrenched inefficiencies, provided clear policy safeguards are in place. Policymakers therefore face a dual mandate: encourage responsible experimentation while offering guidance that addresses intellectual-property protection, data transparency, and equitable access for small-market players.
In sum, the balance between technological promise and practical constraint will determine whether AI fulfils its potential as a catalyst for competitiveness and cultural diversity in Europe’s small-market film industries. The question ahead is not whether AI will reshape production practices, but how stakeholders can navigate its integration to maximise benefits while mitigating risks.
Recommendations
Drawing on the findings of the CresCine Innovation Pilots, we propose the following actions for technology providers and policymakers:
Prioritise Curated, Problem-Oriented Solutions (for tech companies): Film production operates under diverse market conditions that demand tailored responses. Generic, “one-size-fits-all” tools foster mistrust and emotional distance, particularly among Awaiters. Offering market-specific configurations and clearly articulating how a tool addresses concrete pain points will encourage earlier adoption and mitigate fatigue from over-promising.
Ensure Data Transparency and Robust Safety Guarantees (for tech companies): Both Adopters and Awaiters expressed concern about opaque data sourcing—“the mystery black box.” Providers should communicate, in accessible language, the provenance of datasets, their limitations, and error margins. Transparent practices will strengthen confidence in AI outputs and position the technology as a credible external adviser.
Embed Guidance Throughout the Innovation Journey (for tech companies and policymakers): Lack of guidance undermines user experience and tool effectiveness. Comprehensive onboarding, contextual help, and ongoing training will foster trust and maximise impact. Policymakers can amplify these efforts by supporting continuous professional-development initiatives that keep producers abreast of technological advances.
Uphold Authorship and Copyright Protections (for policymakers): Producers demand an equal voice in policy discussions to prevent legal frameworks from tilting unduly toward technology providers. Clear safeguards must preserve intellectual-property rights and ensure that creative ownership remains with authors. At the European level, additional measures are needed to curb biases arising from training models on pirated or non-representative data.
Implementing these recommendations will help balance innovation with trust, accelerating the responsible integration of AI and other emerging technologies into Europe’s small-market film ecosystems.
How to Use Blockchain Technology to Improve the Competitiveness of European Film Industries?
By Madis Järvekülg, Yannick Slenter, and Indrek Ibrus
Introduction
The CresCine consortium has conducted a study—now in its final stage—exploring how blockchain technology might strengthen Europe’s film industries in an era dominated by digital platforms and increasing automation. European film and television operate within a mosaic of small national markets; while this diversity enriches storytelling, it fragments audiences, limits revenue pathways, and leaves producers reliant on public subsidy. Global streaming platforms and proprietary rights databases exacerbate these challenges by siloing metadata, complicating licensing, and obscuring revenue flows. Scholars and entrepreneurs therefore view blockchain’s tamper-proof ledgers and smart contracts as potential instruments for reducing transaction costs, clarifying rights, and opening new financing channels, although uptake remains experimental and fragmented. Against this backdrop, the study asks whether decentralised technologies can help Europe overcome structural disadvantages and compete more effectively in a platform-centric economy.
Aims of the Study
Scheduled for publication in summer 2025, the report pursues two intertwined objectives:
Mapping practice – documenting how “film-tech” ventures across Europe are deploying—or discontinuing—blockchain in areas such as rights registries, revenue management, distribution, and tokenised finance.
Informing policy – distilling lessons so that support instruments, legal frameworks, and data strategies can nurture promising experiments while avoiding hype-driven misallocation.
The core research question is: How is blockchain being experimented with, and how do entrepreneurs envision its future role in the European film industry?
Methods, Research Design, and Scope
The study combines semi-structured interviews with desk research conducted during the second half of 2024. Nine focal companies or projects were selected from an initial list of twenty; several candidates had dissolved despite maintaining web presences, underscoring the sector’s volatility. Interviewees—primarily CEOs—span the value chain, from B2B metadata services (Valunode, Content.Agent) and revenue-management start-ups (Cascade8, Filmchain) to crowdfunding/DAO platforms (Calladita Films, Decentralised Pictures) and blockchain-enabled distributors (Myco, White Rabbit). Headquarters range from Austria and Estonia to Spain, the UK, the US, and the UAE, reflecting diverse profit orientations and levels of EU funding. Transcripts were thematically coded and triangulated with policy dossiers (EBSI, DGA, MiCA) and academic literature to situate entrepreneurial practice within its regulatory context.
Results
The investigation identified four principal domains of experimentation:
Rights-registry infrastructure – Valunode and Content.Agent pursue interoperable copyright databases to feed algorithmic licensing markets. Valunode positions itself as a Data Intermediation Service Provider under the Data Governance Act, piloting an Open Rights Data Exchange on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). Content.Agent layers a European Licence Ledger onto its marketplace for performing-arts films. Success hinges on persuading major catalogue owners to share data and on reconciling international and EU copyright regimes.
Revenue management and collection accounts – Cascade8 initially sought fully automated royalty splits via its Blockframes suite but reverted to centralised solutions when Ethereum gas fees and UX hurdles proved prohibitive. Filmchain has integrated smart-contract logic more cautiously into existing collection-account-management workflows, suggesting that incremental “incorporative” adoption may be more viable than wholesale disruption.
Tokenised finance and community curation – The Spanish feature Calladita raised development capital through NFT drops offering tiered fan perks rather than profit participation to avoid securities rules. Decentralised Pictures, a non-profit DAO backed by Francis Ford Coppola, rewards community voting with FILMCredit tokens redeemable for script coverage or production grants. Both cases illustrate blockchain’s capacity to mobilise new investor groups while highlighting grey zones around tokenised revenue-sharing and taxation.
Blockchain-enabled distribution – Myco operates a “watch-and-earn” VOD platform that shares ad revenue with viewers, whereas White Rabbit pivoted from monetising P2P piracy traffic to a token-reward streaming app linked to an open rights registry. These ventures face regulatory push-back, high customer-acquisition costs, and the need for clear Web3 policy signals to attract mainstream investment.
Collectively, these initiatives constitute an emergent ecosystem that spans data infrastructure, financing, distribution, and governance. They do not compete in a zero-sum game; many envisage composable services that interlock. Yet all confront legal uncertainty, market resistance, and resource constraints. None has reached scale comparable to centralised incumbents, but incremental pilots suggest that blockchain can, under the right conditions, enhance transparency, automate royalties, and diversify capital sources.
Policy Recommendations
The study formulates eight actionable recommendations:
Legal recognition of on-chain rights – Modernise copyright statutes to accept blockchain registrations and smart-contract licences as evidence, coordinated at EU level to avoid jurisdictional friction.
