Opening
Production
What a selected project actually gets: pre-production, a supported shoot, and post through to delivery. End to end, and in kind.
Support in kind, not a cash prize.
The Lab puts the making of the film behind the project.
Nothing is handed over as a cheque against which you then go and find a crew. What a selected project receives is the work itself: people, planning time, technical support and facilities, arranged around the film it happens to be. A cash award of any size still leaves a first-time maker doing the hardest part alone.
That is why a project finishes with a delivered piece rather than a card full of rushes and a problem.
Opening. The route is built and the first round is being prepared.
Pre-production, production, post
The three stages, and what each one covers.
01 · Pre-production
Script lock. Scheduling. Casting. Locations and recces, with the permissions that go with them. Crew planning and departments named. Risk assessment. Consent and contributor care settled before anybody turns over.
02 · Production
A supported shoot: crew, technical support and production oversight, with real call sheets, a chain of command and a wrap. Safeguarding and consent sit on the floor, not in a folder in an office.
03 · Post-production
Edit, sound, colour, titles, and the delivery assets a festival or a broadcaster asks for. Post is booked before the shoot rather than chased after it.
What the support is built around
The same things that make any shoot work, arranged so a first-time maker can use them.
- A producer in place, so the person directing is not also carrying the schedule, the locations and the money.
- Every department named, so everybody on the unit knows who they report to and what they are answerable for.
- Assistant and trainee places held for women coming through training, working beside people doing the job now.
- Contributor care planned in, including prayer, fasting, food and the shape of the day, as on a shooting day.
Terms
Terms are agreed with each selected project in writing before work starts.
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.