Northern Alliance - BFI

The UK Film Council should simplify its business affairs in respect of its short
film activity; it should cap its contribution to the budgets of short films, not
the budgets themselves;
Management and control functions should be brought back in house, with
greater co-ordination and integration of functions in areas such as data
collection and monitoring. Lower tier schemes 5 should be managed at the
level of the scheme rather than at the micro-level of the films they support; for
example, the UK Film Council should cease to take a right of final cut on
Digital Shorts film;
The concept of a clear pathway for directors, leading from lower tier schemes
like Digital Shorts into UK-wide higher programmes such as Digital Nation
should be retained;
Agencies lacking the scale, resources or experience to deliver improved levels
of effectiveness in short filmmaking should be encouraged to consolidate
with, or sub-contract responsibilities to, agencies or third parties that do;
There should, however, be a significant reduction in the numbers of Digital
Shorts films made each year, and reductions made in the overall number of
films funded via National and Regional Screen Agencies, perhaps by as much
as 50% in some cases;
A new top tier scheme should be introduced, through which the UK Film
Council directly commissions short films from production companies that have
a manifest ambition to make a feature film with a new director;
Better use of existing UK Film Council interventions should be made to
showcase short films; for example, the Find any Film website should be made
capable of finding any UK Film Council backed short film available online or on
DVD;
Closer associations should be developed between strategic partners, Skillset
and Skillset-accredited institutions; the Skillset talent scout should play a
central role in ensuring a comprehensive and coherent strategy, from
instruction in filmmaking to the refinement of talent;
There should be a specific review of the UK Film Council‟s work in showcasing
talent by a suitably qualified expert in business to business marketing;
Subject to that review, a new intervention should be established to support
the international marketing of the talent behind the UK‟s best short films.
We believe that support for short filmmaking should be prioritised during the
formulation of the UK Film Council‟s spending plans. There is a broad consensus that
short filmmaking plays a vital role in the development of new feature filmmaking
talent, and that there is little chance that alternative sources of funding will emerge
to replace any significant reduction in the level of support from the UK Film Council.
However, the UK Film Council does not appear to have developed reliable
mechanisms for monitoring what proportion of new feature film directors actually do
5 See Appendix VIII for an overview of the UK Film Council's short film schemes.
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