Interoperable data infrastructure – Incentivise adoption of ISAN, EIDR, HAND, and ISCC identifiers and mandate harmonised metadata schemas so future registries can interoperate.
Market access for small producers – Fund pilots bundling rights clearance, micropayments, and transparent accounting to reduce reliance on gatekeepers and improve discoverability.
Alignment with EU flagship programmes – Embed audiovisual use cases within EBSI, the Data-Governance-Act data-spaces agenda, and MiCA, supported by cross-sector task forces and Creative/Horizon Europe windows.
Hybrid roll-out pathways – Promote regulatory sandboxes and public–private testbeds so blockchain layers can bolt onto existing systems without requiring big-bang replacement.
Capacity-building via national film institutes – Resource institutes to deliver training, technical assistance, and toolkits that translate abstract technology into day-to-day savings for rights-holders.
Guild-led peer learning – Support producer, director, and writer associations as trusted multipliers that gather feedback, spread literacy, and inform policymakers about on-the-ground barriers.
Token-based community finance – Authorise controlled experiments with NFT crowdfunding and revenue-sharing tokens to diversify capital flows—especially in small territories.
Taken together, these recommendations outline a gradual, ecosystem-orientated roadmap: cement legal certainty, build an interoperable data spine, lower adoption costs through targeted support and training, and empower novel financing and governance models. By following this path, EU and national authorities can convert today’s scattered pilots into a coherent infrastructure that bolsters Europe’s audiovisual diversity, competitiveness, and resilience in the Web3 era.
Leap of Faith: The Challenged State of European Industry Skills
Introduction
The European film and audiovisual sector entered 2025 amid profound upheaval. CresCine’s initial survey—conducted with the European Film Academy (EFA), leading training programmes, and Storytek Innovationlab—captured responses from more than 1,200 professionals. It charted evolving skill requirements, pervasive financial insecurity, and a pronounced appetite for continuous learning, especially in smaller markets. While that quantitative baseline highlighted growing needs in digital, technological, and creative competencies, it also signalled notable disparities in access to high-quality training and an over-representation of established producers from larger territories.
To uncover the lived realities behind the numbers, CresCine subsequently undertook a qualitative deep-dive, focusing on why skills gaps persist, how careers advance, and what contextual barriers shape those trajectories—particularly within CresCine territories.
Methodology
From autumn 2024 to spring 2025 CresCine conducted eight focus-group discussions. Six centred on Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, and Portugal; two pan-European groups convened at the Berlinale European Film Market (EFM) addressed cross-cutting themes such as Diversity & Inclusion and below-the-line professions.
Participants represented a broad spectrum of roles—producers, directors, writers, actors, crew members, distributors, academics, and association representatives—selected via direct scouting, GDPR-compliant contact lists (e.g., Cinando), and recommendations from national contact points. Attention was paid to gender balance, below-the-line voices, and professionals transitioning from adjacent creative sectors.
Sessions were audio-recorded with consent, transcribed, and anonymised. Thematic coding yielded a rich qualitative dataset that illuminates the professional experiences underlying earlier survey trends.
Overview of Key Findings
The focus-group discussions reveal systemic challenges that influence access, development, sustainability, and innovation across Europe’s film workforce—challenges that intensify in smaller markets.
1. Barriers to Entry and Progression
Selective film-school pipelines – Prestigious institutions act as powerful gatekeepers. A German participant remarked, “I applied to four film schools here and I got rejected from all of them….” Another recalled being warned at Babelsberg, “…because I will just play prostitutes or whatever.” An Irish respondent observed the cachet of UK credentials: “If you say I went to NFTS, the face almost changes.”
Reliance on informal networks – A Portuguese actor stated, “If you’re not friends with people in Portugal you’re probably not gonna work.”
Discrimination and invisibility – A Black actor noted, “…they don’t see you as European even though you study the European canon… we’re not put into lead roles.” Romani professionals cited type-casting as “prostitutes… witches… and never any lead roles.”
Structural disadvantages in small markets – “We are fighting with these big countries, big budgets, big languages,” explained a Croatian participant.
2. Training Gaps
Mismatch between formal education and industry reality – Lithuanian consensus: “The education provided in the film school [is not] enough to work in the industry.”
Networking over pedagogy in elite programmes – Prestigious initiatives are prized for contacts rather than deep skills; cost and competition deter early-career talent.
Business and entrepreneurial skills – “…so much project development rather than business development,” lamented a Croatian respondent.
Advanced technical shortages – Lithuania, Estonia, and Croatia reported deficits in DITs, colourists, workflow supervisors, and key crew, with training costs prohibitive (e.g., €12,000 for colour-science courses).
Script analysis – An Estonian producer admitted, “It’s the screenplay quality… that’s what I feel I myself lack.”
Mentorship scarcity – “I would gain my skills if I would shadow a more professional producer… But they don’t share this knowledge,” said an Estonian participant.
3. Career Sustainability
Project-to-project precarity – Lithuanian view: “No project, no job.” A Portuguese actor acknowledged reliance on family wealth.
Parenting and caring responsibilities – Irish focus group highlighted hidden caregiving: “…never disclose that the reason you’re turning down work is because you have a kid.”
Retention challenges – “Our industry has always been useless at retention,” stated an Irish producer.
Toxic workplace cultures – Reports of long hours and bullying persist: “There’s a lot of bullying in the film industry that goes completely unchecked.”
4. Leadership and Management Deficiencies
Lack of structured training for Heads of Department and producers contributes to unclear workflows, bullying, and inefficiency.
5. Funding Structures and Business Models
Complex national/EU applications and rules that prevent companies from retaining overheads undermine stability and internal upskilling: “How your company makes money… we’re not allowed to… the most unsustainable thing.”
6. Representation and Data Gaps
Gatekeeping by non-diverse decision-makers perpetuates exclusion. “If you can see it, you can be it.” Romani participants stressed the “profound lack of data” needed for evidence-based advocacy.
7. Adapting to Technological Evolution
Rapid shifts in AI, virtual production, and XR create both opportunities and skills shortages. Concerns include job displacement, IP protection, and high training costs. Shortages of DITs and workflow supervisors were deemed “potentially severe.”
Country-to-Country Comparison
While overarching themes recur across Europe, each CresCine territory presents distinct priorities and pain points—a nuance critical for targeted policy and training interventions, as shown in Table 2.
How Countries Differ
Croatia – A well-trained talent pool faces limited national funding and constrained market opportunities. Rising production costs—partly driven by international servicing—exacerbate the mismatch. Additional concerns include inadequate script-development support and insufficient post-production capacity.
Denmark – Although training funds are available, time and budget pressures often prevent professionals from taking advantage of them. The National Film School’s strong domestic validation system can diminish perceived need for international programmes. Future-oriented skills priorities include international co-production, AI, and social sustainability.
