Israel’s Young Creators
Israeli series and formats have conquered the small screens in the past few years turning the small Near East country into one of the biggest exporters of TV content on a global level. Anyone who has ever worked with people from Israel would know of their great professionalism and motivation to be the best at what they do but all of this would be nothing without the great creative talent born in the country. We meet two of the young creators who will be defining the future of Israeli formats in the coming years.
Shy Barmeli
Shy, you have a pretty interesting story of how you entered the format business. Tell us what happened exactly?
I was in Vancouver, in Canada, where I worked in the diamonds industry, I was doing sales of diamonds and after 4 years in rainy Vancouver I said “no more”, I have to go back home. So it was then that I decided I’m only going to do things I enjoy, because selling diamonds is a lot of money but there is not a lot of fun in it, and you look at your life and say “Why did I waste my time for the last 4 years?” And then my friend offered me a job: “Listen, there is this job for an assistant in production” and I said “You know what, I would take anything, I just want to be in the business of television - what I studied’. So I started as a production assistant, running after celebrities, giving them water or making sure they are not hot or that they’re satisfied and that was in United Studios of Israel.
And one day you came up with a great idea for a TV show. How was it born?
One day I was sent to the supermarket, and it was funny because in Canada you buy one tomato, one cucumber, two oranges - you don’t buy in kilos, because it doesn’t exist, people don’t buy in kilos. So I come to the supermarket here in Israel and there is a special promotion - buy one plastic bag for 75 shekels and you can fill it with as many tomatoes as you want. And I see people putting tomatoes and squeezing them into this bag, and I said “Wow, that’s ridiculous! Why would they do that? You can’t even use half of the tomatoes you squeeze into that bag” and on the way back to the studios I had this idea where the one-liner was “Let’s see what happens when greed meets its biggest enemy – time”. And then I started thinking how I want to create a television game out of it. And then I came up with the game, I met Taliah Shahar from United Studios and I said “ I have an idea for a game, what should I do with it” and that’s how I got in! They really liked the idea, Sony was in the picture, Reshet was in the picture and a year later we started broadcasting in primetime on Channel 2.
How were you involved in the whole development process?
I presented the idea and then I was part of the development and the whole process. I created the game and I was basically involved in every step of the project, from the idea, all the decision making, how the studio is going to look, they were very welcoming into the whole process - you know, they could tell me “It’s a nice idea, we’ll do the job”, but they really gave me the stage to show what I’d like it to look like. The show has been sold to 20 countries I think, already.
There was one funny thing: we were in production, and Raid the Cage was sold to China, during the development process, and actually it was aired in China before it was aired in Israel. We were delaying the broadcast, it was really funny that China was ahead of us with a week or two.
After that I was in contact with Sony and I had a first deal agreement with them for two years, but as soon as I started with Raid the Cage, the only thing I cared about was how am I going to come up with my next show. And this is why I established CreateIt, because I’m always thinking about how I’m gonna create another new thing, how I’m gonna move forward, because this is my company’s biggest motivation - to come up with the next thing. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, the only thing that matters is what we are going to do.
So how did you start your company?
I was with Sony for two years and I met Ori Dror, who is my partner today and he’s Head of Development in the company. When I met him he was the chief editor and the showrunner for Raid the Cage and Still Standing, Babooshka, The Big Picture, etc. and we had a great connection. The two of us started to develop together ideas and at the end of it I thought - “Listen, we are really good at what we are doing. Let’s do something for ourselves” and the first thing we did was Pull Over which was really a guerilla production - my mom made the sandwiches, my friend operated the camera, we asked one of the hosts who we knew in Israel to come and be the host and the whole thing was really a guerilla production, and it went to Armoza and Armoza said “great idea” and sold a few options and also put it on air in Spain. So I told him - “See if we are doing and we are creating, things will happen”, so we called the company CreateIt and we have 11 titles in the past 2 years. All the titles, everything’s created by us.
