After five successful editions of the PROFilm Days conference, the Croatian film industry and the video game industry are 'blending' together to create a new platform for discussing current topics - Blender: Film & Games. The conference will take place on October 4, 2024, at Algebra University, and all panels and workshops are free for all interested, with prior registration. The program will be held on two stages and in workshop rooms. Along with the most relevant Croatian, regional, and international speakers, existing problems will be discussed, and participants will be informed about new technologies and innovations that have become essential in this industry worldwide. There will also be booths in the foyer of Algebra University featuring representatives from educational institutions for audiovisual professions, as well as booths from the video game industry that will inform all interested participants about opportunities for finding a new career in the audiovisual industry.
We can expect the richest program yet, highlighting the following topics:
- Promotion of films on the gaming platform Roblox
- Film criticism in the age of social media
- Virtual production: using game engines in the production of feature films, series, TV programs
- Crossmedia and Transmedia: from film to video games and from video games to film
- Globally successful location managers and their experiences in creating sets we love
- Stage 32 – a platform that connects film professionals worldwide
- Education for a career in the audiovisual industry
- And they are not even 30 yet! – showcasing young talents in the AV industry
- Animation - Similarities and differences in the animation of films and video games
- From Westeros to Middle Earth: Art and exploration in 3D scenography
- and many more
A special room will host scriptwriting workshops with internationally successful script mentors:
The film script workshop, lasting 3.5 hours, will be led by Branko Ružić, an international writer born in Split, who now lives and works between London and Singapore. His authored works include 14 TV series (Mrkomir, Minus i Plus, Bitange i princeze, Dobre namjere, Ugly Betty, and others) and three feature films (Moj dida je pao s Marsa, Nije sve u lovi, Izgubljeni princ); his theatrical plays have been translated into 7 languages, and he is a multiple award-winning author. He is currently working for Studio Dragon/MBC (South Korea) on the Lee Jin project. As a consultant, he worked on the adaptation of the traditional Chinese story Into the Mortal (Winsing); he is working on projects for Fremantle Australia and on the Croatian children's feature film Eva & Hm.
Video Game Scenarios are far from ordinary text as they are also technical documents containing hundreds of pages of visual descriptions, flow diagrams, branching dialogues, and scenes. The workshop on the script of a hit video game lasting 3.5 hours will be led by Siniša Bahun, an academic dramaturge who has been intensively working for the domestic video game industry for the past ten years. He has contributed to Croatian successes such as SCUM, The Red Solstice, Aquatico, Reset and many others. He teaches creative writing for the medium of video games at Vern University and the Academy of Dramatic Arts. In addition, he writes scripts for animated films, some of which, like ‘The Ballad of the Flute and the Necklace’ (Jaka Produkcija), are among the most awarded works in recent years. He has also designed interactive and VR installations for the Geo Info Center Voćin. He is a regular collaborator with the children's program of HRT, where he is currently working on several active projects as part of the morning mosaic Juhuhu.
In the third workshop, an enchantment of transforming an ordinary 2D illustration or photograph into a dynamic 3D space will be presented by an external lecturer from Algebra University and collaborator in the Game Development program, multimedia artist Ivan Šivak. Using simple techniques, Šivak will share his years of experience in the fields of comics, illustration, and animation with the workshop participants and explain how to enrich a static image and create an impressive 3D world. At the end of the process, by adding a camera and animating its path, the workshop participants will create an amazing 3D effect and simultaneously bring the mentioned photograph to life.
Famous Location Managers as Guests of the Conference
This year, representatives of the conference partners, the global organization of location managers (LMGI), who are key players in finding filming locations and thus understand the economic and promotional impact of the film industry, will again participate in the program. The conference will host Naomi Liston from the United Kingdom and Klaus Grosse Darrelmann from Germany. This year's guests have selected filming locations for some of the biggest film hits such as Avengers: Endgame, Game of Thrones: The Last Watch, Game of Thrones, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, and Red Sparrow . Naomi and Klaus will tour Croatia after the conference in search of new filming locations for their future projects.
Westeros and Middle Earth are iconic locations from series known to everyone, and Predrag Šuka, the head of the undergraduate multimedia production program, will introduce interested parties to the creation of castles from locations in the mentioned popular series and films – from The Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones and to historical locations like the Republic of Dubrovnik. Through the lecture, he will showcase the process of building a castle for a scene in which actors move and in which that castle occupies most of the space. By combining the existing and the created, various artistic directions, crafting narratives and atmospheres by adding effects, the lecture focuses on post-production and the way of connecting elements into a continuous production process.
On the panel Virtual Production: Using game engines in the production of feature films, series, and TV programs, Antonio Nuić, Jurica Šimunković, Hrvoje Boljkovac, and Armin Konjalić will discuss, moderated by Marin Pavelić.
The panel Film Criticism in the Age of Social Media will certainly be very interesting with Nina Kovačić, Milena Zajović, Josip Jurčić, and Marko Stojiljković from Slovenia, moderated by the always fantastic Boško Picula.
The Blender conference is organized by Zagreb Film Office and Croatian Audiovisual Centre, which has dedicated its project Games Croatia to promoting and further developing the Croatian video game industry on a national, European, and global level, all with the aim of developing and growing this rapidly growing sector through promotion at international fairs and conferences. Additionally, the conference is held with the support of partners from Algebra University, the Ministry of Culture and Media, the City Office for Culture and Civil Society, TZGZ, and with the support of film and gaming associations. The program starts at 9:00 AM and lasts until 6:00 PM. Entry to the conference is free with registration, which is open until October 3rd at 6:00 PM at this link. All news about the conference can also be followed on Instagram and the Facebook page of the conference.
