Les Arcs Festival’s Team Ugrades FestiCiné With Festival Scope, Shift72
By Elsa Keslassy
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – The team behind Les Arcs Film Festival is upgrading its three-year old online software FestiCiné to serve festivals that are fully or partly switching to virtual, in partnership with Festival Scope, Shift72, as well as Cinando and Zoom.
The software, which launched in 2017 and was upgraded for the next edition of Les Arcs Film Festival, has already enrolled 50 clients, including Series Mania, Karlovy Vary, Cannes Cinéfondation and Angoulême festival. Amid the coronavirus crisis, a plethora of festivals have canceled their physical editions, while others have maintained them but are creating a virtual component for people who aren’t able to travel and attend.
FestiCiné’s new services aims at helping these festivals with programming, guests management, ticketing, market organisation, as well as screenings. Festivals will be able to upload the data about their films to the platform automatically. Festival Scope and Shift72 will then generate a mini-website where users will be able to watch these programmed films.
“We believe that the priority is to facilitate the organisation of festivals in this challenging time and to help them to decide at the last minute whether they can switch entirely or partially to online, depending on the fast-changing sanitary situation,” said Guillaume Calop, the general manager Les Arcs Film Festival and associate manager of FestiCiné.
The screenings, payment and DRM are managed on FestiCiné which is accessible on any device, including computer, tablet and smartphone, and is securely accessible to all team members wherever. FestiCiné’s price for a one-year licence ranges from 500 euros ($547) to 4000 euros ($4378).
FestiCiné will also be used in a market environment with its “one to one meetings” feature for project holders. the tool will be generating a Zoom link for each meeting that will be published on the participant’s schedule, and will manage side events, such as cocktails, luncheons and panels.
FestiCiné is also partnering with Cinando, the tool launched by the Cannes Marché du Film, to integrate the Cinando Video Library into FestiCiné. As such, accredited market participants will have access to a virtual and secure screening room reserved for professionals (which uses also Shift72 technology).
“We all have experienced virtual meetings with Zoom or other platforms and realised that even if it’s not
as casual and warm as real meetings, it can help the market to continue to move on with projects
and business,” said Jérémy Zelnik, Industry Events manager Les Arcs Film Festival and CEO FestiCiné.
“By switching very easily from live meetings or projections to virtual, this allows organisers to be assured to keep their event as a structured and organised market time,” said Zelnik.
