Films
Released
Name: Christmas in London
Approximate Duration: 9mins
Approximate Budget: £200
Release Date: 24.12.2020
Genre: Festive / Romance
Director: Asad Panjwani
Status: Completed
Starring: Rose Lami and Callum McGregor
Name: Bad Blood
Duration: 00:04:09
Budget: £67
Release date: 21.06.2020
Genre: Comedy
Director: Rakesh Jaitly
Starring: Ciaran Cochlan and Asad Panjwani
Name: Cheater
Duration: 00:06:59
Budget: £600
Release date: 01.01.2020
Genre: Comedy / Action
Director: Asad Panjwani
Starring: Abby McLeod, Asad Panjwani and Nathan Joseph
In Production
concepts
Name: Influenced
Genre: Thriller, Action
Format: Short
Writer: Asad Panjwani
Director: Asad Panjwani
Budget: £200
Name: Ruin
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Format: Short
Writer: Rakesh Jaitly
Director: Rakesh Jaitly
Budget: £200
Name: After The One
Genre: Romance
Format: Short
Writer: Camille Hatcher
Director: TBC
Budget: £500
Name: Ujala
Genre: Horror
Format: Short
Writer: Asad Panjwani
Director: Asad Panjwani
Budget: £200
Name: The Family Dinner
Genre: Art House
Format: Short
Writer: Fex Orumwense
Director: Fex Orumwense
Budget: £3,500
Name: Requesting Back Up
Genre: Comedy, Action
Format: Short
Writer: Asad Panjwani
Director: Asad Panjwani
Budget: £800
Name: Blank
Genre: Art House
Format: Short
Writer: Ciaran Cochlan
Director: Ciaran Cochlan
Budget: £5,000
Name: Wednesday
Genre: Art House
Format: Short
Writer: Fex Orumwense
Director: Fex Orumwense
Budget: TBC
Name: Sweet Caroline
Genre: Comedy, Action
Format: Short
Writer: Asad Panjwani
Director: Asad Panjwani
Budget: £5,000
Name: Psycho in Love
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Format: Short
Writer: Asad Panjwani
Director: Asad Panjwani
Budget: £20,000
Name: Doubt
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Format: TV Pilot
Writer: Rakesh Jaitly
Director: Rakesh Jaitly
Budget: £80,000
Name: Morning Mister Magpie
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Format: Feature
Writer: Rakesh Jaitly
Director: Rakesh Jaitly
Budget: £3m
Name: 6 a.m.
Genre: Thriller, Crime
Format: Feature
Writer: Asad Panjwani
Director: Asad Panjwani
Budget: £3m
Name: Mass Revival
Genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Format: TV Pilot
Writer: Asad Panjwani
Director: Asad Panjwani
Budget: £10m
TBC
TBC
blogs
fun-raising
webinar

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
About us
Our
Mission
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.

About
The Ace Effect
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!
About the
Founder
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
Team
Producers

Creative producer
Asad Panjwani

producer
Natalie Chan

Creative producer
Rakesh Jaitly

production manager
Bryony Ditchburn
Writers / Directors

Narrative / Comedy / Drama
Rakesh Jaitly

Action / Comedy / Sci-Fi
Asad Panjwani

Arthouse
Ciaran Cochlan

Arthouse
Fex Orumwense
DPs

Carla Fuschillo

Fex Orumwense

Sam Hotson
Valentina Catenacci
assistant directors

Asad Panjwani

Rakesh Jaitly

Izem Ustun
Krzysztof Broniecki
Lighting Department

gaffer
Carla Fuschillo

best girl
Rozeta Lami
Sound Mixers / Boom Operators

Ciaran Cochlan
Makeup Artist / SFX MUA

Olesia Nikolaiets
BTS

Carla Fuschillo

Rozeta Lami
Editors

Asad Panjwani

Rakesh Jaitly
Visual Effects Artists

lead compositer / supervisor
Asad Panjwani
get in touch
Get in touch
You can now submit your concepts, scripts, loglines, synopsis, or whatever else for TV Shows, Features or Shorts, scripted or non-scripted along with a quick intro about you. We would love to meet and hopefully work with you!
Stay in touch
Like our content and wanna stay in touch for our upcoming films? Sign up below and be the first to hear about them.
Work with us
opportunities
Genre: Romance
Format: Short
Writer: Camille Hatcher
Director: TBC
Budget: £500
Payment: Food, Travel and IMDb Credit
Location: In and around London
Shoot Dates: 27th – 28th of Feb 2020
Prep: Month of Feb.
Post: Month of March.
Screening: In April.
How to Apply?
Submit your name, contact details and your past work below.
Deadline: 04.01.2021
EXPIRED
Director
After the one
The Ace Effect Ltd is looking for a Director for an upcoming Romantic Drama Short Film, written by Camille Hatcher. We are looking for a collaboration with a distinctive voice with innovative ideas to complete our team and bring the story to life. The role is unfortunately unpaid but all travel, meals on shoot dates and pre-agreed expenditure will be covered.
Who’s this opportunity for?
Anyone who has an interest in Directing Romantic Films, ideally those who are in their early careers and are struggling to access the industry.
Those who are committed to making it happen and are willing to put in their 110%.
We want to develop a mutually beneficial, collaborative relationship with the director and create an action plan to make this short film happen.
What happens Next?
We aim to get back to everyone by 11.01.2021, if you’ve been shortlisted. We will send you the script and invite you to send us very short directors’ statement outlining your vision and plans to bring the story to life and then we’ll have a informal chat over zoom/phone call to get to know each other to see if we are the right fit.
We aim to have made a final decision by Monday 18 January 2021 and will be notifying everyone either way again.
If you’ve been unsuccessful, we’d still like to keep your details for future opportunities (unless you’ve instructed us not to).
Still have questions? Drop us an email at ace@theaceeffect.com and we can talk further.
Email: ace@theaceeffect.com
Phone: 07771619993 – Urgent Queries (WhatsApp and Calls Only)