Estonia – Critical gaps exist in senior technical roles (executive producers, DITs, camera operators), coupled with a pronounced need for advanced script-development and analysis expertise. Funding structures that impede long-term company growth are a major concern, as is the preference for intensive, practice-based training over short workshops.
Ireland – Discussions centred on the profound challenges faced by parents and carers, widespread workplace-wellbeing issues (including bullying), and urgent requirements for talent-retention strategies and clearer progression pathways—especially for mid-career professionals. Deficits in leadership and management training were strongly emphasised.
Lithuania – A disconnect persists between formal education and industry needs, particularly in business skills such as budgeting. Acute shortages in technical roles (DITs, post-production) and funding models that undermine company sustainability are pressing issues. European labs are valued primarily for networking and validation rather than substantive skill acquisition.
Portugal – Participants described a fragmented industry landscape characterised by closed networks and reliance on cliques. Local talent is frequently excluded, and funded narratives sometimes lack diversity and audience appeal. International collaboration and mentorship were highlighted as essential.
Pan-European Berlinale Groups – The Below-the-Line/Performers group focused on access barriers, uneven training quality, and financial precarity, while the Diversity & Inclusion group detailed severe identity-linked obstacles, the critical need for reliable data, and national gatekeeping. Both groups called for funding that advances career development and cross-border mobility.
These discussions confirm that although small markets share common struggles, unique historical and policy contexts require tailored solutions for skills development and career sustainability.
Conclusions and Suggestions for the Road Ahead
Our qualitative insights expand the findings presented in State of European Film Vol. 1, revealing a committed workforce operating within systems that restrict access, stifle skills development, and jeopardise career sustainability—particularly in smaller markets.
Access Remains Unequal – Informal gatekeeping, high training costs, credentialism, and systemic discrimination continue to limit entry and progression, especially for professionals from under-represented backgrounds and smaller nations.
Skills Frameworks Need Reorientation – Formal education often lags behind industry requirements. European training labs deliver networking but not always deep, practice-oriented learning. Long-term mentorship and business-oriented curricula are urgently needed.
Career Sustainability Is Precarious – Project-based employment, incompatible structures for parents and carers, ambiguous progression pathways, and problematic workplace cultures threaten talent retention.
Systemic Solutions Are Essential – Funding models must evolve to support company stability; diversity and inclusion require structural reform; and rapid technological change demands proactive, ethically informed strategies.
What Lies Ahead – Avenues for Debate
Prioritise Sustainable Careers and Company Development – Shift from purely project-based support to models that foster long-term career viability and SME growth, including mechanisms for overhead recovery and reinvestment.
Revitalise Training and Mentorship Frameworks – Redesign programmes to be practice-oriented, affordable, and aligned with skills gaps in entrepreneurship, advanced technical roles, and leadership. Establish formal mentorship and shadowing schemes that bridge education and the workplace.
Champion Genuine Diversity, Inclusion, and Well-being – Implement measurable actions that dismantle systemic barriers, ensure diverse representation in decision-making, mandate data collection on diversity metrics, and create funding streams for under-represented groups. Promote ethical leadership, anti-harassment policies, mental-health support, and dedicated provisions for parents and carers.
Strengthen Small-Market Capacity and Collaboration – Simplify access to EU and national funds, support infrastructure upgrades (e.g., post-production, AI), and foster equitable cross-border partnerships that facilitate skill transfer.
Embrace Technological Transformation Strategically – Develop accessible training on AI, virtual production, XR, and funding innovation, focusing on scalable applications, ethics, and workflow integration. Address acute shortages in specialist roles such as DITs and VFX supervisors and promote standardised digital practices.
Europe’s film industry stands at a pivotal juncture. The passion of its professionals must be matched by an equally robust commitment from policymakers, educators, and industry leaders. Addressing these structural challenges with targeted investment and systemic reform will enable Europe’s creative talent not merely to endure but to flourish in an increasingly competitive global landscape.
Competitiveness and Producer Training
Strengthening the competitiveness of the European film industry depends, in part, on equipping producers with methodologies that demonstrably enhance project outcomes. Drawing on evidence from entrepreneurship research, we adapted and piloted three field-tested methods with European producers. Each outperforms—and complements—conventional producer-training practices.
Proven Method 1 – Define Success and Visually Map the Path
Producers are first challenged to articulate a clear definition of success for each project—securing distribution, winning festival awards, achieving specific revenue targets, or other measurable objectives. This mitigates the prevalent absence of medium- and long-term strategic thinking. Once success is defined, participants construct a strategy map: a visual representation of milestones and the causal links connecting creative, production, and distribution activities. The graphic format facilitates team alignment, stress-tests plans, and highlights key assumptions.
Proven Method 2 – Test Assumptions Systematically
Every film rest on assumptions such as:
“My audience is [specific demographic].”
“My story will resonate because [reason].”
“My budget and timeline are realistic because [evidence].”
This method guides producers to validate those assumptions early through targeted outreach, structured feedback, and empirically grounded techniques. Systematic due-diligence strengthens pitches, sharpens narratives, and refines release strategies—moving beyond generic advice such as “network constantly” or “follow your passion.”
Proven Method 3 – Produce with Proactivity and Resilience
Having defined success and tested assumptions, producers build a sustainable action framework that translates strategy into weekly routines. The objectives are to:
Maintain proactivity – establish clear prompts and action cues that sustain momentum;
Anticipate opportunities – plan for upcoming production stages and market windows;
Enhance resilience – identify risks and implement mitigation measures.
Entrepreneurship studies indicate that this step yields the greatest long-term impact. Accordingly, it warrants particular emphasis in producer-training curricula.
Why These Approaches Work
Collectively, the three methods address the cognitive and strategic complexity inherent in film production. They furnish a structured, evidence-based pathway for refining ideas, validating plans, and executing effectively—ultimately leading to stronger creative and commercial results.
Implementation Guide
The Annex integrates these methods into a five-step programme suitable for group workshops or one-to-one mentorship. Originally developed through large-scale trials involving thousands of entrepreneurs, the framework has been tailored to the distinctive demands of film production—from development through distribution. Pilot feedback confirms significant benefits; widespread adoption within European producer training would improve project success rates and, by extension, the competitiveness of the EU film sector. Detailed implementation guidance is provided in the Annex.
Rethinking Distribution and Exhibition: Guides for the Future
The EU film distribution and exhibition landscape has undergone significant shifts in recent years. Chief among them is the expansion of the global market for video-on-demand (VOD) and, in particular, the rise and dominance of US-based streaming services such as Netflix and Prime Video. Their impact is ambivalent: on one hand, they accompany key changes in the way films are consumed while involving local actors in national and EU film ecosystems; on the other hand, they disrupt these ecosystems, raising policy and regulation issues.
