Australian production company Benchmark Films is taking on the Asian market in its third series; iKatch, a new cooking and travel series which is being shot in Australia for a Chinese network in Mandarin. Currently in production, iKatch follows Benchmark’s success in the food television genre with series My Family Feast and On the Grill. The new series is a part travel, part cooking show being filmed across rural New South Wales.
Giovanni Pacialeo, Director of Benchmark Films, emphasises the importance of a strong relationship with their network partners in China. “We’ve got a famous chef from China who was sent to us by the Chinese network and we have an Australian Chinese crew working for us here. It’s a fishing, cooking, and travel show that’s being backed by Destination NSW,” he says. “We actually don’t have to do that much hands on business in China. It’s our design and format that they want and we’ve developed a good relationship with the network there over the past three years. Everything is built on trust.”
The Sydney based production company was founded in 2009 by Pacialeo and Producer Paul Sullivan and has been responsible for a number of successful television series, films and digital and commercial content for Australian and Chinese audiences. The two formed a long standing friendship and working relationship after meeting on the set of Babe 2 in 1997 as third assistant directors, and it is their shared experience in balancing work and family that first inspired them to launch Benchmark Films.
“We both started having children and it’s really hard, especially when your kids start school and you’re living away from home six months at a time, it’s a nightmare. So Paul and I were working as second assistant directors on Superman Returns and we thought ‘we’ve got these ideas, how can we develop them? How can we work as much as we can in Sydney and be with our families?’ That was one of the mains in starting the company,” says Pacialeo, “I had such a fantastic – call it a training background – as an assistant director in film, and that definitely is where the love is for both of us as well, for me and Paul, and the drive is definitely to continue making film.”
Benchmark’s first television project My Family Feast, which aired on SBS in 2009, brought the company into the spotlight and received critical acclaim. The series follows host Sean Connelly as he visits families with diverse cultural backgrounds around Australia, discovering their family recipes and the unique role food plays in important cultural events. “I think our first television project is probably my favourite because it was one that was really difficult to get up, but once we did, SBS was just fantastic. They were so positive and really let us run with all the design and the programming, and how the show was supposed to feel and look. They were so trusting, and the families we were working with were wonderful, which made the on-set experience so great – and the results were too. The show won ‘Best Show in Australia’ at the Australia Food Media Awards, and then went on to do really well overseas,” says Pacialeo.
Some of Benchmark’s other projects have included corporate digital content for companies such as The Star and Suburu, and feature films Esconde and Cactus. Benchmark Films currently has two additional feature films on the horizon currently in development, and is continuing to expand with projects in the Asian and European markets.