New Schemes from IFB

Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board (IFB) has pledged €1 million to a new project aimed at encouraging a variety of new short film schemes.

The Signatures scheme will be the flagship scheme showcasing live action filmmaking, encouraging strong, original storytelling, visual flair and production values appropriate to the big screen. The scheme will fund up to 6 live-action, fiction films with a maximum budget of €90,000 each per year. These shorts will act as a proving-ground for Irish creative talents aspiring to write, direct and produce films for the cinema and will offer an opportunity to work in a professional environment and bring their experience up to the next level. Filmmakers on this scheme will also offer invaluable chance to work closely with an experienced mentor from the Irish film industry.

Reality Bites is a new short documentary scheme which will fund up to 3 films with a maximum budget of €20,000 each per year. It aims to encourage experimentation and realisation of fresh approaches to non-fiction filmmaking, whether the documentary is journalistic or creative, observational or aesthetic, objective or personal.

The Virtual Cinema scheme aims to encourage cinema for the You-Tube generation by funding up to 10 high quality shorts per year which are suitable for viewing across multi-platforms. The films which can be live-action or use any kind of animation technique as there are no creative holds barred, will be maximum two minutes in duration. These films will be launched exclusively for an online audience.

As well as the brand new shorts, the established and successful Short Shorts film scheme has been modified. This scheme, which funds up to seven, 3-5 minute films per year aims to encourage the making of films which are innovative, provocative or idiosyncratic in their content or style or both. The shorts, whether live-action or animated films should now ‘tell a story' within a particular genre chosen for that year- e.g. love story, thriller, musical, horror etc. It is hoped that having the shorts packaged together under a specific theme or genre will allow the IFB to market the Short Shorts more effectively.

The Frameworks animation scheme, co-funded by the Arts Council, RTE and the IFB will continue in its current successful format.

Films commissioned under the Signatures and Reality Bites schemes will be launched at the Cork Film Festival next year.

The deadline for applications for Signatures and Reality Bites is December 14th.

More details about these new schemes should be available on the website later today.