The COVID-19 crisis accelerated this disruption. With cinemas closed, consumers turned to VOD, to the detriment of theatre attendance. What remains uncertain is the mid- and long-term impact. For the moment, the theatrical release remains pivotal. Theatrical exclusivity continues to be a cornerstone of film distribution, conferring visibility and revenue advantages that direct-to-streaming or simultaneous releases seldom replicate. Although theatre attendance has risen across the EU since 2020, it has rarely returned to pre-crisis levels.
A constant trait of EU film markets is their diversity. Markets differ markedly from one another—a premise central to CresCine, which distinguishes small markets from larger ones. It is insufficient to analyse Germany or Italy alone; small markets warrant dedicated attention. Yet small film markets themselves vary greatly. Positively, this reflects Europe’s cultural richness; less positively, it underscores fragmentation. Despite the European Commission’s efforts toward a digital single market, cultural and creative sectors—and film in particular—remain segmented along national and regional borders.
Against this backdrop, CresCine is developing a suite of learning guides on building scale and competitiveness in distribution and exhibition. Through five detailed reports, we examine key developments and address questions such as:
What has been the evolution of distribution and release strategies?
What relationships have EU distributors and producers forged with VOD services?
Are there examples of sharing or exchanging technology and marketing strategies between local VOD platforms?
What challenges and opportunities confront arthouse and city theatres?
What are the cultural and economic impacts of uncommon venues (museums, universities, pop-up cinemas)?
These guides target industry professionals and policymakers and have been co-created with practitioners through extensive interviews. The project involves Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Aarhus University, and Lumière Groep. Two guides are already available; all five will be published by summer 2025.
Guide 1 – Release Windows in Post-COVID Film Distribution
This report offers a comprehensive overview of evolving release strategies in Europe. It analyses lessons learned by European distributors in the post-COVID environment and provides insights for navigating a hybrid marketplace shaped by streaming platforms and shifting audience behaviour. The pandemic prompted experimentation with day-and-date releases and shorter windows, yet the sector has largely reverted to conventional models—testimony to the enduring value of theatrical exclusivity. Recommendations include prioritising theatrical windows, experimenting cautiously with hybrids, and leveraging partnerships to boost visibility and revenue.
Guide 2 – Uncommon Venues for Film Exhibition & Distribution in Europe
This study explores the role of unconventional spaces—cultural centres, museums, galleries, bars—in film exhibition. Such venues differentiate themselves through distinctive locations, diverse programming, and strong community engagement. They play a vital role in promoting European cinema by showcasing independent and culturally diverse works, often in collaboration with distributors and film networks. Recommendations call for further research into audience-engagement strategies, economic sustainability, and the integration of cultural activities within cinema programming to enhance the appeal and longevity of these venues.
Understanding European Audiences – Internal Perspectives from Small Markets and Preview of Future Recommendations
Social activities—word-of-mouth recommendation, communal viewing, cinema clubs—help audiences in small markets discover and engage with domestic film, yet interest dissipates quickly when conditions are unfavourable. Phase 1 of CresCine’s domestic-audience research (media diaries and interviews, see Volume 1) already underscored sociality’s catalytic role. Accordingly, Phase 2 focused on the social practices surrounding film: how groups negotiate tastes, discover titles, and decide what to watch together.
Across seven markets CresCine convened 24 focus groups comprising friends, colleagues, partners, and family members—79 participants in total. Some sessions gathered intact social groups; others paired unfamiliar groups (e.g., two couples). Conducted in local languages, sessions featured a sorting exercise in which participants discussed recent popular and critically acclaimed domestic films. Groups then planned either a cinema outing or a joint streaming evening while researchers observed their decision-making. The following findings inform exhibition and marketing strategies for domestic films in small markets; illustrative vignettes appear throughout.
1. Film as Social Catalyst
Watching film unites people and sparks conversation before and after the screening. Cinema is typically chosen to create a broader social event but involves higher costs and logistical hurdles. Streaming suits groups already gathered under one roof (families, student dorms). Many groups acknowledged that the film itself can be secondary to the opportunity to socialise, although post-film discussion remains integral.
2. Situational Taste Communities
When watching together, groups form situational taste communities, quickly classifying titles as suitable for social or individual viewing. Criteria vary: younger cohorts associate genres of spectacle and intense emotion—action, horror—with joint cinema trips; others prioritise films whose artistic qualities warrant a theatrical setting. Relaxation correlates with comedy, romance, or re-watching favourites on streaming.
3. Spectrum of Group Needs
Group needs range from relaxation (familiarity, entertainment) to visceral or intellectual stimulation. Those seeking spectacle often prefer non-domestic productions because small-market cinema rarely offers action or horror. Yet domestic film unites groups in a shared desire to support national cinema, revisit older classics, and discuss local culture—provided topics are not perceived as unduly “heavy” or controversial.
4. Risk Minimisation and Consensus Building
Groups strive to minimise risk and controversy, favouring “safe” choices anchored in genre familiarity, prior experience with creatives, or known titles. Reaching consensus is itself part of nurturing social bonds; some individuals will deviate from personal taste to strengthen group cohesion.
5. Information Sources and Social Trust
Selecting a film collectively is a risk-management exercise dependent on multiple information sources—awards, reviews, trailers, prior word-of-mouth. Within the negotiation, a single member vouching for a film wields considerable influence but also assumes responsibility for group satisfaction. Consequently, comprehensive and trustworthy information becomes more critical than in individual choice scenarios; some participants will only vouch for films they have previewed.
Domestic titles often lack markers of safety—external validation, strong promotion, genre cues—leading to perceptions of higher risk. Generic marketing campaigns aimed at broad hype were criticised for failing to build confidence. Conversely, familiarity with creatives, cultural relevance, and reliable cinema programming reduced perceived risk.
6. Role of Cinematic Infrastructure
Cinema infrastructure and programming heavily influence group decisions. Factors include location accessibility, ambience, amenities, nearby hospitality, and trust in a cinema’s curation. Limited showtimes for domestic films—whether in theatres or on streaming platforms—hinder access in several small markets.
7. Impact of Loyalty Schemes
Three focus groups included members of loyalty programmes that facilitate cinemagoing. Denmark’s Biografklub discount scheme ritualises outings around a preset seasonal slate. Belgium’s Cineville pass and Nordisk Film’s subscription lower the threshold for spontaneous visits, encouraging exploration of unfamiliar titles and increasing receptivity to in-cinema promotion (e.g., trailers).
