BFI Future Film Festival Returns

The BFI Future Film Festival returns this year from 21-23 February, bringing a line-up of workshops, masterclasses, screenings and Q&As for 15 – 25-year-olds to BFI Southbank.
For the second year running, the festival will be divided into three themes. Friday 21 February will focus on documentary, Saturday 22 February on fiction and Sunday 23 February on animation .
The festival will also host the Future Film Awards, with categories for documentary, fiction and animation in short and feature categories.
According to the BFI, the 2014 festival has seen highest number of film submissions by young filmmakers since its inception, amounting to 400 in total. This year the event will be offering cash prize in the form of £500 to the winner of each of the Short Film Awards, with support from the Chapman Charitable Trust.
2014 sees the festival welcome a variety of industry figures, including a Q&A with Oscar and BAFTA winning Visual Effects Supervisor Neil Corbould (The Fifth Element, The Day After Tomorrow).
Day one of the Festival will focus on documentary filmmaking. Workshops will cover pitching and planning a film, documentary presenting and making docs on mobile phones. Guest speakers will include Director of Programming at Sheffield Doc/Fest Hussain Currimbhoy, a live VJ performance of DocNext: European Souvenirs and a preview of Mark Cousins’ The Story of Children and Film.
Day two of the Festival will be dedicated to fiction storytelling, featuring workshops and panel discussions. Highlights will include masterclasses for budding production designers, casting directors and cinematographers with industry talent such as Casting Director Jeremy Zimmerman (Moon, Hellboy). Workshops will focus on finding the perfect soundtrack, no-to-low budget filmmaking and writing for female characters.
The third day sees animation take centre stage, offering masterclasses for all abilities, to help with everything from scripting and cinematography to sound design and acting for animation.
A highlight will be Getting in the VFX Industry, offering participants the chance to hear from those in the know, recruiters, HR advisors and industry professionals about what the VFX landscape offers for new entrants, how to get noticed and what the rewards are in this fast moving environment.
To accompany the Festival there will also be an exhibition of work by students who have been taking part in The Future Film Design Workshop, with the final aim of creating the marketing campaign for this year’s Festival.
www.bfi.org.uk
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