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 It was pointed out to me by a decent enough man at the
Scottish Screen event in Glasgow last week (main news: Creative Scotland will not
arrive ‘til early 09, and prob be based in both Glasgow &
Edinburgh), that my recent tirade against the UK Film Council now put
me in the same category as all the other rejected whingers out there, who I've long been critical of.
"Their neglect and ignorance of the net could mean we are sleepwalking
into a home entertainment future dominated by a single foreign
technology corporation, when the UK could have been a world leader in the area."
I can see how it would certainly look that way, so I’ve decided it best
to explain why our rejection for Publication Fund money would lead me
to whine about it and bitch that John Woodward (whom a friend tells me is
also very nice) earns more than the Prime Minister. Needless to say not
everyone knows about the events surrounding the end of Netribution back in 2002, the 100 unanswered emails from our members to John, and so forth –
and there’s nowhere on the web that documents it. So perhaps it is overdue.
I also realise that, unlike Leanne Smith, who has raised hundreds of
thousands from public funders under his/her real name, then
slags them off online under a pseudonym, I don’t have that luxury. In
fact part of my business is publishing info about film funding, and in
committing the cardinal sin of the whinger, risk being perceived as having lost impartiality, which a guide such as the Film Finance Handbook obviously needs to have. So the full sordid and sorry tale follows.
Actually it's not that sordid, that was more a cheap ruse to encourage you to click the 'read more' link. I doubt that any one is really that interested in this story, save perhaps for the people involved or those who two have been rejected, but I'll present it as best as I can in three parts - a background to the area; a background to Netribution and our interest in publishing free info on public funds; and a description of the dispute which makes me feel both hard done by, and concerned over the management of the UK film industry's most important body, at least in relation to the area of the Internet and new media.
Rejected whingers - and my first applications for public money
 On the subject of rejected whingers – I need to make my position really crystal clear here, for I have long found them pretty boring.
In the end we got £15 from Marks and Spencer and £10 from Harrogate’s
wonderous sewing emporium, Duttons for Buttons.It happens. There isn’t enough money to go round and if there was then everyone would be doing it. Funding isn’t a right but a privilege. Which isn’t to say that all decisions are fair or honest or impartial. But shit happens too, and whinging won’t help. Some manage to take their funders to court, some have revealed gross corruption, and if there are facts they are worth presenting then it's worth trying to. But whining won't help anyone, least of all yourself.
When I was 16, and had just produced my first play at the local theatre, funded by family and friends, and doubled our money, I decided to try and raise ten times more money (£5k) for what was the North of England’s only young-person run theatre group. I went to the library and copied down every address I could find from the big Arts Grants and Trusts book that backed theatre and young peoples’ projects. I wrote letters to over 100 of them. I applied to the Princes Trust. I delivered letters to every business in Harrogate I could find asking for sponsorship. We sent press releases out. In the end we got £15 from Marks and Spencer and £10 from Harrogate’s wondrous (and now closed) sewing emporium, Duttons for Buttons.
I was a bit upset that the Princes Trust thought we were too privileged (half of us were from single parent families), but otherwise the Flying Carrot Theatre Group just carried on and did our next show anyway (touring poet Simon Armitage’s first play to a 20 seater venue at the Edinburgh Fringe in 97).
So I learned early on to not let a lack of public support stop your plans, never to whinge, and that maybe, just maybe, I don't really cut it as a fundraiser.
Funding info and the launch of Netribution
 Forward a little and I’m in second year at Westminster after a crazy first year. I’m studying screenwriting under the excellent guidance of Tony Grisoni and writing a book for my uncle’s company MTI on the world film and TV rights business. During one of our classes Tony receives a phone call from Terry Gilliam and excitedly – infamously - tells us The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is happening.
Three other key things happen while I’m writing the book:
01I realise that the world film business is huge, ruthless and unlikely to give any of us on the course any money ever, no matter how great our scripts are.
02I realise our course is teaching us next to nothing about 'the real world' of the film business.
03I find some fantastic resources on the web, but very little information about the UK industry, other than a small printed booklet - the BFI Lowdown Guide to low budget feature film finance, which is remarkably informative.
These three ideas collide over a series of conversations with Wendy Bevan Mogg and Tom Fogg where we conclude that the web might offer an alternative to the giant machine of the international film and TV business and that there was a need for some UK specific information online.
And so Netribution was born.
We pull together a few thousands pages of information from various sources, including MTI and the Lowdown Guide’s list of funders, and launch. Tom and I are so excited by the dotcom buzz that was peaking around then (our first news article covered the merger of AOL and Time Warner) that we skip Grisoni's course and eventually quit the degree.
We try and raise private finance, fail because of the dotcom crash, but get such positive feedback from our readers that we continue anyway.
But we finally we get to meet the Film Council in their new offices. Tom and I return from meeting the communications department (then just two people in a broom cupboard) buzzing and excited. We *really* liked them and what they were trying to do.
Over the next year or so – after they suggest that they may pay us to update the Lowdown funding guide – we have a number of meetings and chats. Eventually they go silent (never a rejection, just silence), so we approach Focal Press who say they’ll publish a Guide to Film Finance under the Netribution banner. The money’s not great, and First Film Foundation’s Jonathan Rawlinson, who has some stories to tell about the FC, suggests we self-publish. When Netribution finally folds and ShootingPeople offers me a job, we decide to publish it together (the ‘Banana book’). A fuller account of Netribution's rise and fall is here.
