Opening
Development
What a selected project gets: the script or treatment worked properly, a deck, a costed read on whether it can be made, and two people attached to it.
The part that usually costs money, or luck
Selection is the start of the work.
Development is where an idea becomes something a crew can shoot. Most of it is unglamorous: rewriting, checking, costing, asking whether the access is real and whether the people in the story are protected. Skipping it is the commonest reason a good subject never reaches a screen.
Projects come in from the Writers Room, by referral, or through an open call on a theme. A treatment, an outline or a strong opening sample is enough. Opening. The first round is published with its theme, its panel and its closing date together.
What the work covers
Script, treatment or outline
Structure, character and drafts, with written notes after every session and a development draft you can send out.
Concept development
What the piece actually is, who it is for, and what it does that nothing else does.
Storyboards and visual approach
The look and the shape of the sequences, put in front of people so everyone is talking about the same film.
The pitch deck
A logline that survives a room, a synopsis, a tone set, and a deck that works when you are not there.
Feasibility and budget review
What it would take to shoot: locations, cast, crew, kit and days. You leave able to say what your film costs.
Social impact and contributor care
Consent, anonymity, right of reply and aftercare where a story touches real people, faith, trauma or allegations.
A producer and a mentor attached, and what that means week to week
Both phrases mean nothing from outside the industry. This is the work.
The producer answers whether this can be made. They read what you have, tell you what it would take to shoot it, then go and find out what neither of you knows: whether the location would have you, whether the access is real, whether a contributor is well enough to take part, what the schedule has to look like. They come back with answers rather than opinions, and the answers change the script.
The mentor is a working practitioner at the grade you are aiming at, and they are yours for the run. You send pages. They read them, come back with notes in writing, then talk you through them. Between sessions you write and they reply. It works best when you bring the thing you are stuck on rather than the thing you have finished.
The rhythm is a session with the group, then your own work, then a session one to one, and it repeats. Everything agreed is written down, including the dates you commit to.
How development ends
One of these, said to you in person and confirmed in writing with the reasons.
It goes further
The project moves towards production, with the unit, the post and the delivery that needs.
It becomes a short
The story is stronger at that length and gets made at that length, rather than stretched.
It becomes a proof of concept
A scene or a teaser built to raise the rest of the money, with the costings behind it.
It becomes a documentary treatment
A full treatment, an access strategy and a contributor-care plan, ready for a producer to take out.
It waits
Strong story, wrong moment. It keeps its mentor and its place in the next round, and you are told why.
Where the Lab runs
The Story-to-Screen Lab is a joint programme with Futures in Film CIC, and it is co-run across 3 Mills Studios and Pinewood Studios.
Sessions run online as well, and in other spaces we can reach, so that taking part does not depend on living near one building. Writers, filmmakers and community organisations work together across all of them.