PRODUCERS - We’re looking for feature film projects to co-produce. Please read this thread carefully as the remit is quite specific. Please RT! #film #ukfilm #filmproducers 1/ Looking for UK producers who have produced at least one feature film above £500k budget.

Random thread of Thoughts on Cannes this year:
1/ First year back here since before COVID and seemed busy if a little more muted than it was. Parties and drinks all felt more restrained (not a bad thing). 2/ Haven't heard of any major deals being struck (many seem to have been done pre-festival) but the sales agents I spoke to said that there was decent business being done, if not spectacular. Seemed to be a good showing from indie distrib buyers.

Went down an AI rabbit-hole this week. In under 30 mins, I had an AI create an original idea for a film, write a treatment, suggest a cast list, build a basic pitch deck and create a poster image. Now... ...whilst all of this was fairly basic, it was impressive that it managed to identify the key things needed in each and if I'd been sent these by a person, I'd have had no idea that it was all created via AI.

I’ve met many filmmakers who over the years have told me “they don’t care about the money” and “you focus too much on the business side of things”. There’s a reason for that. Without a viable system of financing and revenues, you won’t get paid. You won’t do this for a living. The news about Cineworld is devastating and will likely be followed by more chains. It’s not Bond’s fault. It’s not the studios fault. It’s not the general public’s fault. This pandemic has already decimated the aviation and travel industries. It’s just another casualty.

It’s basic economics. If there’s no product to sell, the business isn’t viable. There’s no way government grants will keep cinemas afloat until Easter. We’re seeing a sea-change in the film business, as models adapt to direct to digital.

https://twitter.com/patrickvons/status/1312271458475872256

It will mean lower budgets as there won’t be the revenues to prop up $200m films. Could also mean digital platforms commission films as opposed to licensing them.

Any other indie producers interested in banding together to use the new Government Kickstarter scheme to offer 16-24yo’s a 6 month job placement? Would need enough of us to offer a minimum of 30 jobs. Government pay for 25 hrs pw. Reply to this thread and I’ll see if it’s viable. Thanks to everyone who has expressed interest in the Government Kickstarter scheme. There’s been huge interest and it’s going to take a lot of admin to set up, so we’re working on a coordinated industry approach that will work for everyone.

Will write a full blog post in the next week or two but here are some quick summary points of my thoughts on filming shorts under Covid guidelines: Producer and Covid supervisor need to be two separate people, it’s too much work. You’ll need the supervisor on early in prep to get across everything.

So having filmed two shorts back-to-back in a week, under new Covid-19 guidelines, my feelings are that this way of filmmaking is going to be really tough on shorts and lower budget films. The creative ambition on most shorts is going to be scaled down considerably and the cost of doing even a fairly simple film is going to go up. Some of the rules aren’t that practical and schedules are going to have to extend in order to compensate for all the lost time.

Still don't think the system is broken? A self-made, career producer with a hit TV show is still treated this way. And people talk about meritocracy. The institutions at the top of Film and TV in the UK aren't fit for purpose.

https://twitter.com/HerrDirector/status/1292751017944272897

I was also part of the BAFTA review earlier this year. I was asked why I wasn't a member and I spoke of my disillusionment with the establishment and how I didn't feel I wanted to be part of something that operated that way.

With 2 days to go until Lab Rat premieres on @watchdust here's a look at our actors. The film was co-produced with @CSSDLondon and this talented bunch were all on the MA in Screen Acting course, run by my co-producer Amanda Brennan: KIRSTY STURGESS (@kirstysturgess1) stars as Alika

I was trying to come up with a list of top-level, prolific UK film producers who are either Black, Asian or from another Ethnic Minority. That is that they need to be arguably in the top 50 of producers in this country. Here's a list from a Nov 2018 article by Screen Daily, listing (in their view) the top 50 UK film production companies:
screendaily.com/features/the-b…

Every producer on every production should be hiring an associate from a minority background, to shadow and learn from them. Hiring runners and assistants is great but we need more senior level POC in every part of the creative industries. To that end, if there are any Black, Asian or other ethnic minority producers, who have made a few shorts or a small feature and feel they would benefit from some advice on producing and strategy, I'm happy to do a series of 30 min 1-2-1 calls over the next few weeks. Pls RT.