You also recently sold a show to Endemol Shine. Can you tell us more about that?
With them it was a very interesting process. We really liked an idea that we called Cash Crush. So we went to Endemol Shine. They really liked the idea and they invested in the pilot, we did the pilot and from the moment they gave us the “Go ahead”, from the meeting until we had the take, it was 4 days. We recruited everybody, we had the studio ready, everything in 4 days and we delivered the pilot, because they had a big meeting where they wanted to present it. So we sold them the game and they invested also in the pilot, took the IP and now there are few countries already interested, there is one country that is already producing and they are going to air it in January.
Can you mention some other shows that you are working on right now?
We are currently working on Play Date, that we won the Israeli Conference pitch cometition with. It’s a daily strip where families are meeting every day in someone else’s house for a Play Date. The kids are playing, while the parents are watching the hosting family, and the kids at the end are giving the house a grade. So the play date, the food, etc. We shot a test that was very successful and now we are going to shoot a pilot. We are going to launch it at MIP.
Also we are working on a show that is Road Trip. It’s a show where the the mentors are driving to the homes of the potential stars, pick them up and do the auditions in the car. We did it with Media Pro. Another show that we launched at MIPCOM was Shoot Me If I’m Wrong, a show where if you don’t know you get shot by a paintball and it’s a very high-tension show that got a lot of interest. In general, as you can see we are always dealing with the extreme, as we want to bring our audience to a interesting situation in an extreme condition.
Why do you think Israeli shows are so popular around the world? What’s the secret for this success?
I think that what’s happening in Israel is like in a startup, Israel is trying to take simple ideas and simple visions and stop and look at them. While other countries are, there is a whole book Startup Nation where they talk about the innovation in Israel. So, it started with the startups and now it’s coming into television, that Israeli people are innovating and trying to create out of really simple ideas that make sense, but nobody thought about them before. Of course there is a lot of creation around the world that is huge but Israel is a country with 8 million people and maybe 50.000 opinions. So also in creative, there are a lot of creative people that want to show their opinion about how gameshows should look like, how reality shows should look like, and they do it by creating formats that are really interesting, because if you look at it, if you are coming out of Israel, it is always on the spot with what is hot, and always with ideas that are a little bit not ahead, but exactly in the trend. I think that Israelis know how to recognize the trend and how to work by it.
Do you think that age is also a factor? It seems like there is a lot of young people involved in this whole process, especially in Israel.
I totally agree that age is a factor. In the company we are running for almost a year and a half now, we have a group of young people - it’s like a workshop - they don’t pay for the workshop, we teach them how to create formats and they come up with their ideas. Those people, by definition, are not coming from the business of television - we have doctors, we have lawyers, we have one girl who works in a coffee place. They’re bringing cool ideas, all of them are young, and what we decided to do is to give them a place where they can bring us, the television people, things that we are not aware of. We even have a 17-year old guy who gave us a few good ideas that we are working on and developing, that we are not aware of, things that are trends in the youngest world. You know I’m 37, I don’t think I’m that old, but obviously when you look at a 17-year old, they tell you “Listen, the hottest thing now is to watch people play FIFA” and I will ask “What’s fun about this?”, because I prefer to play on PlayStation, not to watch, and he says “This is the biggest trend”, and now we are opening a YouTube channel in Israel with people commenting the games - it’s a trend that has already been in the world for many years, but we have a twist on it that we will do in our show. So we can take that idea, we can take the trend that he brings and he shows us, and put a twist on it. And I think, with my experience, and their creative minds, the result is amazing.
Lital, what attracted your interest to television and how did you start creating formats?
I’ve been working as a journalist and news anchor for a few years. I’m working for different channels and media outlets and most of the time I’m in front of the screen. Seeing the industry from the inside and given the fact that I’m a former freelance copywriter doing mostly digital stuff, I see myself as an entrepreneur and a person who comes from the world of ideas. I’m always having ideas on various things: initiatives, TV ideas, apps. I’m always creating and I think the whole format industry is very popular and it gained more and more strength in the past few years with a lot of Israeli formats and TV series that have traveled all over the world; and this is how I got drawn to this whole world. Also, seeing my partner Elwin (Senior Creative Director at Armoza Formats) creating stuff all the time and asking about ideas also drew me to the format world.
