Funding - Institutional Research

For the purpose of funding and distributing our finished piece, we had to look into production companies who would be willing to do so.
We focused our research on smaller local companies who would be more likely to invest in our project. I found some of the following options:

• EM Media - http://www.em-media.org.uk/pages/home
• Screen East - http://www.screeneast.co.uk/
• Film London - http://www.filmlondon.org.uk/
• First Light - http://www.firstlightonline.co.uk/
• UK Film Council - http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/

We then looked at one of the companies each to see what the pro's and con's would be for using them as funding, and came up with the following conclusions;

First Light & The UK Film Council - Emma Cottee

Of these film production and funding companies, the First Light project particularly caught my eye. It is funded as part of the UK Film Council and the Department of Children, Schools and Families and runs several schemes with chances of funding for young talent. The Young Film Fund is part of the UK Film Council's lottery funded programme for up to 19 year olds, and offers funds ranging from £3,000 to £30,000. There are several other options through First Light such as Mediabox and Second Light, which I looked into, however they mainly focus on arranged group projects, and projects with under-privileged children.

First Light could be something we look into further, and consider presenting our ideas to so that we can see if they would consider funding our project. However, due to its links to the UK Film Council, we may be better to target them directly rather than such a small company who may only be able to offer limited funds. Saying that, the UK Film Council do tend to focus on slightly larger productions than ours, and therefore if we did look at approaching them, we would possibly have to look at expanding our production.

The UK Film Council do offer many funding programmes though, and therefore we would have lots of options when it comes to investigating them as a possible funder. Of their projects, we would possibly be interested in either the Development Fund, or the New Cinema Fund, as both focus on the discovery of fresh talent, and the New Cinema Fund has also shown to be successful in the past, producing British hits such as 'Adulthood' and 'This is England'.

Screen East – Amy Gallacher

Screen East is the screen agency for the East of England. They are dedicated to developing, supporting and promoting the film and media industries along with culture in the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Screen East encourages the creation and production of distinctive films that could potentially reach an audience by investing in script as well as project development through National Lottery funding. Screen East also aims to seek out the most innovative new writing and directing talent in the East of England. Their talent schemes give filmmakers the chance and resources to develop their ideas and to boost creativity with professional guidance in a commercial environment.
Regional Investment Fund for England (RIFE) is Lottery funding that Screen East distributes on behalf of the UK Film Council. There are certain schemes that Screen East will fund, each with their own guidelines, for example, their Small Awards Fund which has been set up to support and encourage small-scale projects that develop industry skills and talents in the East of England. There are bursaries of up to £500 available for this type of scheme that is available for individuals across priority areas.

Screen East has recently launched its short film programme “Digital Shorts” for 2009/10. This partners the UK Film Council New Cinema Fund that will enable filmmaking talent to produce short digital films with professional support. Films can be of any genre within live action fiction, animation and documentary. Seven projects will be chosen for development and five will be produced after the developmental period. All films have a cash budget of up to £12,500.

Screen East will not fully fund a production. A contribution must be provided, how big of a contribution depends on if the funding is going towards an individual or a company…

For individuals. You must provide a minimum of 30% partnership funding (15% in cash and 15%
in-kind). We ask you to provide evidence of this contribution in the application.

For companies and organisations. RIFE will provide a maximum of 50% of the project budget and applications must show 50% partnership funding (25% in cash and 25% in-kind) of the total budget.

Minimum partnership funding. If you can show that your project encourages diversity or is aimed at socially excluded groups, you may be eligible for a discretionary award for projects with a minimum of 15% cash and 35% in-kind. The cash contribution can come from the projected income of your project (e.g. box office).

If we were looking to receive funding to transform our teaser trailer into a film we could apply to Screen East. We would do this by downloading an application form from their website, however we would need to look extremely closely at the different schemes available and would need to apply to the right one. Screen East encourages anybody applying for funding to call and discuss their production over the telephone. If we were successful in an application to Screen East, we would have to eventually repay the funding over time as Screen East does not provide grants. A re-payment schedule would be agreed after a successful application.