These insights inform forthcoming CresCine recommendations on exhibition and marketing strategies tailored to small-market audiences and their social decision-making processes.
Our Recommendations and the Look Ahead
For small film markets, the eventfulness of cinema-going underscores the importance of accessible and attractive cinema infrastructure offering a convenient selection of domestic titles. Comprehensive programming at suitable times prevents domestic films from being overlooked when audiences consult cinema listings—an essential promotional tool. Capitalising on film’s social appeal can be achieved through special programming (including repertory titles), alternative venues, and membership or discount schemes that ritualise attendance.
Helping audiences manage the perceived “risk” of choosing a domestic film is crucial for encouraging group viewings. Trusted and detailed information—reviews, paratexts on cinema websites and streaming platforms, social-media content—should provide multiple indicators that a film will deliver quality time. Promotion must move beyond generic “buzz” to highlight genre, themes, and creative talent. Communication should be diversified across target groups and release windows and delivered via platforms audiences already use, rather than siloed domestic-film portals.
Building audience knowledge through positive experiences fosters familiarity with domestic creatives, increases literacy, and spreads trust socially. Group viewing can nudge individuals outside their comfort zones, but marketing should avoid reinforcing stereotypes that domestic films are invariably “heavy.”
State of European Film, Volume 3 will shift focus to international audiences in large European markets, the United States, and South Korea, analysing what impedes—or enhances—the global circulation of films from small European markets.
Conclusion
This second volume of State of European Film encapsulates CresCine’s 2024–2025 findings and affirms our commitment to enhancing competitiveness in Europe’s smaller markets. The dossier and interactive platform portray a sector at a pivotal juncture—rich in creative potential yet constrained by systemic challenges that demand innovative, collaborative solutions.
A unifying theme is the imperative for robust, accessible data. The FIDA initiative equips stakeholders with evidence for strategic decision-making, replacing anecdote with insight. Equally, understanding the small European film ecosystems—with their distinctive cultural and structural traits—is essential; evolving strategies coexist with persistent funding and infrastructure deficits that call for tailored policy responses.
Technological advances present both opportunities and anxieties. AI promises efficiency gains but raises concerns about creative control, data integrity, and equitable access. Blockchain shows potential for rights management and financing but requires clear regulation and broader uptake.
Our research emphasises the “leap of faith” demanded of the workforce. Barriers to entry, evolving skill requirements, and career precarity are especially acute in small nations. Addressing business and technological training gaps, alongside systemic diversity and inclusion issues, is urgent. Entrepreneurial training models for producers merit wider adoption.
Distribution, exhibition, and audience engagement dynamics continue to evolve. While theatrical releases remain vital, leveraging VOD platforms, unconventional venues, and social viewing behaviours is key to connecting small-market films with wider audiences.
In sum, State of European Film, Volume 2 calls for a multi-pronged strategy: embrace data and technology, reform skills development and funding structures, and champion inclusive practices. Europe’s film talent is indisputable; enabling that creativity to thrive—particularly in smaller markets—demands sustained commitment from policymakers, industry bodies, and educational institutions. The insights herein provide a foundation for such collaboration, paving the way toward a more competitive, resilient, and culturally vibrant European film industry.
Creative Edge: Strategic Support for Creative Film Producers
Executive Summary
Many film projects fail to achieve their creative and economic goals. One promising way to improve the competitiveness of EU film is to better support EU film producers so they can succeed more often using methods proven to increase success in related fields. We identified three in the domain of entrepreneurship that have been shown in experiments to help entrepreneurs succeed far more effectively. We adapted and tested these methods with film producers, finding they are powerful tools for producers, outperforming and complementing traditional producer training.
Proven Method 1: Define Success and Visually Map the Path There
The first method challenges producers to clearly define what success looks like for their film project, whether that’s securing distribution, winning awards, or hitting a revenue target. Producers typically leave this vague, resulting in a significant lack of medium and long term thinking. They are then guided to create a strategy map: a visual representation of the key milestones leading to their goal. This map shows the causal connections between creative, production, and distribution steps. The visual format also helps teams align, stress-test their plans, and identify key assumptions.
Proven Method 2: Test Assumptions Within the Film Project Strategy
Every film project is built on assumptions, such as:
"My audience is [specific demographic]."
"My story will resonate because [reason]."
"My budget and timeline are realistic [because]."
This method guides producers to test their assumptions early and systematically - doing real-world checks before investing significant time and money. It can be contrasted to vague advice like "network constantly" or "follow your passion." Instead, it promotes targeted outreach, gathering structured feedback, and applying powerful concepts from scientific research. This resulting high quality due diligence of their project strengthens the project pitch, sharpens the story, and improves the release strategy.
Proven Method 3: Produce with Proactivity and Resilience
After defining success and testing assumptions, the final method helps producers build a sustainable working structure for ongoing action.
The goal is to support producers in:
Becoming more proactive: setting clear prompts and action cues to maintain momentum.
Thinking ahead: preparing for opportunities and future stages of production.
Building resilience: anticipating risks and taking steps to mitigate challenges.
The output is a custom action plan for translating their film project strategy into weekly habits and routines, building the mindset, structures, and rhythms needed to sustain progress over the long timelines typical in filmmaking.
Among entrepreneurs, this step has been shown to have the greatest long-term impact and deserves special emphasis in producer training.
These three approaches work because they help manage the real mental and strategic complexity of producing a film. They provide a structured, evidence-based path for filmmakers to sharpen their ideas, validate their plans, and execute effectively, leading to stronger creative and commercial outcomes.
This guide weaves the methods into a five-step program, suitable for both group workshops and one-on-one mentorships for independent producers and creative teams. At the core of this program are three field-tested approaches that significantly outperform current "best practices" in both entrepreneurship and film producer training. Originally developed through large-scale experiments with thousands of entrepreneurs, they have been adapted for the unique challenges of film production, from development through distribution. We found that film producers benefited significantly from applying these methods and recommend their widespread adoption within producer training programs. Doing so will improve the success rate of EU film projects and contribute to a more competitive EU film industry.
Introduction
As a mentor, trainer, or advisor to filmmakers, your role goes far beyond solving immediate problems. While producers may look to you for guidance on these short-term problems, you can typically add much more value by supporting them with the bigger picture. Offering that level of guidance, especially early in your mentoring or teaching career, can feel daunting, and not all advisory methods are equally effective. Many traditional approaches lack strong evidence of success.
That’s where evidence-based tools can make a huge difference. Grounded in rigorous research and tested in real-world environments, these methods not only help you support producers more effectively, they also make your work more structured, scalable, and impactful. One method featured in this guide, for example, increased small business profitability by 30% in large-scale trials. Using this guide, you can expect to achieve a similar boost in project success for the producers that you work with.
