Preview – Green Shoots for Children’s Film

Posted on: Friday 01 July 2016 3:06pm by Phil Parker

Session Producer Phil Parker is taking a positive attitude to an area showing small signs of growth.

For the last three years at CMC we have had discussions about different ways to fund and make children’s and family films. Come to this session to see how you can join in the fun and pain of Indie film-making for the world’s largest audience.

‘Bach In Brazil’, an Indie family film, has now been in the cinemas for 16 weeks, defying all expectations in Germany. This first-time feature, by Ansgar Ahlers, was made using a combination of a co-production deal, pre-sale, TV sale and public funds. So what are the prospects for the UK?

Film Cymru / Wales have a whole new strategy. A combination of seed development and audience development. The latter has been a major part of public funding through the BFI, and European Commission for some time. So I’m going to concentrate here on the seed development approach outlined by Pauline Burt, Chief Eexcutive of Film Cymru in preparation for those elusive green shoots.

In essence this is a potential slate development deal with Chicken House,  a major UK children’s book publisher.  Film Cymru is providing a small amount of funding to encourage the optioning of up to ten books. The idea being that this will promote existing UK published popular books and potentially provide the basis for new cinema audiences.

This broad strategic approach will be watched by many, and is being discussed as a European wide initiative.

Meanwhile, Nicole Carmen-Davis, a UK indie producer has used a short VFX driven film, ‘Litterbugs’ to create the basis for a feature film aimed at children and family audiences.  Nicole will outline her planned route to follow Ansgar to a long running cinema release.

And of course it’s inevitable that all of this will need to be discussed in the context of what exiting the EU might do for the green shoots.

Come and join us for an upbeat panel that aims to find best-practice routes through the tricky terrain of children’s and family film.

Green Shoots in Children’s and Family Film, Thursday 7 July, 13:00 – 13:45 in Showroom Cinema 3