Transcript
BEN ROBERTS
The big difference between us and the two broadcasters, Film4 and the BBC, is that we're not a commissioner. What we do instead is we respond to ideas that come to us through an application process. So no one can get money from us without applying for the money.
We fund talent that's at different stages of their career. And we invest quite a lot of money in short film-making, or the development of the film-maker and the idea, up to the point at which they've made their first film. We look at a lot of work that exists from that film maker to get a sense of their particular approach, their particular style, where their skills lie. And if we're looking at a feature film project that is a comedy, for example, and that film-maker has only ever made three rather disturbing violent horror films, I think you look at those two things together and want to identify what it's going to mean they can turn from horror to comedy.
Whereas, if someone's made three very funny short films and they have a script that's equally funny, you can see the read across.
The thing we're looking for most of all is the different ideas, so the things that are not entirely derivative of 10 things that have existed before, because there's a lot of film-making that is designed to please as many people as possible. So you have very, very commercial film-making, which is looking to satisfy everyone. And that becomes quite repetitive, we can all identify similarities in those types of mainstream films. What we're looking for is ideas and film-makers who are doing something unusual.
And that just means them having a very different tone of voice, approaching ideas from a different angle, writing in a particular way, and that's what I'd say as a team excites us the most, when you read something or you see something that you feel like you've never seen before.