The Three Proven Methods
1. Strategy Mapping
Helping producers clarify what success means for their project and visually map a realistic path toward it. Proof: Agarwal et al. (2023) found that this method led to a huge increase in income for SMEs, on average larger than the local average annual income. In fact, that was the improvement in comparison to using just next method alone, so the absolute effect may be even larger.
2. Assumption Validation
Guiding producers to test key ideas — about their audience, funding, story viability, or release strategy. Proof: Camuffo et al. (2024) reported a €7,000 increase in income for entrepreneurs using this method in a large-scale replicated experiment.
3. Proactive Implementation
Turning long-term strategy into weekly and daily action, while building the habits and resilience needed for creative endurance. Proof: Campos et al. (2017) found that participants taught this method achieved 30% higher profits with the training compared to SMEs randomly assigned to receive no training.
Confirming the Methods Work for Film Producers: The Creative Edge Program
While the three approaches have been proven effective for entrepreneurs, it was unclear how they would work for film producers. To test this, the CresCine Project adapted and piloted these methods specifically for film production. In autumn 2023, we launched a training program that initially combined both existing "best practice" methods and entrepreneurial-inspired methods. After initial pilots, we divided participants into two groups:
Control Group: Followed current industry best practices (e.g., pitching exercises, business model canvas, and marketing planning).
Experimental Group: Trained exclusively with the three proven entrepreneurial methods.
We conducted multiple trials, both in-person and online, to evaluate producer progress and outcomes.
Key Findings:
Producers using the entrepreneurial-inspired methods were challenged more to consider what and why they were producing a project, and made greater progress during the workshops.
While producers in the best practice programs still found value, many noted the material felt familiar and more focused on short-term goals.
In contrast, the new methods fostered a longer-term, more strategic mindset, better equipping producers for sustainable success.
Implications for the film industry
Based on our findings, we strongly recommend that film producer training programs and policies aimed at improving producer effectiveness adopt these evidence-based methods as part of their training and support processes. We further recommend integrating these methods into film project funding proposal development processes, as they are likely to increase both the creative and economic success rates of film projects. These tools provide a clear, structured way to help producers make better decisions about their projects and careers.
Moreover, beyond the initial effort needed to upskill film producer trainers and advisors, implementing these methods is expected to be not just cost-neutral but ultimately cost-positive. Producers and projects trained using this approach are likely to perform more effectively and deliver greater returns, contributing to a more robust and sustainable film production ecosystem.
What makes these methods especially powerful is that they are industry-neutral and highly scalable. Trainers, mentors, and advisors do not need years of experience in film production or specialized expertise to apply them effectively. This means that film labs, training programs, and first-time mentors can start delivering meaningful value right away, even in the complex and unpredictable world of filmmaking.
Helping Producers Overcome Overwhelm
All three approaches address a common and critical challenge for filmmakers: overwhelm. With so many moving parts, from creative decisions to business logistics, new producers often get stuck in analysis paralysis or fall into reactive, short-term decision-making.
Research clearly shows that when people face too many complex options without structure, it often leads to inaction or poor decision quality.
The Solution
These tools help producers:
Clarify their ambition
Test whether that ambition is achievable
Build day-to-day systems to turn goals into real progress
By narrowing the focus to what matters most, producers are able to make confident, high-quality decisions and maintain momentum across long project timelines.
Conclusion
By using these proven, evidence-based tools, you can:
Increase the success rate of the producers you support
Make your role as a mentor, trainer, or advisor more effective and sustainable
Deliver deep, lasting value to the next generation of filmmakers
The methods presented in this guide offer a clear path forward for building a stronger, more competitive, and more resilient film industry.
How to Use This Guide and Slides
This guide and the accompanying slide deck are designed to support you in delivering 1-on-1 mentoring or group training to early-stage and independent film producers. Whether you’re running a new initiative, contributing to a film lab, or enhancing an existing program, these materials are built to be adaptable, relevant for both first-time mentors and experienced trainers looking for fresh, evidence-based tools.
This guide is not a standalone resource.
To get the full benefit, use it in tandem with the slide deck:
The program’s logic, flow, and key tools are split between the slides and this guide. To fully grasp and deliver each step effectively, we recommend the following workflow for each of the five steps:
Start by reviewing the slides for a high-level overview of the step.
Then read the matching section in this guide for context, facilitation tips, and film-specific framing.
Finally, customize the slides to suit your voice, your session format, and your group before using them with producers.
These materials are designed to help you guide producers through a structured process that enhances their clarity, confidence, and decision-making, from early development through to execution.
Step 0 - Get Oriented Before You Meet
Before your first workshop or mentoring session, it’s helpful to assign a small piece of preparatory work to participating producers. This helps them begin thinking more clearly about their project and allows you to use your limited time together more effectively.
We recommend sharing a short explainer video or worksheet on a simple tool like a Film Project Snapshot or One-Page Pitch Canvas. Ask participants to jot down 2–3 key phrases or bullet points for each section, such as:
Logline / Core Concept
Intended Audience
Budget Range / Funding Plan
Distribution Goals
Key Team / Attachments
Creative Inspirations or Comparables
This task can take as little as 15–20 minutes, but it often sparks important reflection and gives the producer a clearer sense of what they’re actually building before they walk into the room. Ask participants to create a free Canva account beforehand if they don’t already have, so they can copy the templates provided edit their copy.
If a participant skips this first bit of prep, it can be a good moment to gently set expectations. Explain that your time together is limited and that some light prep between sessions will go a long way toward making their project stronger. This helps build a foundation of mutual respect and accountability from the very beginning.
Step 1: Introductions & Film Project Canvas
When you first meet with producers, start with the most powerful questions: What are you making, and why? Who is it for, and how will it reach them? These deceptively simple prompts help set the tone. You’re not just here to critique or advise just yet, you’re here to listen and feedback to them what you hear. It may be the first time they have heard someone summarise their project for them, which can be a revealing experience enabling them to see their project more clearly and structure their thinking accordingly. Whether you’re working one-on-one or in a group setting, use this step to start building a shared understanding of each project’s core vision and goals.
Group Training Tip: Allow each participant to briefly introduce themselves and their project. You can open the floor to one or two clarifying questions from the group after each intro, but don’t linger too long here. Move purposefully into the main activity: the Film Project Canvas.
The Film Project Canvas is a structured but flexible tool that helps filmmakers map out the key elements of their project on a single page. It’s adapted from models like the Business Model Canvas but tailored for creative storytelling, production logistics, and audience strategy. Each section of the canvas encourages the producer to think through their project concept from different angles; story, audience, team, budget, and distribution, many of which they may not have fully considered yet. It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about getting all the pieces out of their head and onto the page. This tool works well visually and conceptually. It helps participants spot gaps, see relationships, and begin shaping a viable path forward.
