Salla Kozma Shares Her Plans for Naru Force Studios’ First Year

Last year, Salla Kozma opened Pig & Horse Productions to develop documentaries and unscripted formats. This year, she teamed up with Beatrice Rossmanith and Anssi Rimpelä to open Naru Force Studios, which will be focusing on maximizing creative ideas across the digital world using social-first formats that incorporate branded entertainment and e-commerce, made with its own proprietary tech-assisted workflows. Kozma tells TV Formats Weekly about the new company and the plans for its first year in operation.

TV FORMATS: What led to the launch of Naru Force Studios?
KOZMA: We started with Pig & Horse about a year ago. Pig & Horse was founded to produce one documentary film. Then I realized I want to make more documentaries. I want to make TV. After first pitching at MIP CANNES, I realized we have to do things differently. We use so much time for developing, then pitching, then waiting, then waiting for an answer for two months because it takes time from one department to the other. In a couple of months, I realized that we have to figure out a new way to do it. And everyone’s talking about creating universes around IPs. That’s how we should think about everything. Why even start to develop something before we know what people actually want? We should just go where people are and then expand.

And why would we only think about one production at a time? I’m an actress. I’m used to thinking of things in multiple layers. As an actor, you’re part of the whole puzzle. But you see all the other departments at the same time—music, then there are costumes, everything. [It’s] the same way inside this whole industry. You’re like one little ant there, with a creative mind. And you’re like, “Oh, my God, my kids love K-pop.” And somebody’s like, “Mine, too! Do you have anything like this going on now?” “No, no, no.” “Well, then let’s start doing it.” It just comes out of discussions and then you realize, “I also want to do this and this and this.” So, this led to starting a completely new studio.

During this first year, we’re testing a lot of things, not just the content itself, but the ways of making it and what type of teams we actually need, how much data, what type of data. It’s an experiment. It’s a proof-of-concept year. We took a subject that fascinates us at the moment, which is K-pop, and we’re just testing all the possible things we can do out of it. It’s like clay. And, of course, we see how the whole ecosystem works. How does e-commerce come into it?

We’re trying the content itself and all the functions in different forms. Then, we’re trying how our production pipeline actually works. Then, we’re trying what kinds of tools are the best for us to work with. And then the tech side, that’s something that we need to do. We are developing our own tech at the same time. We are actually in the process of planning two different tech products for the market. I said, “Let’s just go for everything.” Because why not? When everything is changing so fast, then you start making something and you realize, “But we are lacking this. We are lacking tools.” And I’m like, “Can we make those tools?” Because we’re smart, we can do that. The people who I am working with are amazing. They are multi-talents. They’ve been working with so many different positions in the whole industry from distribution, sales, content creation, leading projects, directing, creating the concepts. They’ve seen it from all different angles, so they are very open-minded. I found the perfect people to work with.

Some people are saying it’s a risky time to come to the business. [The people I’m working with] say, “No, it’s the least risky time to come in.” Because when things are changing, when there’s a major change happening, that’s exactly when you need to step in. Because I don’t need to have the 30 years of experience from the production side. I’ve been on the other side of the camera. I’ve been in the industry, but looking from a different angle. And then these people, they’ve seen the development further away, much longer time than me from the office side, the practical side. But you don’t need to know everything. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t been working as a producer in films or TV. It really doesn’t matter that I haven’t done that. I’m looking at things totally out of the box because I don’t even know the boxes! My mind doesn’t have those boxes because I don’t know how things were done for years. I don’t need to change my way of thinking.

TV FORMATS: What role is AI going to play in your workflow?
KOZMA: We have to admit that AI is already making the process faster. You throw around ideas. You can do that creation part and ideas and all of that faster. I couldn’t even tell you what tools we are going to use in six months because we’re going to test them. We’re going to take the 12 most-praised tools, try them and see how they fit into the whole production line. It [will be with] human control because you have your project managers, your directors, the people looking over it. People come around and say, “Oh, but my performance is so easy. It’s so short and easy to do.” That’s the most difficult part! Three hooks in 60 seconds—it’s not easy. That’s something that tools can’t really do. You can’t write full scripts. You can use something in editing, especially when you’re starting to throw around ideas. It just makes it faster. It’s just a helping tool. We’ll see which tools are going to stay with us at the end of 11 months. I’ve given 11 months for the first proof-of-concept year.

TV FORMATS: How can the data you get from social inform how you shape an IP’s creative and commercial direction?
KOZMA: Well, first of all, you need the data before that, especially when it comes to e-commerce because that’s going to be integrated in production. You need the data already. “The same people who listen to this and that music, they will buy this and that.” We need to know that already so that we can get the right brand on board so that they sell straight to the people who are listening to this or watching that. You need the data already.

However, you collect your own data at the same time, and you change along the way because if we see that something is not quite right, then we have to come up with something fast that is more correct and that talks more to the people. But usually this is like consumer data. You have different little groups, and there’s micro-groups inside those. You have a niche, but then there’s little groups inside that too. Not everybody uses the same soap. They don’t all want the same hairdo or perfume. But it can be fairly targeted, of course. The data plays the biggest role in the whole development.

TV FORMATS: How do funding models for digital-native formats compare to those of formats that are going to launch on broadcast television first?
KOZMA: It is very different because a lot of money needs to come from private equity. But the thing is, [private investors] are more on the film side, maybe not so much in digital yet. In Monaco, I spoke with someone I know there. I explained what I have just started to do and what we’re going to do. This person has nothing to do with the business, but he saw immediately the [vision]. So, I’ve been offered money to join in. People who are used to investing, they can see how big it can get, and everybody can see the scale. The scalability is incredible because you can scale these ecosystems. You can make endless amounts of different formats. You can make different ways to play around the same IP. And [there are] so many different revenue streams. If you think about these ecosystems, they can start to grow like mushrooms—pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. You can see [how to build] around different things. It’s kind of an endless field. It’s a big business opportunity for many. There is a lot of pre-seed coming from us, but when we’re going to scale, of course, then we [will] turn to different funds and private equity. That’s the next step when we start to scale it bigger. But first we need some proof for ourselves that we can trust that this is the right way to go and that it’s a firm business model and super scalable.

TV FORMATS: That first format is K-pop themed. Is there anything at all you can share about that?
KOZMA: It’s going to be Europe-wide. It’s a new talent search show. It will be big. It’ll be very interesting to see how it’s going to come out because we’re in the middle of everything. So, I don’t even know how it will be!