Plans to launch a Czech / English subtitled version of our film Bata-ville next month are taking us down some bizarre alleyways. Last week I sold a bit (more) of my soul for some funding, by attending an 'Export' course to encourage me to see our new 'product' as financially viable.....
For an artist, being on a Department of Trade & Industry course and pumped with business & management speak for two days is actually rather exotic and fascinating. Judging from my blase classmates though, for the average business person it's a bit of a busman's holiday. Nevertheless, we had a laugh arranging the 49 steps of 'market entry' for any new export product (ours was 'golf holidays for European visitors" - incredibly relevant for my projected DVD sales), and I even managed to get a business man to the point of giving up his deskjob by simply describing my average working week attractively. Lunch was pretty lavish considering, so I really couldn't complain.
The most complicated exercise was coming up with a 'shield of export' for your proposed product and company. The pressure was on for me, what with my profile within the group as the 'arty one'. As it was, the only distinguishing factor of my effort was the sight '3D' effect of my drawing. The men that were launching shower enclosures in Dubai and the man that was marketing steam-boat trips (I'm not making this up) did rather well, though a globe in the shields' centres became a shortcut to articulating 'world domination' as ones ultimate ambition in life. I thought 'world domination' was a given in any business scenario, so had downscaled my own ambition (having been coached for 15 hours on realism - not my specialism usually) to getting Bata-ville in to cinemas, TVs and into the media.
I'll leave you to decipher the rest!
