Animated Lazio

Lazio, the animated Heart of Italy

Lazio (Latium) is one of Italy’s twenty regions and encompasses the Municipality of Rome, capital of the Region and capital of Italy. The Region is culturally and historically equipped to meet with other territories in Europe and the rest of the world: Lazio is an open museum, with a rich and variegated collection of history, myths and legends.
A place where the past blends with the present and the future. Traces of its long, rich history can be encountered everywhere: in Rome, custodian of world-famous wonders such as the Coliseum and Sistine Chapel, but also throughout the region itself, with its ancient necropolis, its grand, aristocratic palaces and Medieval hamlets. In Lazio, the oldest flavours and fragrances of Italian tradition are enhanced by excellent products such as oil, wine and cheese: the products of an agro-business which, over the years, has been capable of change and innovation. This is the region’s success factor, a mix of tradition and modernity, the highest example of Italian Style.

Lazio is a modern region, crucial for the country’s economic and cultural life. The region’s innovation and research in the quaternary service sector supports and boosts development. The production system, established worldwide as a high quality model, spans from the chemical-pharmaceutical sector to Information Technology and Telecommunication, from agro-business to fashion and luxury products, movies and audiovisuals, from papermaking to construction, from scientific research and aerospace to the shipbuilding sector.

Lazio’s Audiovisual Industry on Foreign Markets

The Audiovisual Industry in the Lazio Region of Italy is an economic production chain of excellence, at professional and industrial levels, which realizes products for multimedia publishing, cinema, TV and traditional and digital animation.

A driving force which brings together hi-tech, professionalism, creativity and tradition: 69% of Italy’s businesses in the cine-audiovisual division resides in the Region, 27% of the sector’s workforce is employed in Lazio and 15.000 days of filming take place at 40 outdoor locations every year. A division which, at regional level, represents 30% of Italian cine-audiovisual enterprises and 70% of film and video distribution, involving a total of 53 thousand skilled workers.

The District Area of the audiovisual production system of the Province of Rome, hosts over 2.700 units locally, employing 51 thousand workers, with an export level in 2008 worth 144 million euros.

Italy’s major television broadcasters are present in Lazio. Particularly significant is the presence in Rome of the Cinecittà film studios (managed by Cinecittà Holding S.p.A.) where the most part of Italian film and fiction production is concentrated and which attract a great many film productions from abroad.

Traditional and Digital Animated Film

In recent years, the audiovisual and multimedia sectors have grown and evolved thanks to the role of excellence taken on by enterprises operating in the production of 3D and virtual graphics. In this context, the figures related to the production of animated content are particularly significant.

In the Lazio Region, there are about 25 specialized enterprises with core business activities related to the sector of animation, whatever their position in the production chain: production services, production, post-production, distribution. In fact, about 50% of the nation’s animation studios are to be found in the Lazio Region. The workforce involved in the animation production chain involves approximately 1000 professionals.
The total turnover of enterprises active in Lazio is currently in the region of 100 million euros (including “non-animation” businesses operating in the division): figures of considerable importance, in the economy of the national audiovisual industry, both for the significant effects on related industry and for the positive interaction with other segments of the audiovisual production chain: cinema, fiction, special effects, videogames, educational, advertising, crossmedia.

The natural abilities to be found in the fabric of animation enterprises in the Lazio Region are strengthened by a particularly innovative policy implemented by the Region at various levels: from aid for SMEs to professional training (the Training Pole for Film and Audiovisuals) and the creation of Industrial District policies (Technological District for Cultural Heritage and Activities, etc.)

Lazio is now acknowledged as a “benchmark” region in the scenario of national cultural and media policies and as an example of great interest at European level, both for the economic and financial intensity of intervention and for the different experimental forms of action.

The professional, artistic and business activities which orbit around the concept, production and commercialisation of “cartoons” are seen thus therefore as a reference point for the economic and industrial development policies in the Lazio Region.

One of the strong points of animation is the ability to overcome, better than other audiovisual products, language barriers, and therefore to become an industrial internationalisation tool.

The development opportunities offered by the growing number of distribution platforms present new possibilities for all those professional, artistic and business activities orbiting around the concept, production and commercialization of animated content. The possibility of replication of content through diverse media pushes forward new frontiers in creativity.
Sectors with a high level of innovation, such as the production of crossmedia content, are fundamental in responding to an increasingly refined demand for “imagery” on behalf of an increasingly diversified range of end-users.

Professionals and enterprises in the Lazio Region, having learned over the year to blend technological innovation and artistic sensitivity, are now ready to compete and address the challenges of the global market.