What would the world of regional filmmakers be like without The Producers’ Forum? I’m not a filmmaker myself, but I can give you a view from where I sit – on the Board of the Forum and as the day to day administrator.
-Carole Manship
First Mondays
We were really pleased with the grass root initiative to get a monthly networking meeting up and running and particularly thank Andy Conway, Brendan O’Neill and Mark Pressdee for getting these underway the first Monday of the month (except August) at The Mockingbird Theatre in the Custard Factory in Digbeth. The evenings have proved very popular and successful. There’s a real warmth at the events and lots of connections being made. People travel from quite a distance to take part – recently a couple from Milton Keynes drove up and a couple who live in Coventry without a car made the journey to Digbeth by bus. We love the dedication to their craft that motivates them to attend.
Highlights in 2015 include the guest appearance of Chris Perry and Mike Prince, just before launching their new Big Centre TV station to let filmmakers know of the opportunities available. Hayleigh Power led a great evening when she interviewed Scarlet Scardanelli, complete with showing of film clips from Scarlet’s impressive work. Lights were out and all attention was on the screens. I apologised to one of the Mockingbird Directors for stopping the trade at the bar and he remarked that it was no problem – it’s wonderful to see the Mockingbird used like this.
There’s one more first Monday to end 2015 – on 7th December at The Mockingbird. We kick off around 7. It’s free (though there’s a cash bar in operation), usually twenty to thirty people attending. It’s open to anyone who wants to join in.
Hope to see you there.
The big event for 2015: Get My Film to the Market
This was quite a huge undertaking for the Forum – to bring a successful film marketplace to Birmingham.
Not only did we pull this off (with 11 industry experts on hand for 30 film companies to pitch to), but also helped prep filmmakers for this and/or future marketplaces by offering four excellent workshops in July on the themes of development, distribution, finance, packaging and pitching and holding a pitching competition in September with a panel of industry experts to give public feedback on each of the pitches.
Workshops were led by key industry players and feedback from participants was one of great appreciation for all that they were able to learn – whether new to filmmaking or well experienced. What also happens of course is that people meet and make new connections. I’m aware of a circle of women that was created from a breakout group on a Saturday workshop who continue to support each other and their filmmaking projects and of two filmmakers who met for the first time at the workshops but were able to join together as a team for the pitching competition.
The support of , and enabled us to put on the event and we had additional help from others. Forum member Tracey Briggs helped with the smooth running of the day and later wrote to us: “I was so proud and delighted to be part of this successful event.”
We plan to repeat the whole project in 2016. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, please get in touch with Pip Piper ().
Other events in 2015
We kicked off the year with an event at the end of January at The Mockingbird. Local filmmaker and film academic Roger Shannon was on stage interviewing his good friend, Egypt’s leading filmmaker Khaled el Hagar. Khaled splits his life between Birmingham and Cairo and it was a fantastic evening to learn of Khaled’s career, complete with clips from some of his films, his anecdotes and responses to questions from the audience made up of Forum members and invited guests of Roger and Khaled.
In March, we were invited to take part in the Flatpack Festival by hosting an evening at The Mockingbird. Pip Piper led a Q&A session of a panel of local, successful film producers on the topic: I want to be a filmmaker but I need to eat. We could have wished for better attendance but that’s not to say the audience was empty.
One class studying filmmaking journey up from Portsmouth for the event and their tutor, Vicki Pinder, wrote to us afterwards:
The students found it really interesting to be able to ask industry professionals about their career into film. They have also realised how difficult the industry is (despite the teaching team telling them…it sounds more real when they are being told this by filmmakers!) The students that asked questions and joined in the discussion came away feeling really determined and asked me lots more questions about film (I studied film at university but ended up working in television before going into a teaching career.)
We will hopefully make this trip an annual event so it would be good to get our students experiencing this again.
Many thanks Vicki
What we are trying to figure out is how to get take up from our local university and college film courses! And we thank Creative Skillset for their contribution to enable the Forum to make it a free event for all.
TV producer Tom Norton (Guy Martin Show, The Gadget Show) was the focus of a very well attended and sociable June event at The Mockingbird. In his early career, Tom was manager of The Producers’ Forum and set up many of the systems used today. He’s a great guy and we all celebrate his success with North One and were fascinated by his story. North One sponsored the evening and the audience were charged a small fee for entry (£10 for members; £20 for non-members), so that the cost of the venue and first round of drinks were covered.
Thanks for a terrific 'Share Your Project' event last night. Such a good format for hearing all the projects everyone's up to. Also great to tap into the collective wisdom of film-making experts and to get a realistic assessment of my own project (Beatrice Cadbury biopic).
Living up to our strapline
Supporting the filmmaking community is what we say we do. While our emphasis is on the local community, in actuality our sphere of influence is far wider as evidenced by the participation of filmmakers from throughout the UK in the marketplace and pitching competition and the distances travelled to attend networking events. Our annual subscription remains at £25 a year; I believe that’s incredible value for what is on offer as well as what savings can be made for those who take advantage of the activities.
For example, applications to the marketplace were £75 for members and £100 for non-members.
If you’re not a member already, don’t you want to be part of this vibrant community?
What do you think?
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