Underpinning many of these initiatives are opportunities for international partners to co-create with Singapore media firms on content, services and applications across seven media clusters – film, television, animation, music, interactive media, publishing and games.

Government-to-Government Partnerships
MDA has established partnerships with government counterparts all over the world to facilitate Singapore media collaborations with overseas partners.

The Singapore Government has forged bilateral co-production treaties with Australia, Canada, Korea and New Zealand. These treaties bring together talents and resources of participating countries to create quality media content for international markets. In addition, 17 Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) on media cooperation have been signed with countries including Australia, Brunei, France, Japan, Korea, United Kingdom and Thailand.

Bait, Singapore’s first stereoscopic 3D film that is currently in development, is the first official project under the Australia-Singapore Co-production Treaty that was signed in 2007. Co-produced by Singapore’s Blackmagic Design and Australia’s Arclight Films, Story Bridge Films and Pictures In Paradise, the film is funded by MDA through its International Film Fund and by the Australian federal body Screen Australia and the regional Screen Queensland.

Intensifying the push into the United Kingdom, MDA and South West Screen ­– the media development agency for South West England – formed the Multi-Platform Content Across Continents initiative, to promote collaborations between Singapore and British producers on multi-platform projects.

Down under, the MDA-ScreenWest Cross-Media Development Initiative encourages multi-platform co-productions between Singapore and Western Australian companies. This initiative's second call for proposals brought about three co-productions – Potted Histories by Australia’s Great Western Entertainment and Singapore’s Infinite Frameworks; Are you Smarter than Nature? by Australia’s Sea Dog TV International and Singapore’s Very!; and Global Sound Hunters by Australia’s Circling Shark Productions and Singapore’s Xtreme Production.

Said Mr William Lim, Executive Producer with Xtreme Production: “It has been working out great, and Xtreme is currently in talks with other global partners to develop other exciting projects for global audiences.”

Penetrating the China Market
To give local media firms an extra fillip, MDA has also organised business missions. Their most recent programme brought 30 Singapore digital media players on a five-day trip to China. It is one of the key markets, along with the UK and ASEAN that MDA is focusing on to help Singapore’s media companies penetrate.

The mission, organised in November last year, covered Beijing, Shanghai and Shaanxi. Participants attended networking events, pitching sessions, and visited Chinese digital media companies and research centres.

Besides the mission, Singapore and China have had regular exchanges in the field of interactive digital media research and development. In 2008, Singapore’s Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts and China’s Ministry of Science and Technology signed an MOU on bilateral collaboration in interactive digital media research and development. Under the MOU, two resulting projects were: a collaboration with the Science & Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality to establish a digital media test-bed exchange between Singapore and Shanghai, and a collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Science Institute of Automation to set up the China-Singapore Institute of Digital Media in Singapore.

Singapore’s MyChinaChannel and Shanghai Media Group’s distribution unit, Wings Media, agreed to co-produce China Trend, a 13-part series on the modern China lifestyle, and My China Destiny, a series on foreigners settling in China. China Trend has been successfully screened, and both companies are now working on My China Destiny, due for telecast in China in October 2010.

MyChinaChannel is currently working on other co-production projects with China TV networks and producers. The genres include infotainment, drama and movies. Ms Angelin Ong, of MyChinaChannel, said: “A number of these special projects are being finalised and announcements will be made at the Shanghai TV Festival in June 2010.”

Co-Investments Through Funding
MDA created the International Film Fund last year and the International Animation Fund this year to enable Singapore media companies to enter the international market via co-productions. Singapore production and post-production companies assume executive producer or co-producer roles together with international partners in large-scale commercial films and animated features.

To further facilitate the production and distribution of quality Made-by-Singapore content, MDA co-invests in projects with potential for global reach under the SCREEN (TV) scheme. The Spearheading Publishing Innovation for New Enterprise (SPINE) scheme fosters the development of original publishing properties into brands and franchises for multiple media platforms.

Market Development
On the market development front, MDA has been leading delegations to various overseas and local media markets and trade events, such as MIPTV and the Cannes Film Market. Last year, 95 companies promoted their content and capabilities under the Singapore Pavilion.

Made-by-Singapore television content has now found users in over 70 countries, while the country’s digital media applications are reaching out to millions in over 210 countries. MDA’s internationalisation efforts are indeed paying off.