Duration: | 00:11:36 |
Budget: | £4,000 |
Release: | 19.11.2022 |
Genre: | Psychological Thriller / Action |
Format: | Short Film |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Starring: | Olesia Nikolaiets, Ciaran Cochlan, Asad Panjwani and Sarah Collins |
Name: | Influenced |
Duration: | 00:11:36 |
Budget: | £4,000 |
Release: | 19.11.2022 |
Genre: | Psychological Thriller / Action |
Format: | Short Film |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Starring: | Olesia Nikolaiets, Ciaran Cochlan, Asad Panjwani and Sarah Collins |
Duration: | 00:10:17 |
Budget: | £200 |
Release: | 24.12.2020 |
Genre: | Festive / Romance |
Format: | Short Film |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Starring: | Rose Lami, Callum McGregor and Krzysztof Broniecki |
Name: | Christmas in London |
Duration: | 00:10:17 |
Budget: | £200 |
Release: | 24.12.2020 |
Genre: | Festive / Romance |
Format: | Short Film |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Starring: | Rose Lami, Callum McGregor and Krzysztof Broniecki |
Duration: | 00:04:08 |
Budget: | £67 |
Release: | 21.06.2020 |
Genre: | Comedy |
Format: | Short Film |
Writer: | Rakesh Jaitly |
Director: | Rakesh Jaitly |
Starring: | Ciaran Cochlan and Asad Panjwani |
Name: | Bad Blood |
Duration: | 00:04:08 |
Budget: | £67 |
Release: | 21.06.2020 |
Genre: | Comedy |
Format: | Short Film |
Writer: | Rakesh Jaitly |
Director: | Rakesh Jaitly |
Starring: | Ciaran Cochlan and Asad Panjwani |
Duration: | 00:10:17 |
Budget: | £600 |
Release: | 01.01.2020 |
Genre: | Comedy / Action |
Format: | Short Film |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Starring: | Abby McLeod, Asad Panjwani and Nathan Joseph |
Name: | Cheater |
Duration: | 00:10:17 |
Budget: | £600 |
Release: | 01.01.2020 |
Genre: | Comedy / Action |
Format: | Short Film |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Starring: | Abby McLeod, Asad Panjwani and Nathan Joseph |
Genre: | Action |
Format: | Short |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Genre: | Comedy, Fantasy |
Format: | Web Series |
Writer: | Nathan Lawrie |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Genre: | Psycho. Horror |
Format: | Short |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Genre: | Psycho. Thriller |
Format: | Short |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Genre: | Action, Comedy |
Format: | Short |
Writer: | Asad Panjwani |
Director: | Asad Panjwani |
Natalie here, The Ace Effect’s Producer. Like many of you, it’s been a very strange year, both for me personally and for our company as a whole, but there are definitely moments to be proud of.
Last month, I led on partnering with BFI Network to curate and produce a series of workshops/webinars on the topic of finding money to make your film happen – it’s called Film Fun-Raising (yes it’s a pun!) and would love to share it with you all, read on and the links are below, or you can scroll straight down, we won’t judge 😛
The project was born out of some inspirations as a new entrant to the film industry
I thought working in theatre was competitive and hard (Don’t get me wrong, it definitely is!) but least I think there’s a healthy understanding of the subsidised sector.
Before someone gets to make a show for the West End stage where thousands of tickets can be sold each night, during the early days where we’re lucky to get 50 people in the audience, the production is operating at a loss and relies on philanthropic support (meaning donations/kindness to offer financial or other support without an expectation of return) to ensure the books balances. Sometimes, this support is coming from the creative team and actors not taking a fee, sometimes it’s coming from externally.
The exact same theory applies for making short films, until someone makes a successful feature with a healthy box office income, more often or not the short film where we hone our craft costs money to make but doesn’t generate enough income to cover the costs. However, in my humble personal opinion, apart from a rare few obvious public funders (who are of course, wonderful), I don’t think there is enough understanding and empathy from the private and charitable sector that early-career filmmakers desperately need support, just like their counterparts in theatre do!
I certainly do not have an answer to this, and I am struggling to gather my thoughts on this business model and where the line draws between being “early-career” and needing this “no-strings-attached and no return expected” support to that you are responsible fully for your own “start-up” business like any other business out there?
But I know, for definite, I am keen to tell our fellow filmmakers that, you are not alone struggling with the problem of finding money to make your first couple of short films, and there’s most certainly no magic formula.
In this series of webinars, I produced together with BFI Network, you get to hear directly from other producers, a philanthropic donor who has a track record of giving to the crowd-funding campaign, an executive producer with a wealth of experience in acquisitions and investments and lovely member of staff from a local council who offers grants to young people.
Enjoy!
Just for full transparency, I juggle producing at The Ace Effect with many other things, like everyone else in the team and I am sure the same is true for our fellow filmmakers.
In my day-job, I started 2020 as Fundraising Assistant for a charitable theatre venue and ended 2020 as Fundraising Manager for a different charitable arts organisation, and I received a £5k pay rise per annum.