When did you come up with your first idea?
My first idea was Come to Bed – it is a docu reality showing people in their most intimate time before they go to bed. I understood that there is a huge insight there, with people peeling their layers and creating their most intimate shrine – the bedroom. From my personal experiences in this situation of talking about your day, things bothering you and also the experience of having other couples who are facing different life situations – couples expecting kids or people rediscovering their relationship after their kids have left home, or a single guy who every night has a different girl in his bedroom. All these different states in life and experiences I think they need to be shown.
I applied with this idea at the pitching contest organized by Small World IFT and Reed MIDEM at Kiev Media Week. I was among the top five finalists and I flew there and pitched my idea and I won. Small World took the rights and we developed it a bit together and they launched it at MIPTV. I was also sitting with them in a few meetings with clients and I saw how people are really enthusiastic about it and now the hard part starts – to close the deals in all those territories. I’m very excited to work with Small World, and really excited with this format.
After that you sold a show to Global Agency. Can you tell more about it?
It’s a cooking show that has both elements from gameshows and cooking shows in which you have two families from the same street competing against each other by cooking a meal for two celebrity chefs who are surprise guests in their homes. The chefs are carrying a suitcase full of a lot of money with them which the families can win. It is called Cook for the Chefs and Global Agency is distributing it.
You had another interesting experience this year by winning the Elevator Pitch at MIPCOM. How did you win it?
They just invited people to come and pitch their ideas inside an elevator in Cannes. So people pitch their ideas and the videos went to the judges from Red Arrow who picked my idea. After that I had a meeting with Mike Timmerman and I pitched him my idea and we are still in contact and now I started sending him a few other ideas. So that was a nice way to get in touch with people when you are a newbie at MIP.
Do you have any new projects that you are working on at the moment?
Yes, I got back from MIPCOM and I was overwhelmed and so inspired by everything going on there and I’m now working on a few new ideas – some are entertainment, talent shows, some are cooking shows and reality shows.
Does this come easy to you? Or do you spend a lot of time thinking about new ideas?
Yes, the ideas are coming very easily. The hard part is to develop the show and to check that there is nothing similar out there and to find a unique element to it to make it special – something that people haven’t seen before. So that takes some effort.
Also, there are not so many young people and women creating new formats in this industry so what was the attitude of the TV pros towards you during MIPCOM?
I can’t say that I felt different in any way. But I do feel that you do need to be more prepared and really schedule all your meetings in advance to make the most of it. I do think that the majority of the format creators are men and I would want to see more women in that field in the future.
What is the situation in Israel? Are there more women engaged in the process of creating formats?
When you look at the creative directors out there – the head of creative at Armoza is a woman and the head of creative at Reshet is also a woman and that’s just a few examples. So, yes, there are a lot of women creating formats in Israel.
Can we also say that this one of the key ingredients that makes Israeli shows so successful?
Yes, I think Israel is a very innovative country and you can see it in so many different fields like the high-tech industry and the startup industry where we are Number 2 after the US per capita and I think we are Number 4 in exporting formats. I think some of the reasons are that we are a young country and we needed to grow rapidly – we don’t have many natural resources here so our biggest resource is our brains, so we are constantly inventing new stuff.
You were also in the 40under40 ranking of one of the leading websites covering the media world in Israel. Do you know most of the people in that ranking and what are the criteria to get in there?
I think they picked the rising stars of the industry – television, advertising, media. People who achieved a lot this year and made the headlines and I actually know most of the people on the list and it’s a great honor.
Are you planning to build your own company or are you going to work closer with a particular company?
