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.