No matter which way I look at it, I can’t see how indie film survives if it can’t pivot to funding models underpinned by digital distribution. And that means online distributors pre-buying or commissioning films. That will really be a buyers market. Besides the odd outlier, theatrical is an expensive no-go for most indies now. With the contraction of the inter’l sales and DVD market, and tv deals worth a fraction of what they were, the only real revenue streams are digital.

All logical and sensible but also massively costly and impractical and so much left open. There's going to need to be huge amounts of training and I don't really get why this is advisory and not mandatory. Feels like a producer will need a lot of indemnity clauses in contracts.

https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1267230393733836801

As well as a new CV-19 unit, we'll need an HR department to cover all the GDPR issues. We also need to make sure that every supplier and location has complimentary procedures. And from a legal standpoint, I'm unclear about what the ramifications of failing to comply are.

I can count on one hand the number of actual racists I've met in the film industry over the past 21 years. But I could fill a book with a list of those that have enabled it or not understood how their actions perpetuate racial stereotypes. It's not an easy conversation to have. It's too expansive a subject to cover in a Twitter thread and I don't want to misdirect anger but beyond a little lip service, very little has been done about it over the last few decades.

We need a top to bottom rethink of the whole indie film system. It's been broken for years. Finance, int'l sales, distribution: all needs a radical overhaul.
UK domestic film production falls 72% in Q1 pre-shutdown as inward investment booms screendaily.com/news/uk-domest… We need to accept that theatrical releases aren't the right form of distribution for the majority of indie films. I love seeing films in a cinema but we've clung to this ideology to our own detriment. The economics of it no longer work.

Delighted to say that our short film "Lab Rat" is part of the Lift-Off Genre Content Extravaganza. Please RT, watch and vote for us (No 49 on the list)! #LiftOffGenreLabs #LiftOffGenreContentExtravaganza #SupportIndieFilm
vimeo.com/ondemand/lifto… @PanaceaProds @MattBrothers2 @MaxHWilliams_ @kirstysturgess1 @SianHill @nainitadesai @MarkNutkins

Here it is! Proud to announce that I'm producing a live-action series based on Joe Dever's LONE WOLF series of adventure gamebooks. This high-fantasy series was a staple of the 1980/90s and I'm working with Joe's son Ben, to bring them to the screen. #lonewolf #tvseries #fantasy The series follows the adventures of Lone Wolf, last of the Kai Lords of Sommerlund, as he battles against the evil forces of the Darklords of Helgedad. The books have sold over 10m copies worldwide. magnamund.com/pages/about

Been thinking a lot about the “how” of film production post-pandemic but now also thinking of the “what”. As producers we’re always having to think a year or so ahead, so what sort of films and tv will people want in the future? The accepted vision is that right now people want lighter, feel-good, escapist stuff and want to avoid grim reality. I’m not entirely sure this is true (Contagion has seen a big up-tick in views) but it certainly seems to be the message from buyers and commissioners.

I’ve started to experiment with watching big films on my phone recently. It’s really interesting how the smaller screen and sound expose things. The scale of the VFX and stunts doesn’t translate well to a phone screen, meaning that a film’s story, characters and actors performances are thrust to the foreground.

One of the biggest problems with the way films were/are funded, was the complete lack of reward for development and equity investors. So many entities between the customer and the investor, taking a cut, with very little returned to those that took the biggest risk. When we eventually come out of this situation and start to rebuild our film industry, we'd do well to think about structures that fairly distribute revenues between all parties. We can't have cinemas taking such high rentals and investors losing money all the time.