Funding

The John Brabourne Awards Talent Development Programme provides individual financial awards up to £5000. This can go towards production projects, scriptwriting and development, education and training and more. It is named in honour of legendary producer John Brabourne, one of Britain’s most prolific producers with an illustrious career spanning four decades and 27 films.

Here is some information about the JBA’s programme from the Film and Television Charity:

Who should apply?

We help anyone who is talented and driven but who has faced hurdles in developing their career. Whatever your situation, if you are struggling to take yourself to the next level we encourage you to apply. Apply if you work in any part of the Film and TV industry – that isn’t front of camera performance or presentation – and have at least two years professional experience, our programme can financially support a wide range of projects and work situations. 

Awards are made to individuals rather than teams, projects or organisations. Funding cannot be provided retrospectively. For example, covering production costs for a completed short film.

Areas where we have helped before include:

• Production and development finance
• Post production and festival distribution
• Living support while developing projects, including scriptwriting
• Tuition fees
• Short training programmes

Eligibility

To apply for a JBA, you must be able to demonstrate that you:

• Possess the talent required to succeed within your chosen field
• Are in genuine need of financial assistance and our support will help you to overcome career hurdles in your personal and/or professional lives
• Are committed and driven to progress your career
• Have worked for a minimum of two years in the Film and/or TV industries (including aspects of online/digital broadcast). However, your experience does not have to be continuous and can be accumulative. Please note that your experience cannot include front of camera performance or presentation
• Have a career focus primarily based within UK Film and/or TV at the time of applying

How to Apply

Applications are open for the Summer 2019 round, with a deadline for applications of midnight 31 July 2019. Apply and find out more here. 

To increase your chances of success, we advise reading the guidelines before applying and closely following the submission instructions. We’ll let you know we’ve received your application and are assessing it.

Find out more about the application process here or  read the full guidelines here.

Source: filmtvcharity.org.uk

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The Women in Film Finishing Fund gives grants to female filmmakers working in both short and long formats, in all genres. To apply, the filmmaker must have completed 90% of principal photography and have a rough cut at the time of application. You do not need to be a WIF Member to apply, and international submissions are welcome.

Since its inception in 1985, the Women In Film Finishing Fund – run by Women in Film (WIF) Los Angeles (LA) – has had an impressive track record of selecting recipients that have gone on to achieve distribution and win major awards.

Women in film and TV members receive a discount on the application fee.

For full details, as well as a link to the application, please visit the WIF LA website here.

Application deadlines

Earlybird deadline: Friday 31 May
Regular deadline: Sunday 23 June
Late deadline: Sunday 14 July

Source: wftv.org.uk

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Creative England’s New Ideas Fund offers small seed funding to sole traders, start-ups and small businesses for their creative business ideas. Their previous investment schemes have been aimed at established companies. However, this New Ideas Fund targets untapped talent and new ideas.

What is the fund?

Through BFI-Lottery funding, Creative England can offer investments between £500 and £15,000 for emerging and new screen based storytelling business proposals. Newer companies and proposals looking for lower amounts are likely to receive grants. Creative England is likely to offer loans to higher-value proposals and more established companies. Decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Who is it for?

The New Ideas Fund is for screen based storytelling businesses in the English regions. Your idea must be for a screen based industry. That is, film, television, animation, games, immersive media or tech that supports these industries.

Who is not eligible?

The New Ideas Fund is not for companies working in corporate video or advertising, e-learning or training (unless you want to start a screen based storytelling arm). It is also not for charities, non-profits or CICs (unless you want to set up a corporate arm relevant to the screen based industries).

For more information on who can and cannot apply, please read Creative England’s Guidelines.

What can I use the money for?

The New Ideas Fund is to help you with business costs, improve your offering and diversifying revenue streams.

It can be used for seed funding, set up costs, hiring office space (e.g. for a group of producers to work together), conducting market research, diversifying your current business into the screen based industries, R&D, testing out new and exciting elements of immersive media to help your business, employing someone new into your team, building IP, equipment etc.