At the moment I’m not thinking about creating my own company. Maybe that will happen in the future when I have enough formats. Now, my main job is being a news anchor. I just recently got to be the new host of News Evening – one of the first news shows in Israel on Channel 1, and I’m hoping to grow and create more new exciting shows.
I was in Vancouver, in Canada, where I worked in the diamonds industry, I was doing sales of diamonds and after 4 years in rainy Vancouver I said “no more”, I have to go back home. So it was then that I decided I’m only going to do things I enjoy, because selling diamonds is a lot of money but there is not a lot of fun in it, and you look at your life and say “Why did I waste my time for the last 4 years?” And then my friend offered me a job: “Listen, there is this job for an assistant in production” and I said “You know what, I would take anything, I just want to be in the business of television - what I studied’. So I started as a production assistant, running after celebrities, giving them water or making sure they are not hot or that they’re satisfied and that was in United Studios of Israel.
And one day you came up with a great idea for a TV show. How was it born?
One day I was sent to the supermarket, and it was funny because in Canada you buy one tomato, one cucumber, two oranges - you don’t buy in kilos, because it doesn’t exist, people don’t buy in kilos. So I come to the supermarket here in Israel and there is a special promotion - buy one plastic bag for 75 shekels and you can fill it with as many tomatoes as you want. And I see people putting tomatoes and squeezing them into this bag, and I said “Wow, that’s ridiculous! Why would they do that? You can’t even use half of the tomatoes you squeeze into that bag” and on the way back to the studios I had this idea where the one-liner was “Let’s see what happens when greed meets its biggest enemy – time”. And then I started thinking how I want to create a television game out of it. And then I came up with the game, I met Taliah Shahar from United Studios and I said “ I have an idea for a game, what should I do with it” and that’s how I got in! They really liked the idea, Sony was in the picture, Reshet was in the picture and a year later we started broadcasting in primetime on Channel 2.
How were you involved in the whole development process?
I presented the idea and then I was part of the development and the whole process. I created the game and I was basically involved in every step of the project, from the idea, all the decision making, how the studio is going to look, they were very welcoming into the whole process - you know, they could tell me “It’s a nice idea, we’ll do the job”, but they really gave me the stage to show what I’d like it to look like. The show has been sold to 20 countries I think, already.
There was one funny thing: we were in production, and Raid the Cage was sold to China, during the development process, and actually it was aired in China before it was aired in Israel. We were delaying the broadcast, it was really funny that China was ahead of us with a week or two.
After that I was in contact with Sony and I had a first deal agreement with them for two years, but as soon as I started with Raid the Cage, the only thing I cared about was how am I going to come up with my next show. And this is why I established CreateIt, because I’m always thinking about how I’m gonna create another new thing, how I’m gonna move forward, because this is my company’s biggest motivation - to come up with the next thing. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, the only thing that matters is what we are going to do.
So how did you start your company?
I was with Sony for two years and I met Ori Dror, who is my partner today and he’s Head of Development in the company. When I met him he was the chief editor and the showrunner for Raid the Cage and Still Standing, Babooshka, The Big Picture, etc. and we had a great connection. The two of us started to develop together ideas and at the end of it I thought - “Listen, we are really good at what we are doing. Let’s do something for ourselves” and the first thing we did was Pull Over which was really a guerilla production - my mom made the sandwiches, my friend operated the camera, we asked one of the hosts who we knew in Israel to come and be the host and the whole thing was really a guerilla production, and it went to Armoza and Armoza said “great idea” and sold a few options and also put it on air in Spain. So I told him - “See if we are doing and we are creating, things will happen”, so we called the company CreateIt and we have 11 titles in the past 2 years. All the titles, everything’s created by us.
You also recently sold a show to Endemol Shine. Can you tell us more about that?
