Stephen Follows - Film industry data and education

The effect of Brexit on the UK film industry

June 26, 2017 1 comment

It’s been almost a year since I last addressed the topic of Brexit on this blog and I’ve wanted to give you an update for a while. The reason you’re reading this now is that the BFI have finally released an internal report (commissioned last summer) which looks at the effect of Brexit on the UK’s screen sector.

The report was put out to tender last August and the finished document delivered to the BFI’s Screen Sector Task Force in January. It wasn’t publicly available, so I put in a Freedom of Information request and last Friday the report was added to the BFI site. I strongly recommend that you download and read the full report yourself. It’s 84 pages long …

Read full article

The UK’s secret 20% tax relief for short films

June 19, 2017 3 comments

Short films have long been a vital part of the journey of new filmmakers, allowing them to learn new skills, meet like-minded collaborators and showcase their talent.

Most people’s first few shorts have a budget of almost (or exactly) nothing, with the filmmakers relying on the help of friends and family. However, as their ambition grows, so too must their budget. The cost of a short film can vary wildly, but over half of the short films submitted to the Raindance Film Festival cost more than £3,000.

Short filmmakers do all sorts of things to raise money for their short films, including crowdfunding, applying to schemes, begging family and spending their own savings. So it may come as a surprise …

Read full article

What percentage of box office income goes to local films?

June 12, 2017 1 comment

A few weeks ago, I looked at how much of Hollywood’s box office cinema is earned outside North America. The figure for 2016 was 63%, meaning that just 37% of the box office gross for Hollywood movies was from US and Canadian cinemas. This prompted a few people to get in contact to ask how this compares to the film industries of other countries.

I’m going to focus on European countries as these are the ones for which I have the most complete and equivalent data.

Local films in the top 10 European film markets

Let’s start by looking at the top ten film markets in Europe. France is both the largest market (213 million admissions last year) and also had the highest …

Read full article

What’s changed in the world of film festivals?

May 29, 2017 16 comments

Just over a year ago I published a long piece about the huge changes we’ve witnessed in the film festival market over the past fifteen years. It covered the emergence of online submission service Withoutabox, how the industry fell in love with Withoutabox, how it then fell out love thanks to poor service and monopolistic practices (due to their all-powerful patent) and finally the emergence of a rival, FilmFreeway.

If you’ve not read the piece then I recommend you do now as (a) it’s quite an entertaining, shocking story and (b) it will provide context for today’s article.

A year later, I thought I’d check in and see what’s changed. I spoke to Withoutabox, FilmFreeway and senior people within major film festivals. Throughout the article, I …

Read full article