Northern Alliance - BFI

As noted in section 4.2 above, the data collection methodologies adopted often do
not lend themselves to accurate measurement of the impact of activity. In our survey,
all of the strategic partners cited career development as a measure of success for
their short film activities. Despite this, four of the respondents do not collect careertracking
data at all, and half of all respondents did not track all of the categories
which they stated – as part of the questionnaire - were key career tracking data.
However, according to information supplied by the NCF after the completion of the
field work undertaken for this report, 63% of NCF backed feature directors have
made short films and, measured over the life of the programmes, almost one third of
Cinema Extreme directors and 8% of Completion Fund and Digital Plus/Nation
directors have gone on to make features.
Strategic partners stressed that a key issue in monitoring talent is to do so over a
sufficiently long time period (see case study, Shane Meadows and short film,
Appendix 1). It can take several years for a filmmaker to progress from his/her first
engagement with the funding system to achieving visibility as a features director.
Frequently, by the time such breakthroughs have occurred, this initial engagement
has been forgotten. 42
The data in Table 11 should therefore be viewed in that context; there are certainly
exceptionally talented filmmakers who have made short films in the period analysed
who have not yet made a feature film, but will go on to do so in the future.
42 For example, Anthony Minghella’s short film award from the now-closed Southern Arts Board
film and video production fund. Similarly, Saul Dibb had early support from First Take, a joint initiative by
Eastern Arts Board and Anglia TV, in the mid-1990s, almost ten years before his first feature Bullet Boy
(2004). Andrea Arnold was supported by First Take at around the same time, well before her
breakthrough short film, Wasp was supported by Cinema Extreme in 2003.
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