With them it was a very interesting process. We really liked an idea that we called Cash Crush. So we went to Endemol Shine. They really liked the idea and they invested in the pilot, we did the pilot and from the moment they gave us the “Go ahead”, from the meeting until we had the take, it was 4 days. We recruited everybody, we had the studio ready, everything in 4 days and we delivered the pilot, because they had a big meeting where they wanted to present it. So we sold them the game and they invested also in the pilot, took the IP and now there are few countries already interested, there is one country that is already producing and they are going to air it in January.
Can you mention some other shows that you are working on right now?
We are currently working on Play Date, that we won the Israeli Conference pitch cometition with. It’s a daily strip where families are meeting every day in someone else’s house for a Play Date. The kids are playing, while the parents are watching the hosting family, and the kids at the end are giving the house a grade. So the play date, the food, etc. We shot a test that was very successful and now we are going to shoot a pilot. We are going to launch it at MIP.
Also we are working on a show that is Road Trip. It’s a show where the the mentors are driving to the homes of the potential stars, pick them up and do the auditions in the car. We did it with Media Pro. Another show that we launched at MIPCOM was Shoot Me If I’m Wrong, a show where if you don’t know you get shot by a paintball and it’s a very high-tension show that got a lot of interest. In general, as you can see we are always dealing with the extreme, as we want to bring our audience to a interesting situation in an extreme condition.
Why do you think Israeli shows are so popular around the world? What’s the secret for this success?
I think that what’s happening in Israel is like in a startup, Israel is trying to take simple ideas and simple visions and stop and look at them. While other countries are, there is a whole book Startup Nation where they talk about the innovation in Israel. So, it started with the startups and now it’s coming into television, that Israeli people are innovating and trying to create out of really simple ideas that make sense, but nobody thought about them before. Of course there is a lot of creation around the world that is huge but Israel is a country with 8 million people and maybe 50.000 opinions. So also in creative, there are a lot of creative people that want to show their opinion about how gameshows should look like, how reality shows should look like, and they do it by creating formats that are really interesting, because if you look at it, if you are coming out of Israel, it is always on the spot with what is hot, and always with ideas that are a little bit not ahead, but exactly in the trend. I think that Israelis know how to recognize the trend and how to work by it.
Do you think that age is also a factor? It seems like there is a lot of young people involved in this whole process, especially in Israel.
I totally agree that age is a factor. In the company we are running for almost a year and a half now, we have a group of young people - it’s like a workshop - they don’t pay for the workshop, we teach them how to create formats and they come up with their ideas. Those people, by definition, are not coming from the business of television - we have doctors, we have lawyers, we have one girl who works in a coffee place. They’re bringing cool ideas, all of them are young, and what we decided to do is to give them a place where they can bring us, the television people, things that we are not aware of. We even have a 17-year old guy who gave us a few good ideas that we are working on and developing, that we are not aware of, things that are trends in the youngest world. You know I’m 37, I don’t think I’m that old, but obviously when you look at a 17-year old, they tell you “Listen, the hottest thing now is to watch people play FIFA” and I will ask “What’s fun about this?”, because I prefer to play on PlayStation, not to watch, and he says “This is the biggest trend”, and now we are opening a YouTube channel in Israel with people commenting the games - it’s a trend that has already been in the world for many years, but we have a twist on it that we will do in our show. So we can take that idea, we can take the trend that he brings and he shows us, and put a twist on it. And I think, with my experience, and their creative minds, the result is amazing.
Lital Shemesh
Lital, what attracted your interest to television and how did you start creating formats?
I’ve been working as a journalist and news anchor for a few years. I’m working for different channels and media outlets and most of the time I’m in front of the screen. Seeing the industry from the inside and given the fact that I’m a former freelance copywriter doing mostly digital stuff, I see myself as an entrepreneur and a person who comes from the world of ideas. I’m always having ideas on various things: initiatives, TV ideas, apps. I’m always creating and I think the whole format industry is very popular and it gained more and more strength in the past few years with a lot of Israeli formats and TV series that have traveled all over the world; and this is how I got drawn to this whole world. Also, seeing my partner Elwin (Senior Creative Director at Armoza Formats) creating stuff all the time and asking about ideas also drew me to the format world.