But you cannot use the fund for: just creating content, e.g. short films, feature films, slate funding, talent development, production costs. We need proposals to focus on developing a sustainable business rather than a specific project.

For more information on what you can and cannot apply for, and where to go for alternative funding, please read our Guidelines.

When is the deadline?

Applications for the New Ideas Fund are accepted on a rolling basis but we’d encourage you apply soon.

APPLY HERE.

Source: www.creativeengland.co.uk

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Do you have a feature film, High end TV drama series, serial or single drama in development? Are you looking to make in the West Midlands? Then you could be eligible for funding from the West Midlands Production Fund. You could also benefit from Seed Enterprise Investment Schemes (SEIS) or Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) schemes.

Screen Central is organizing an event to provide information for filmmakers. The event will take place at Zellig, Birmingham on Monday, April 8, 2019, 1:00 PM – 6:00 PM.

Paul Aston, Head of Film at Creative England and an EIS/SEIS expert will lead this two-part workshop. The workshop will explain in detail:

1 – 3pm: how the WMPF fund works, at what stage applications should be made and what they are looking for in terms of the regional test and commercial returns.

3 – 5pm: how the EIS/SEIS scheme works, how it can benefit your company and how they are set up.

Sign up here.

About the West Midlands Production Fund

This fund supports the development of the West Midlands as a dynamic, sustainable film and TV drama hub by providing access to finance for start-up SME’s who are active in moving image content production. The fund generally invests between £100,000 – £500,000 in any one project. This can be a mix of both debt and equity.

Previous investments have included Jawbone, The Marker, The Girl with All the Gifts, Spooks: The Greater Good, The Call Up, Nativity 2, One Mile Away, Toast, Hustle, Line of Duty and Dancing on the Edge amongst others. The European Regional Development Fund Programme 2007 – 2013  has part-financed The Fund.

The fund can support the production of

• Feature films of all genres including documentaries and animation;
• High-end TV drama series, serials and single dramas

It cannot support the cost of development or the production of shorts films, other television programmes or games.

Applying for the West Midlands Production Fund

At the time of application your project will need to have a director and producer formally attached, be ready for packaging and have a budget, financing plan and sales/distribution strategy in place. Your company must also own or have under option the relevant rights in the project. Your project must be capable of scoring 11 points or more in the Regional Test to be eligible. All projects should be able to evidence a clear commercial/business strategy and a realistic expectation of a return on our investment. Any investment by the Fund – either as debt or equity – must be matched £ for £ by an equivalent amount of private and/or public sector risk finance.

This is a rolling fund so there is no current deadline for applications.

Further details on the fund can be found here.

About Paul Ashton

At Creative England Paul has backed filmmakers through our Emerging and Production funds. These include BFI NETWORK programmes iShorts and iWrite, and Sky partnership shortflix. He was Executive Producer on the BIFA and Tribeca winning Adult Life Skills, the award winning Netflix Original Calibre, brummie noir The Marker, the comic-romance Old Boys, and the shortflix films transmitted on Sky Arts in 2018. Paul has also been Exec on numerous nominated and award-winning shorts

Further films which have converted from his Emerging development slate include Westwood (Sundance premiere, released 2018), England is Mine (Edinburgh closing gala film, released 2017), and The Ritual (Toronto premiere, BIFA winning, released 2017). Paul now oversees the wider Film team work, which includes the iFeatures programme with three new films in the pipeline. It also includes the West Midlands Production Fund, which recently backed the BIFA winning and BAFTA nominated films The Girl With All the Gifts, and Jawbone.

Paul was previously Development Producer at the BBC, where his credits included OSCAR and BAFTA nominated shorts and features. His book The Calling Card Script: A Writer’s Toolbox for Screen, Stage and Radio is published by Bloomsbury.

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