Northern Alliance - BFI

That dedication and persistence has paid off, with Six Shooter being released in
North America by Magnolia and by 2 Entertain in the UK. The film has been acquired
by a number of broadcasters, including the UK‟s Film4 and Ireland‟s RTE. In 2008
Bays was nominated for BAFTA‟s Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising
Newcomer after producing the documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man.
“By and large, there is not much economic value in shorts. However, with the right
positioning, it is definitely possible to generate returns from shorts, both financial
and non-financial.”
Calling card and what next?
René Mohandas is the writer, director and producer of Elephant Boy (2005), a 26minute
short that garnered a 2005 BAFTA nomination. Since the success of that film,
he has developed feature length screenplays but to date has not made any more
films.
After seeing screenings of Elephant Boy, and having read his feature film outline,
Emma Clarke, senior production executive at the UK Film Council, encouraged
Mohandas to apply to the Development Fund, which he did in 2006. 64 Mohandas
found the experience a complete contrast to Clarke‟s helpful, constructive approach.
Rather than an exploratory development of the work and relationship, development
support was noted as only available to writers with three to four screenplays and not
first-time writers. He had no further engagement with the UK Film Council until last
year.
Mohandas feels the critical step from shorts to features is a major challenge for the
UK Film Council. Micro budget film schemes work for certain projects, but for others
there are too many restrictions imposed by funding constraints and the management
of those schemes.
Mohandas has entered a series of scriptwriting competitions sponsored by a variety
of film schemes and broadcasters, including the BBC. While he believes they have
their merits and are well intentioned, they have failed to live up to his expectations,
mainly because the script development is tailored to the competition and not to the
individual needs of the project. Despite being a finalist twice, neither scheme
produced or funded any of his films.
64 The UK Film Council has stated that René's experience in 2006 was under a previous funding
structure Development Fund. The current Development Fund engaged with René at the Director’s Lab in
2008, and encouraged him to think about submitting a feature idea.
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