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Schemers
Niamh Creely gives a crash course on the new Irish Film Board shorts schemes.
BSÉ/IFB launched their new raft of short film schemes on Saturday 20th October in an informal Q&A session in the Metropole Hotel in Cork. Simon Perry, Fran Keaveney, Louise Ryan and Andrew Meehan formed the panel outlining the schemes.
Previously, BSÉ/IFB ran four shorts schemes: Short Cuts (live-action, 6–15 minutes), Frameworks (animation, 5–6 minutes), Oscailt (Irish language, live-action or animation, 10–25 minutes) and Short Shorts (live-action or animation, up to 3 minutes). Of the four, only one scheme has emerged unchanged: Frameworks.
On the principle that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, BSÉ/IFB have decided to leave the flourishing Frameworks scheme untouched. Co-funded by RTÉ, the Arts Council, and BSÉ/IFB, successes for the scheme include an Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Short Film category for Give Up Yer Aul Sins, produced by Brown Bag Films in 2001.
Frameworks is open to animated films made using any technique and any format (except for Flash). The scheme is co-funded by bsé/ifb, the Arts Council and RTÉ. Up to six films, six minutes long can be made on the scheme, with no film costing more than €15,000 per minute. (That’s a maximum of €90,000 per film, for those without a calculator.) Don’t get too excited though, as the deadline for 2007 applications has now passed.
Ok, now we know what’s stayed the same. But what’s changed?
Concerns about the Irish language short being ‘ghetto-ised’ have resulted in the dedicated scheme Oscailt being discontinued. Instead, all five short schemes have been opened up to Irish language submissions. The thinking behind this is to give those interested in writing as Gaeilge as much scope as possible and also to discourage shorts being translated purely for the purpose of funding. Irish-language film will continue to have a high priority for bsé/ifb so Gaeilgeoirí please note: special attention will be given to projects written originally as Gaeilge.
Short Cuts, the old live-action scheme has gone the way of Oscailt and has been, somewhat ironically, cut. The successor to both of these schemes is Signatures.
The full article is printed in Film Ireland 119.
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