Netribution folding and the 100 unanswered emails
You may have heard that Netribution never earned us a penny. Actually the Screenwriters Store once bought two banner ads, but other than that not a penny. So instead we make money from other things – I write books and reports for the big industry machine we initially aimed to sidestep, which sell for £1,500 a copy. We run FilmFestivals.com’s London office till they run out of cash. We make films for DKTV til they go under. We organise part of the London Screenings and then that folds. At times it feels as if we have a kiss of death (and if a funder had ever stated that as a reason for rejecting us, my god I would respect them!)
Anyway, Netribution runs out of cash finally so I email all my contacts and ask them for testimonials. I pull around 80 of them (from Ben Hopkins to Elliot Grove) into a long letter and sent it to FC CEO John Woodward asking for support. Almost a month passes and there is no reply, not even a polite no.
I broaden the appeal to readers and ask them to contact John Woodward directly – I even create an email form to save them time. Over 100 people do. (Read the letter here: word / pdf )
Days, weeks pass and nothing from them. Finally a reply from the Head of Communications. It simply asks us to stop sending John Woodward emails. We were gobsmacked. We probably should have gone to the DCMS, but instead I back down and ask for a meeting. I finally get a meeting with her where she explains how there just isn’t a relevant fund to help us but it’s something they will look at.
So when the Publications fund is finally created, a year later, by Chris Chandler, the man, in fact, who had originally written the BFI Lowdown Guide, and who considered Netribution to be ‘the only email newsletter I bother reading’, and who designed the fund with Netribution (amongst others) in mind; and after I bid for and win cash for Shooting People through it, for the first round, creating a magazine which still runs to this day, I start to think about relaunching Netribution and applying for cash.
Which we do in January 2006. I self-finance and publish two more funding books with Adam P Davies, partnering with the Cannes Film Market and the top media law firm in New York. It’s the no.1 film business book on Amazon.
So when the Publication fund launches again I just assume we’ll be shoe-ins, especially with a product that would be as useful as a free and updated online global database of funds, competitions and incentives, accompanied with lots of promotion for the wonders of the UK.
I was wrong.
 The moto of not being defeated by lack of funding or external support continues... but to be honest, I’m gutted.
We’ve put some of our database online anyway and we’ll try and put more up too. The motto of not being defeated by lack of funding or external support continues.
But to be honest, I’m gutted. One of the fund heads recently told me, after suggesting that any criticism of the FC was just me wanting to 'have a go' (as if it was a sport), that it would be better to have me inside the tent pissing out than outside it pissing in. I’m no longer sure if those guys are even in the tent, so removed do they seem from what filmmakers in the UK really need.
It's as if a long spell of institutional rudeness in the face of offering free services to the British film scene for little renumeration, is forcing me to turn my back on the UK. Why push to promote Blighty more than, say, Denmark or Romania or India or Nigeria if this is how they treat their own? Perhaps this is why most talented Brits (Chaplin, Hitchcock, Scott, etc) end up in America. They actually like and encourage enterprise there.
But sadder still, and less so for me than the UK in general, is the UK Film Council's ignorant approach to the web. To be honest, I really wouldn't mind them not funding us, if there was another publication that covered emerging tech from a film business perspective. Or even support them putting £3 million into an online venture like MyFilms.com if it had a better hope of success, being created by someone with a background in the web, as opposed to brand management and marketing. Imagine if that money had gone on creating a British YouTube or set of open source tools for filmmakers to support fundraising, production, marketing and distribution? In truth, the web is barely on the radar for them. The November 2006 major strategy consultation document looking at their future was called Film in the Digital Age yet failed to mention the Internet once. Seriously, try searching the 36 page document for the word. The same head who made the tent pissing comment also confessed he despised short films and saw no future in YouTube-type sites for the film industry.
This neglect and ignorance of the net could mean we are sleepwalking into a home entertainment future dominated by a single foreign technology corporation, when the UK could have been a world leader in the area.
[PS - I should probably add that obviously I don't speak about the whole of the UK Film Council, or the people who work there - and that it does some great things, like the new development funds for first time writers, the Digital Screen Network, First Light, Skills Development, Digital Shorts and the New Cinema Fund. And also that life is far too short to ever get upset about money, or lack of it.]
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How the UKFC has spent the lottery money on film production through direct investments, full a-z list by title/award, is listed at:
http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.u...utus/faqs/
Sure, there are some good films on the list, but the good films generally get made regardless in the end. Some of the sums wasted are obscene. How were they good causes?
This list does not include the debacle that was the "lottery franchises". If you look at the back of the accounts, the sorry tale is told in full. The one that makes me chuckle through gritted teeth is Pathe's £3m, yes, £3m of lottery franchise money spent on "The Magic Roundabout". How much has it recovered? Just £88,195.
The accounts have a useful running tally of how much has been written off for each film.
It's a scandal. The UKFC has been around long enough for it to be fully accountable for it's investment decisions since it was set up, so a detailed analysis of what has been lost on each film backed should be made available. A Freedom of Information Act request?