Suggestion for 1-1 support: You ask the questions in the Film Project Canvas jot and down their responses as best you understand them. Then review the filled-in canvas together to confirm you have a common understanding of the project.
Group Workshop Suggested Structure:
Show an example of a completed canvas explaining each section.
Set a timer for 20 minutes. Ask each participant to complete a draft version of the Film Project Canvas for their project. This doesn’t need to be perfect, a rough but thoughtful draft is enough to unlock insights in the next steps.
Optional: Have participants share their draft canvas with the group and invite short, constructive feedback. Keep it focused, this is about shaping ideas, not refining pitches (yet).
This step lays the foundation for everything that follows. Participants should move to the next steps with a clearer understanding of their own project, a list of the project’s key components and a shared language for discussing strategy in the sessions ahead.
Step 2: Building a Strategy Map
Define success: One of the most effective ways to support producers is by helping them clearly define what success means for their project-and then mapping how they believe they’ll get there. Success in filmmaking often feels vague or subjective. Is it getting into a festival? Selling the film? Finishing on time? Getting critical acclaim? Each producer will have a slightly different version, and that’s okay. What matters is that they define it clearly and specifically, so their strategy has something concrete to aim at. Define Success, Don’t Just Hope for It. You’ll know you’ve done this step well when the definition of success becomes unambiguous and measurable. It's no longer just a feeling like “I want to make something great,” but a defined threshold, e.g., “premiere at a Tier 1 festival and secure distribution by Q2 next year.”
Strategy Map: Once success is defined, you can begin building a Strategy Map - a visual logic model showing the producer’s assumptions about how success will be achieved. Think of a Strategy Map as a storyboard for project success. Begin with the end goal, the climax, then work backward through key milestones that lay the foundation for that success. Each connection will represent a causal assumption, something the producer believes must happen to reach the next stage.
Example milestones. If “Get accepted to Sundance” is the goal, The preceding milestone might be “Assemble strong festival strategy” or “Have a compelling proof-of-concept.” That in turn might rely on “Complete a polished rough cut” or “Secure a credible editor.” Each connection is an assumed causal relationship. The producer is saying: “I believe that if this happens, it increases the chance of that happening.”
In early trials of this tool, it was called a Story Tree, a fitting term in film, but we now prefer Strategy Map, because it reinforces that this is not just a wish list or plan, it’s a logic model rooted in practical intention and action.
Why It Works: Compared to broader tools like the Film Project Canvas (Step 1), the Strategy Map is more focused and selective. It doesn’t try to capture everything; it zeroes in on what truly matters and forces the producer to confront the assumptions their project depends on. This makes it easier for:
You, as a trainer or mentor, to understand how the producer sees their path forward.
The producer to make day-to-day decisions that stay aligned with their long-term goals.
Both of you to spot weak points in the strategy and refine them early.
Tips for Creating Strategy Map: Start in 1-on-1 sessions: Begin by asking the producer: “What’s a tangible indicator of success for this project?” Then work backward, milestone by milestone, using a visual tool (like a flowchart or tree diagram) to capture their logic. You build the map as they talk. Reflect it back to them. Clarify, challenge, and co-develop. Then take it to group training: Once you’ve practised in 1-on-1 settings, you can guide participants in a group to build their own maps. But group sessions can be slower, and newer producers may struggle without that personal guidance, so practice first.
It’s okay if the map isn’t perfect. The point is to make the producer’s internal logic visible, not just to you, but to themselves also. This way, you can help them test it, revise it, and build confidence in their creative and strategic direction.
Suggested Preparation for Participants: Before this session, share the following materials:
Video: The difference between planning and strategy - A Plan Is Not a Strategy(Helps participants understand why strategy is about assumptions and causality, not just task lists.)
Canva Template: Strategy Map Template - https://www.canva.com/design/DAF-Qr0YuVo/ax4x4YcO1x6F5G9gsKoCIA/edit
Summary: Producers often have big ideas and a lot of energy, but unclear logic about how their projects will succeed. The Strategy Map helps them articulate that logic, test it, and own it. You’re not giving them your plan. You’re helping them express, stress-test, and strengthen theirs.
Step 3: Sharpen the Strategy & Identify Critical Assumptions
After building a Strategy Map in Step 2, producers often end up with a complex web of ideas, goals, and milestones. That’s a great start but now it’s time to streamline the Strategy Map, trimming away what’s already certain or less important, and focusing on what’s still unknown and truly essential. This is where clarity deepens and focus begins.
From Messy Map to Focused Framework: Think of this as a post-production edit for your strategy. Ask
What can be cut without losing meaning?
What’s already been validated and doesn’t need more attention?
Which connections are obvious or not central to success?
Aim for a 20–30% reduction in complexity. It should feel tighter, leaner, and more focused but still fully reflect the heart of the project’s logic. You’re looking to reduce the map from something like “a detailed script” to “a strong logline.” As the old quote goes: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
Dialogue Prompts for Mentors: Use these kinds of questions to reflect the map back to the producer and confirm shared understanding:
“Have I understood correctly that your end goal is [X], and you’ll know you’ve achieved it when [Y] happens?”
“What would you say is the most essential milestone on the way there?”
“If that part doesn’t work, do you think the whole project is at risk?”
This reflection process helps producers hear their own logic out loud, often for the first time, and begin to see where the make-or-break assumptions are.
Identify Key Assumptions
Now that the Strategy Map is clearer and more focused, it’s time to spotlight the assumptions that are both:
Important (if this doesn’t work, the project’s in trouble), and
Uncertain (we don’t yet have good evidence this will work)
We call these your “Must-Win Battles.” Examples in film might include:
“Audiences will emotionally connect with a protagonist who never speaks.”
“We can realistically shoot the film in 12 days with this team and budget.”
“This hybrid docu-fiction format will be welcomed by festivals.”
Ask the producer to identify 1–3 key assumptions that need to be tested before they move forward with confidence. These will form the basis of the next step.
Choosing Which to Test: There’s a judgment call here. Some assumptions may be:
Critical but hard to test right now
Uncertain but not very important
Important and testable-these are ideal to focus on first
Work together to find the right balance between importance, uncertainty, and practicality. The goal is to choose 1–3 things that can realistically be explored or tested in the coming days or weeks. Streamlining the Strategy Map is more than cleanup; it’s a commitment to focus and forward motion. When producers get clear on what matters most and where the main risks of failure are, they become more confident, more strategic, and more ready to act assertively.
