On July 3, the Imperial Spa, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s elegant new industry venue, hosted a panel discussion titled “Emerging Digital Technologies Shaping the Evolution of the Distribution Sector,” moderated by industry consultant Michael Gubbins. The event saw the participation of four technology providers which service the needs of distributors and the needs of audiences. Participants included Alexandre Cerri, of LuckyTime; Niels Alberg Nielsen, of Publikum; Mehdi Mimouni, of MovieChainer; and Seneit Debese, of Greta & Starks.

The presentations were kicked off by Alberg Nielsen of Publikum, a Denmark-based consulting service that combines deep anthropological audience insights with artificial intelligence (AI) technology to provide novel inspiration to filmmakers. The company focuses on “creating buzz” and “sparking emotions,” paying attention to the current “zeitgeist” and identifying what elements prompt audience reactions within a given narrative. For obvious reasons, Publikum, which was launched four years ago, is particularly useful during both the development and distribution stages of a production.

The tool includes a comprehensive mapping of emotions with “contemporary relevance” and in-depth testing, which helps to record the audience’s reactions to certain characters, core themes, score, and style, among other elements. It explores the different nuances of a given concept or societal issue (for example, how narcissism is perceived in the different Scandinavian countries in the case of “Sick of Myself,” or right-wing and left-wing opinions on the use of nuclear weapons in “Atomic Soldiers”), highlighting whether there are “common areas” capable of intercepting the widest audience possible. This is done through data scraping thousands of websites in a film project’s target territory to gain a broad understanding of an audience’s culture on different topics.

Publikum uses the data generated through their AI tools during a three step process that includes exploring a filmmaker’s vision and direct audience research to develop what they refer to as an Audience Book that can help guide the development of a script or a distribution strategy for a completed film. Nielsen presented a case study in which Publikum worked with Wildcard Distribution to research the best way for them to position their release “Kneecap” to attract audiences. The film, about an Irish hip-hop trio that raps in Gaelic, is loosely based on a true story and Publickum determined audience’s were most interested by the biopic characteristic of the story. The marketing of the movie In Ireland and the United States centered around what the company had determined most intrigued audiences in those territories.

Cerri meanwhile detailed LuckyTime’s ten-years of work with French distributors, festivals and movie theatres in the field of communication and digital marketing. The company’s core activities include distribution strategy recommendation, advertising, community management, creative production (including movie trailers and social media content), and training initiatives. Cerri also zoomed in on LuckyLab, a tool capable of analyzing audience behavior and interests, retargeting captive audiences for VOD, DVD, and theatrical releases, measuring digital operations’ performances, and providing insights on international communication. To date, LuckyLab cooperates with 31 distributors in France, developing websites and landing pages that welcome about 4 million unique visitors per week.

“It is impossible for us to know right now how many people are buying their tickets online after visiting the websites,” said Cerri, “but over the next six months we are going to test conversion tracking at 100 theatres in partnership with Le Syndicat des Cinémas d’Art (SCARE).”

Next, Mimouni talked through MovieChainer, a rights management tool launched in 2016 the film financier and production company Backup Media for their own internal needs. “Over 20 years they ended up with more than 400 titles to manage and keep track of,” he explained. “You can imagine they ended up with endless spreadsheets so they decided to build an inhouse system to keep track of this and they created MovieChainer.” When development of the solution cost more than expected, Backup Media decided to sell it to other distributors, sales agents, finances and production companies who could use it for their own purposes.

MovieChainer solutions initially focused on financial modeling and deal-making and later extended operations on rights, intellectual property, and data management, turning into a true “one-stop shop for industry professionals.” To date, the MovieChainer team consists of 20 people and assists 47 clients worldwide. Some of the distributors’ features are contractual data ingestion, automatic revenue integration, ready-to-go royalty statements, and sales prospects.

The final presenter was Debese, whose app Greta & Starks enables people with sight and hearing impairments to experience “fully accessible cinema.” She began her presentation by asking how many attendees were passionate about cinema admissions. After most in the audience raised their hands, Debese asked, “And how many of you want to really contribute something meaningful to this world? With our technology you are doing this.” The barrier-free app includes closed captions, sound amplification, audio descriptions, and sign language videos along with multilingual dubbing and subtitles. This content synchronizes automatically with the corresponding film as it plays in a cinema auditorium. To date, the company has managed to provide easier access for over 1,000 titles. 

At the end of the session all of the presenters came together on stages to tackle the “elephant in the room,” namely the future role of AI and its potential prominence when it comes to distribution. Alberg Nielsen suggested how the focus on these tools should be on “simplicity.” “We collect a lot of data, but it’s often pretty difficult to use it,” he said. “It might be easier making decisions, but I don’t think [having] data is necessarily good if it’s not informative. This is also an industry where the creative part should have a place. Generative AI isn’t only about replacing animation studios with just a click, there’s a lot more. I think we’ll still have these ‘natural qualities’ inside the companies, and working with a human understanding on top of all of this is the easy, clever shortcut.”

Gubbins, as well as the other participants, agreed with Alberg Nielsen’s point of view and the moderator defined working with AI as “finding more effective methods to connect brilliant ideas and brilliant work with audiences.”

Despite achievements reached by each of the presenters’ respective tools and businesses, they all agreed how most of the predictions on AI are still “pointless.” “There’s a lot of guessing still, and the future isn’t here yet,” summed up Alberg Nielsen.

One of the points which make the future uncanny is the lack of a solid regulatory framework – the European Union AI Act is a first attempt in this sense, but its effectiveness is yet to be demonstrated.

In sum, the Karlovy Vary panel offered food for thought in terms of showcasing how some European firms are trying to exploit AI to serve their distribution strategies and fulfill other purposes. However, they all still act as separate entities, making Alberg Nielsen’s aforementioned quest for simplicity hard to achieve.

Observing their results in the medium and long term will certainly be interesting, but the session made it even clearer how their ‘industry solipsism’ (‘every man for himself’) could easily lead the industry into a chaotic transitional phase – whose length is hard to predict – wherein only big tech players and government regulations may bring order in terms of practices and languages, especially around AI.

Smaller, innovative players like the ones that took part in the debate at Karlovy Vary should seek unity – by lobbying together, as well as optimizing research and development efforts. Surely, as always, this is easier said than done.