Christian Davin

April 2008

Christian Davin founded Alphanim in 1997 and guided it into becoming one of the leading production and distribution companies in France. Its slate of shows for children includes Robotboy, Potatoes & Dragons, Hairy Scary and Galactik Football, as well as the animated feature Franklin & The Turtle Lake Treasure. At the beginning of 2008, Alphanim was acquired by Gaumont, the French feature-film production and distribution company. Being part of Gaumont will give Alphanim the possibility of producing more features and a better position in the film market. Davin talks about his plans for Alphanim.

TV KIDS: Are you starting to produce live action for children?

DAVIN: We want to develop some expertise in live-action series and then bring it to feature films as well. We would start with the existing market of live-action series for teens or tweens and we would like to work on international projects. We are not so keen on producing a show that will be only for French television because then the budget would be too limited. We have been talking to some potential partners in Canada and Belgium. We’d like to be in production with the first series in 2009 or by the end of 2008.

TV KIDS: How many animated series do you need to produce on a yearly basis?

DAVIN: Three to five series a year. That is our on-going activity because when you produce several series, it allows you to have a certain kind of organization—to keep staff on a long-term basis and develop expertise. This year we will develop about 11 television projects, which means we’ve taken the rights, or at least options on rights, for comic books or original ideas or books. I feel that this is something we must still go on with because out of 11 projects, which will not be ready all at the same time, you must be able to put forward four or five that are really ready to go should we find interest and then we want to produce four a year. That is the kind of development slate you ought to have because broadcasters are more selective and more anxious and therefore they should be made very comfortable and offered a choice of a large number of shows.

TV KIDS: You always have a French broadcaster on board at the beginning of each project. Do you also do presales?

DAVIN: The way the funding is structured in France, you need to have a French broadcaster fund a minimum of 25 percent of the French share of the production. In other words, if you do a 50/50 co-production with Canada, for example, 25 percent of 50 percent must be brought in by the French broadcaster, which is not a major problem, because overall the contribution of a French broadcaster to a series is on average 20 percent of the total budget. Overall we manage to trigger from the CNC [Centre National de la Cinématographie] subsidies proportional to spending in France and subject to certain criteria. But the tax credit is also helping us a lot, plus the possibility of some presales or sometimes co-productions and resorting to some extent to labor [in Asia] for a smaller and smaller part of the work because computers have helped us keep the most creative part of the work here.

In other words, the French financing on a show can reach up to 50 or 60 percent if you are lucky, and 30 to 40 percent if you are less lucky. It doesn’t mean that we can automatically sell our series, because competition is high and broadcasters will take only so many shows per company. The competition is tough but at Alphanim we can secure three or five presales or co-productions and we have a great output deal with the German distributor Europool. We can rely on their financing on a certain number of shows over a period of several years. This support helps us a lot. So if you start with good French funding, this German output deal, and a co-production with RAI or a presale to Spanish television, it makes it feasible to sustain a certain amount of production.

TV KIDS: Do you involve licensing partners at the development stage of a project?

DAVIN: At the creation stage we try to take into consideration all the aspects of future exploitation, but we are not committed to toy companies to a point where we would ask them for advice. First of all I am not sure that they would be able to or want to. On the other hand, as soon as the series is delivered, we elaborate a very professional style guide. That is something we invest in and we try to see how we can exploit the licensing. And we hire agents for licensing and merchandising.

To give you an example, for Robotboy, which is a co-production with Cartoon Network U.K., we use Cartoon Network Enterprises as a worldwide agent. With Jetix we co-produce Galactik Football and we use Jetix Consumer Products as an agent. On Galactik Football we have so far a gross figure of nearly €1 million in minimum guarantees or advances on merchandising revenues, even though season two is not on the air yet and that is quite unusual in licensing and merchandising.

On Robotboy, they are studying some very interesting moves around video games and various other licenses. But we are waiting until we have broadcast season two on a wide free-TV basis. That’s what it takes to be able to enter this very, very restricted world.

TV KIDS: Galactik Football is a unique show. Has reaction from international buyers been good?

DAVIN: Excellent. It combines 3-D motion capture for the action scenes in the stadium, but it doesn’t deal with football as you would think. The teams consist of girls and boys and the show is about their relationships outside the games and [on the field] facing fantastic competitors coming from galactic places so they have funny powers. So we are in the world of science fiction, but it’s also a bit of a sitcom because it’s relationship-based and [focuses on] the idea that ordinary people can become champions. So this show is doing very well where it is airing. Season two looks great and we believe it will do just as well. We have a lot of fans on the Internet and we are developing websites systematically. That is an investment we feel we have to do to get the buzz [around the show] going.

TV KIDS: Plus, children live online as much as they do on TV.

DAVIN: Yes, and what we’ve noticed is that when they move away from the TV set to go on the computer, it’s not so much to watch VOD and catch up on TV series; they go to play games.

On one of our shows, Hairy Scary, which is 3-D, we want to build a virtual community where kids can meet and we are working on it right now. More and more we try to think of extensions, whether games or the online community world.

There is one show, The Questers, that we do with the EBU [European Broadcasting Union] and we have all kinds of broadcasters involved, which is very good for the exposure of the series when it will be ready.

We are developing a role-playing MMPOG [massively multi-player online game] for a high budget, and it’s very significant because there are so many of us that we managed to invest a good amount of money to ensure a good product. We believe we will be able to release the game online simultaneously with the broadcast of the show. It’s a medieval quest, sort of quirky and slightly off the wall—very British in a way. The English, they have the copyright for the Middle Ages! They own the Middle Ages with things like Monty Python and so many others. So we’ve hired some writers from England, mixed with some French as well and some Franco-American and what comes out is kind of nice.

TV KIDS: You have been able to sell to the American market.

DAVIN: We work with the U.S channels internationally and within the U.S. Robotboy, which we co-produced with Cartoon Network U.K., has been on the air very successfully in the U.S. Season two will start in April and they are very confident of its success. We sold Galactik Football to a Spanish-speaking channel, Sorpresa!. Al Ovadia, our agent in the U.S., did the deal for us and we are very happy because it’s another way of entering the U.S. We sold Santapprentice to ABC digital cable and satellite. And now we have a development deal with qubo for a preschool series. It’s an original idea and one that we hope to close soon.

TV KIDS: What do you enjoy most about your job?

DAVIN: I like the teamwork. What I like about animation is that I am always fascinated to see the process of making a series or a film. It’s the collaboration of many, many people in a very methodical and structured way—where every single person brings his value. It’s not a star system, it’s more a family thing. I really like the craftsmanship and also the slightly industrial aspect. This means that on the computer side we now have to be extremely structured with the new tools, which allow us to work with non-E.U. subcontractors as if they were next door. It’s a very positive aspect of globalization—globalization is not just bad! When you manage to make everyone benefit from it; it’s progress; it’s something fantastic.