Step 4: Choosing How to Test
Now that the producer has identified their top 1–3 assumptions in Step 3, it’s time to choose how to test them with an effective reality check. Choose smart, effective, and intentional validation methods to ensure ideas and reality are aligned - or at least have a reasonable chance of becoming so!
Many filmmakers skip this stage. They either trust their gut, lean on friends and family for feedback, or plunge straight into the production hamster wheel, never really thinking beyond the next hurdle or milestone. The main problem with this approach is that focusing solely on superficial project goals or outcomes has the potential to lead to large errors. Structured testing might not move as quickly at the beginning, but it supports deeper examination and clarity, better decision making, and so fewer costly missteps along the way.
From Lean Startup to Lean Storytelling: This step builds on ideas from Lean Startup, but with a key difference. Instead of rushing to "get out and talk to people," we pause to think more deeply about:
Who do we need to talk to
What we’re actually trying to learn
What will count as a meaningful result
It’s tempting to chase momentum, but doing a little planning first allows us to learn more when we do talk to people and get more useful feedback faster.
Strategic Validation Means Making Trade-Offs: When choosing a validation method, the producer needs to balance:
Effort and cost (time, access, materials)
Expected information value (how much insight it will provide)
For example:
It’s easy to show your teaser to close friends, but their feedback might be biased.
It’s harder to get an early cut in front of strangers in your target audience, but the insights may be much richer.
The goal isn’t always to choose the easiest path, it’s to choose the one that gives the most meaningful, decision-shaping information relative to the effort required.
Planning the Validation, Not Just Doing It
Once the producer has selected a method, resist the urge to jump right in. Instead, have them plan the process:
What’s the timeline?
Who do they need access to?
What are the risks, blockers, or practical steps?
And most importantly: How will they interpret the results? Set expectations before any data is collected. For example: “If only 6 out of 10 viewers say the mood reel was emotionally engaging, we’ll consider revisiting the tone.” This helps the producer avoid the trap of “moving the goalposts” after the fact. Without predefined expectations, it's easy to unconsciously twist the results to match what we hoped would be true. In this case - after the fact they might be tempted to think 4 out of 10 is enough to proceed.
Interpreting the Results: Once the data comes in, whether from feedback, research, or tests, the producer has three clear paths:
Confirm & Proceed: The assumption is supported. Keep going with greater focus and confidence.
Pivot or Adjust: The assumption needs rethinking, and the project evolves.
Abandon or Rebuild: A major assumption breaks, and it's smarter to stop or radically shift.
This structured approach helps producers fail faster, fix smarter, and succeed sooner. It avoids months (or years) of clinging to a flawed vision and instead builds creative momentum around what's working.
Final Thought: In filmmaking, intuition matters. But validation gives intuition a reality check. It turns passion into focused action. And when done right, it builds not just a stronger project, but a stronger, more confident producer.
Step 5: Proactive Implementation
Up to this point, producers have been working on the big picture - what success looks like and how to get there. Now we zoom in and ask: What does that mean on an average week? What should you be doing on a typical day? How can we structure your work to make sure the important things happen? What actions will I take today to progress my Strategy? The goal is to avoid that all-too-common state where a producer knows they should be doing something… but are unsure about exactly what that something is, or lacks a system that keeps them accountable.
Success in film doesn’t come from bursts of energy; it comes from sustained, focused momentum towards a clear goal. Helping producers implement this final step gives them the tools not just to finish this project, but to navigate the long game of a creative career. This final step is where the big plan turns into execution and implementation. Now it’s time to translate all of that work from the previous steps into consistent action by guiding producers to build the routines, mindset, and structure needed to keep moving towards success, day by day, week by week. This will be personal and unique to each producer as it needs to fit their life and their project and here’s the kicker: This step has the strongest evidence of impact on long-term success. It may seem basic - make a plan, stick to it - but research shows that very few people do this well without guidance, and it makes a huge difference (up to a 30% increase in success!).
There are three types of behaviours that this step helps producers do more of.
Self-starting: Taking initiative without being told. Doing the hard or unglamorous tasks without waiting for perfect circumstances.
Future-oriented: Thinking and planning ahead, not just reacting to today’s problems, but setting up systems that support long-term goals.
Persistent: Sticking with important tasks even when things get boring, difficult, or uncertain (which they often do in filmmaking).
Example Activities in this Step
Weekly Planning: Set aside time at the start of each week to plan actions that directly move the project towards success.
Critical Task Reminders: Identify 2–3 “non-negotiables” that must happen each week (e.g., send outreach emails, review cash flow).
Habit Formation Prompts: Tie key activities to existing habits (e.g., "Every morning after coffee, I’ll do 30 minutes of writing or outreach").
Obstacle Forecasting: Ask: What might throw you off course this week? And plan how to respond.
Talking Points for Trainers / Mentors
“What does your strategy look like in daily practice?”
“If you had 1 hour a day for your project, how would you spend it?”
“What routines would help you show up consistently, even when things get hard?”
Conclusion: From Insight to Impact
This guide has taken you through a structured, evidence-based process for guiding film producers from clarifying their vision to validating their assumptions, and ultimately, building the habits that support long-term success. Across these five steps, your role as a mentor, trainer, or advisor has evolved. You’ve shifted from simply offering advice to becoming a thinking partner, a strategic mirror, and a creative systems builder. And in doing so, you’re helping producers not just get their projects off the ground, but develop the mindset and skills they’ll carry across their careers.
A Quick Recap of the Journey
Step 0: Oriented participants with light prep, setting the tone for reflective, focused work.
Step 1: Mapped out each film project’s big-picture logic using the Film Project Canvas.
Step 2: Created a Strategy Map that visualized how success will be achieved, milestone by milestone.
Step 3: Streamlined that strategy and surfaced the most critical assumptions.
Step 4: Selected and planned effective validation methods; intelligent, focused, and practical.
Step 5: Translate strategy into regular action by embedding personal initiative and resilience into weekly practice.
Each step builds cognitive clarity, emotional ownership, and strategic confidence. Working with film producers is both inspiring and demanding. They’re driven by vision, often under-resourced, and constantly navigating uncertainty. The support you provide isn’t just about pushing a project forward; it’s about helping someone grow into their full potential as a creative leader. By applying this structured approach, you’re giving producers something rare:
A clearer path.
A stronger voice.
A better chance at sustainable success.
Final Reflections
You don’t need decades of experience to deliver value, just the right tools and the willingness to listen deeply and reflect honestly.
These methods scale across experience levels, project types, and production contexts.
You’re not here to have all the answers; you’re here to ask better questions.
Success in filmmaking is complex, nonlinear, and deeply personal. But with structure, empathy, and evidence-based tools, we can dramatically increase the likelihood that great stories get made - and that the people behind them grow stronger in the process.