When did you come up with your first idea?
My first idea was Come to Bed – it is a docu reality showing people in their most intimate time before they go to bed. I understood that there is a huge insight there, with people peeling their layers and creating their most intimate shrine – the bedroom. From my personal experiences in this situation of talking about your day, things bothering you and also the experience of having other couples who are facing different life situations – couples expecting kids or people rediscovering their relationship after their kids have left home, or a single guy who every night has a different girl in his bedroom. All these different states in life and experiences I think they need to be shown.
I applied with this idea at the pitching contest organized by Small World IFT and Reed MIDEM at Kiev Media Week. I was among the top five finalists and I flew there and pitched my idea and I won. Small World took the rights and we developed it a bit together and they launched it at MIPTV. I was also sitting with them in a few meetings with clients and I saw how people are really enthusiastic about it and now the hard part starts – to close the deals in all those territories. I’m very excited to work with Small World, and really excited with this format.
After that you sold a show to Global Agency. Can you tell more about it?
It’s a cooking show that has both elements from gameshows and cooking shows in which you have two families from the same street competing against each other by cooking a meal for two celebrity chefs who are surprise guests in their homes. The chefs are carrying a suitcase full of a lot of money with them which the families can win. It is called Cook for the Chefs and Global Agency is distributing it.
You had another interesting experience this year by winning the Elevator Pitch at MIPCOM. How did you win it?
They just invited people to come and pitch their ideas inside an elevator in Cannes. So people pitch their ideas and the videos went to the judges from Red Arrow who picked my idea. After that I had a meeting with Mike Timmerman and I pitched him my idea and we are still in contact and now I started sending him a few other ideas. So that was a nice way to get in touch with people when you are a newbie at MIP.
Do you have any new projects that you are working on at the moment?
Yes, I got back from MIPCOM and I was overwhelmed and so inspired by everything going on there and I’m now working on a few new ideas – some are entertainment, talent shows, some are cooking shows and reality shows.
Does this come easy to you? Or do you spend a lot of time thinking about new ideas?
Yes, the ideas are coming very easily. The hard part is to develop the show and to check that there is nothing similar out there and to find a unique element to it to make it special – something that people haven’t seen before. So that takes some effort.
Also, there are not so many young people and women creating new formats in this industry so what was the attitude of the TV pros towards you during MIPCOM?
I can’t say that I felt different in any way. But I do feel that you do need to be more prepared and really schedule all your meetings in advance to make the most of it. I do think that the majority of the format creators are men and I would want to see more women in that field in the future.
What is the situation in Israel? Are there more women engaged in the process of creating formats?
When you look at the creative directors out there – the head of creative at Armoza is a woman and the head of creative at Reshet is also a woman and that’s just a few examples. So, yes, there are a lot of women creating formats in Israel.
Can we also say that this one of the key ingredients that makes Israeli shows so successful?
Yes, I think Israel is a very innovative country and you can see it in so many different fields like the high-tech industry and the startup industry where we are Number 2 after the US per capita and I think we are Number 4 in exporting formats. I think some of the reasons are that we are a young country and we needed to grow rapidly – we don’t have many natural resources here so our biggest resource is our brains, so we are constantly inventing new stuff.
You were also in the 40under40 ranking of one of the leading websites covering the media world in Israel. Do you know most of the people in that ranking and what are the criteria to get in there?
I think they picked the rising stars of the industry – television, advertising, media. People who achieved a lot this year and made the headlines and I actually know most of the people on the list and it’s a great honor.
Are you planning to build your own company or are you going to work closer with a particular company?
At the moment I’m not thinking about creating my own company. Maybe that will happen in the future when I have enough formats. Now, my main job is being a news anchor. I just recently got to be the new host of News Evening – one of the first news shows in Israel on Channel 1, and I’m hoping to grow and create more new exciting shows.
