From green managers to intimacy coordinators, and brand managers to diversity and inclusion heads, VFX supervisors and many, many others, the times we’re living in and the profound transformations taking place in the audiovisual sector are necessitating a whole new series of professional roles. These needs were discussed in the panel entitled “New  Professions for New Scenarios: New Opportunities within the Film and Audiovisual Sector in the Current Global Landscape”, which was organised by the Rome Lazio Film Commission and held on 11 December in Rome’s Palazzo Poli, and which involved leading exponents of these new professions relating to film production and audiovisual content in the digital age. The discussion was designed as an open workshop, aimed at developing a strategy for training new generations for roles which are set to be increasingly popular on the labour market. “As film commissions, we want to identify the new needs of the production world”, the special commissioner of Rome Lazio FC Maria Giuseppina Troccoli explained, “in order to set up targeted training courses, potentially from next year”.

Stealing focus amongst these new professions are the roles of green manager and intimacy coordinator, which have only recently appeared in Italy and which are based on existing protocols abroad. “The role of green manager - in other words, the person responsible for directing production teams towards ecologically sustainable choices – is yet to be contractually defined for us”, explained Carla Bernardin, Fremantle’s green and sustainability manager; her work, aside from ensuring adherence to all good practices, is to gather data relating to consumption on set and to enter it into a calculator which measures CO2 emissions. Luisa Lazzaro, meanwhile, spoke about the role of an intimacy coordinator, whose job it is to ensure proper conduct during intimate scenes: “In Italy, we still don’t have a national protocol for this role, which first appeared in America in 2014 on the set of The Deuce, following an actress’s request”. London-based firm Safe Sets, for whom Lazzaro works, has joined forces with Anica Academy and Netflix, with support from Sky Italia, to launch the first ever training course in our country. “I’m going to need back-up soon”, Lazzaro added, “because since I started a year and a half ago, I’ve had so many requests from broadcasters”.

Laura Corbetta, chair of OBE Osservatorio Branded Entertainment, described the role of a brand manager who acts as the point of contact between brands and the cultural industry. “As it stands, the nine leading companies capitalised on the international market produce intangible goods, meaning that the power of the brand, i.e. the capacity to sell oneself through original and unique stories, is more important than the product itself. Brands no longer speak exclusively to a company’s existing clients; we need only think of what has recently been achieved with films like Barbie or Air, or what Michael Jordan has done for Nike”. For Giuseppe Musci, diversity and inclusion manager at SKY, what started out as a survey into diversity and inclusion in his own company has now turned into a full-time job: “We started from inside our own company, from our people, analysing data and identifying the different sectors’ needs. That’s how networks such as Women Sky were born, which unites more than 500 women who propose initiatives to improve female leadership numbers and everyday life, and LGBTQ+, in order to lend visibility to all genders. Other areas we’re working on are people with disabilities and mental health”.

Francesco Mastrofini, the co-founder and CEO of Rainbow CGI, spoke about Rainbow Academy, the academy founded in 2011 with the aim of fusing training and industry experience, and training professionals for the creation of cartoons (his company, presided over by Igino Straffi, devised and produced the animated Winx Club series). The focus then turned to roles such as post-production supervisor, VFX supervisor and sound designer, courtesy of Monica Verzolini, Fabio Cerrito (of frame by frame) and Mirko Perri, respectively. Federico Basso, a film director and the creative director of ETT’s video productions, homed in on virtual reality and how it can be of service to traditional cinema. Last but not least, the world of videogames was at the heart of the discussion’s closing rounds, with Raoul Carbone, chair of the Video Game Museum of Rome Foundation, and Fabio Viola, game designer and curator of the gaming area at Turin’s National Film Museum, reminding us how the videogames market share is the most prosperous within the entertainment sector, with a global turnover of roughly 200 billion dollars, and how interactive works can be considered veritable forms of art.

A recording of the full panel discussion can be accessed here.