I joined The Ace Effect at the start of 2020, and worked with the team to develop the company, we went from 0 at the start of the year to finishing 2020 with 4 successful funding applications under our belt (From Croydon Council, Film & TV Charity, Film Hub London and one more to be announced in the new year). And yet, I still haven’t been able to pay myself (and neither has the team) more than maybe two glasses of processco.
So yes, it’s definitely not an easy path, very very very hard work and a long long journey for any return on investment of your time and efforts. For now, I am looking forward to seeing where 2021 takes, watch this space.
Natalie here, The Ace Effect’s Producer. Like many of you, it’s been a very strange year, both for me personally and for our company as a whole, but there are definitely moments to be proud of.
Last month, I led on partnering with BFI Network to curate and produce a series of workshops/webinars on the topic of finding money to make your film happen – it’s called Film Fun-Raising (yes it’s a pun!) and would love to share it with you all, read on and the links are below, or you can scroll straight down, we won’t judge 😛
The project was born out of some inspirations as a new entrant to the film industry
I thought working in theatre was competitive and hard (Don’t get me wrong, it definitely is!) but least I think there’s a healthy understanding of the subsidised sector.
Before someone gets to make a show for the West End stage where thousands of tickets can be sold each night, during the early days where we’re lucky to get 50 people in the audience, the production is operating at a loss and relies on philanthropic support (meaning donations/kindness to offer financial or other support without an expectation of return) to ensure the books balances. Sometimes, this support is coming from the creative team and actors not taking a fee, sometimes it’s coming from externally.
Producers Honest Discussion
59:08
Individual Giving 101 + Q&A
59:32
Building Relationships with Investors + Q&A
01:01:23
Approaching Councils for Funding + Q&A
01:00:12
The Ace Effect is a new and ambitious Film Production Company that champions bold and under-represented voices by offering them a platform to experiment with their ‘risky’ ideas.
The Ace Effect was founded in February 2019 by a British-Pakistani Actor / Filmmaker. It was intended to be a Visual Effects Production Company but soon, in March 2019 morphed into a Film Production Company. It kept the same name because “Effect” now has a new meaning, it refers to the impact we have on our audience, “Ace” is how we describe the quality of our work and “The”… well, that’s because it’s one of it’s kind.
The company’s main mission is to champion bold and under-represented voices on and off screen by offering them a platform to experiment on, with their ‘risky’ ideas in an attempt to shed light on new and exciting yet authentic voices. The company is lead by ambitious BAME creatives who think outside the box to produce content that our audience craves for and unable to find elsewhere. Our concepts and content really speak for themselves and we are constantly working towards crafting / searching for new ideas that help us to continue offering our audience that “Ace Effect” we claim to have.
Since our first release for “Cheater” on New Years Day 2020, The Ace Effect has grown from a 3 person team into a 12 person team for “Judgement” that went into production merely 2 months later and is rapidly growing. We credit this growth to our fair and open-minded allocation of opportunities. We pride ourselves in working with creatives where the minority voices are encouraged and their differences are celebrated. This is extremely important to us! If we received a pound for; every black writer that told us that their incredible stories were rejected as “not relevant to the larger audience”, every female editor that is stuck in a junior position despite being more experienced then her male seniors, every south Asian actor being cast as a terrorist, taxi driver, or shop keeper and has never been considered as a lead, we’d already have enough resources to make the change that is long overdue. These are some of the many eye watering stories we hear far too frequently and it further fuels our ambitions.
A report from the Work Foundation found that 3% of employees in production are from a minority ethnic background and just one in five key production personnel are women. Our team doesn’t reflect this at all, where the core members from our team are from Asian and other ethnic minority backgrounds and we are committed to ensuring that all of our activity is inline with BFI’s inclusion targets and diversity standards at all levels, from assistant roles to Heads Of Departments, we want to create opportunities for those who are facing barriers in accessing the industry and furthering their careers.
We’ve done extremely well to offset this balance and are really proud of it. In our last main production, 67% of our crew members were from ethnic minority backgrounds and 58% were females. Our fun and energetic approach is bringing together more under-represented voices where they feel apart of the community, not only as cast and crew members but as audiences too!
Asad Panjwani, is an experienced short film producer, his credits include, “Denied”, “Cheater”, “Judgement” and “Bad Blood”. He has a proven track record in other fields too such as acting, directing, editing and visual effects which have been an excellent asset in the face of his varied responsibilities. He also possesses a successful track record in leadership and project management, with other short film projects receiving funding from Croydon Council.
Asad Panjwani was born in Karachi, Pakistan and grew up in London, UK then moved to Luton, UK for secondary school. He studied the Art of Visual Effects in University and in his final year founded The Ace Effect as a Visual Effects Production Company. A month in he noticed a big miss-match between the percentage of ethnic diversity within the VFX workforce (19%) compared to the wider film and TV industry (3%) and decided to take it upon himself to try and make a difference. The Ace Effect morphed into a Film Production Company and got underway with its first production, “Denied” and the rest is history