Whereas the Glasgow Movie Pageant wrapped a number of weeks in the past with greater than 33,000 individuals in attendance on the 12-day occasion, the pageant’s trade program noticed a giant increase in attendance this yr, with numbers up 15% year-on-year.
It’s welcome information for Samantha Andie Bennett, who heads up the GFF Business Focus part and its expertise growth labs as she and her group work to place the strand into a major occasion on the pageant calendar that may appeal to delegates from across the UK and past whereas, crucially, making a pipeline to help new native expertise.
“We’ve been looking for a components and see what works and we’ve been trialling issues for the previous couple of years however this yr, it simply looks like we discovered the correct mix,” she tells Deadline. We’ve been constructing our community and the brand new venue – The Social Hub in Glasgow – has been an enormous assist to creating the trade strand what it’s.”
Within the final decade, the pageant’s trade program has grown from a two-day native networking occasion in 2016 to a four-day nationwide occasion immediately. This yr noticed greater than 750 delegates contact down in Glasgow for the Business Focus strand, which ran March 3-6 and supported 39 filmmaking skills throughout its three year-round expertise growth initiatives.
This yr author Kaljeven Lally and producers Isabella Bassett and Jena Hunter received the inaugural Humorous Options Business Viewers Award for his or her venture Accountability. The function follows Sanjeev who shortly turns into the primary suspect in a weird homicide case and the goal of two opposing crime households, the police and his mother and father.
The Animatic Expertise Growth scheme, which facilitates the event of Scottish creatives’ animated options, TV collection and quick movie concepts, entered its second yr and the winner for Finest TV/Characteristic Pitch went to animated Scottish people thriller Lochs & Legends by Abi Lamb. In the meantime, the award for Finest Quick Pitch went to To Myself and the Forest of Tigers from Sammi Duong and Hannah Kelso’s grownup comedy collection Overlords received the inaugural Animatic Business Viewers Award. Wilma Smith’s The Three Graces earned a particular point out.
“The advantage of animatic is the entry requirement or expertise stage is stored fairly low as a result of with out it, there’s not an enormous quantity of help on the market for those that wish to make animated work,” says Bennett.
GFF Business Focus additionally has its New Expertise mentorship scheme, which it began 5 years in the past and contains six months of mentorship for underrepresented writers, administrators and producers. Contributors are given one-to-one consultancy classes, workshops and bespoke mentoring to help the event of their tasks. This yr, director Ben Wheatley served as one of many mentors.
“It’s useful for these skills to have somebody who can discuss them via the trade, demystify it just a little bit and provides them a roadmap of the place to go, how you can develop and what they should get their subsequent venture made,” Bennett says.
Along with the labs, the trade strand provided up a variety of talks throughtout the three-day occasion, together with keynotes investigating using copyright within the age of AI and an onstage dialog with exec producer Sam Lavender.
“It’s the busiest yr we’ve ever had,” says Bennett. “Each session was jam packed and this yr we additionally had our greatest cohort of expertise via our expertise labs. We had a number of determination makers coming in and seeing this expertise that they’ve by no means heard of earlier than, with actually fascinating and nice concepts and new voices.
“The main focus in earlier years was in regards to the filmmakers and other people attending the pageant for the movie program and I feel we’ve sort of rejigged that and that’s why it’s catapulted itself so massively during the last couple of years – as a result of we’re catering for the whole trade now and attempting to usher in new expertise, new voices and showcase Scotland and the UK as greatest as attainable.”
This yr’s Glasgow Movie Pageant had considered one of its greatest lineups up to now with stars reminiscent of Toni Collette, Jessica Lange, Ed Harris, James McAvoy and Tim Roth all touching down within the Scottish metropolis for the 12-day occasion.
