Digital Departures Announces Stunning Short List

A world-class group of film and TV professionals have been selected as finalists in the Digital Departures micro-budget filmmaking initiative, created by Northwest Vision + Media.
Together with its partners the Liverpool Culture Company, the UK Film Council and the BBC, Northwest Vision + Media have announced an impressive short-list of 12 filmmaking teams, each competing for a chance to make one of three £250,000 feature films in the next 14 months.
The final countdown sees a reunion for Liverpool Writers Frank Cottrell Boyce (24 Hour Party People, Millions) and Carl Hunter, whose current feature 'Grow Your Own' has opened at cinemas across the country. They are joined by Liverpool producer, Sarada McDermott, in a feature called 'Triple Word Score'.
Internationally-renowned director, Terence Davies, (Distant Voices Still Lives) has also been selected, working with Sol Papadopoulos and Roy Boulter, the Merseyside-based producers whose latest feature, 'Under The Mud', is also currently receiving international critical acclaim.
Liverpool producer Chris Bernard (Letter To Brezhnev) teams up with Cumbria’s award-winning writer/director, Juliet Mckoen, who took the film industry by storm with her feature, Frozen, starring Shirley Henderson, winning a phenomenal 11 awards last year.
And Liverpool rock legend, Pete Wylie, joins forces with Eastenders writer, Jeff Young, in their musical feature, 'The Don'.
In addition to established talent there are many new and emerging filmmakers involved in Digital Departures. Indeed, 10 of the final 12 filmmaking teams have people within the core writer/director/producer group who have been developed by, and are featured in, Northwest Vision + Media’s new Talent Year Book 2007.
Liverpool writer/producer, John Maxwell, has made it through to the short-list with his feature idea 'The Northern Cowboy'. He’s joined by Colin O’Donnell, Story Editor at Hollyoaks, who is writing horror film, 'Salvage'.
Also on the short-list are Liverpool director, Julie Lau, with a project called 'Left Handed', writer Lynne Harwood of Formby with Looking For Iris, Liverpool producer Richard Cottier is working on a film called Arabian Nightz, and The Maimed is a feature by Liverpool writer Gavin Whitefiled and director Laurence Easeman.
Liverpool writer Leigh Campbell has also been short-listed, for her feature 'Starstruck', and Birkenhead director, James Marquand is part of the team producing 'Whores With Guns', to be written by top Liverpool comic John Bishop and produced by Liverpool’s Philip Evers.
The 12 teams have now embarked on an intensive script-development period, overseen by Northwest Vision + Media, which works on behalf of the TV, film, radio and digital content industries to grow a world-class media economy in England’s Northwest. The project is also supported by the Liverpool Culture Company, the UK Film Council and the BBC.
In August, six of the projects will be selected to go forward to full script stage and ultimately seek to become one of three films greenlit for full production.
Lisa Marie Russo, the Executive Producer for Digital Departures, says each of the 12 projects deserves to be made: "That’s why, even when we have to reduce the short-list to just six, the teams who don’t make the final cut won’t just be abandoned."
"Resources means we can only make three features through the initiative, but we will do everything we can to help the filmmakers set up their projects elsewhere. The joy of Digital Departures is that it should deliver 12 professionally developed feature film projects, three of which will definitely be made over the next 14 months."
The three feature films which are eventually greenlit for production will each be developed, shot and post-produced in Liverpool and will premiere in the city in the autumn of 2008, as part of the city’s Capital of Culture celebrations.
"There is a wave of optimism in the film arts at the moment, anything seems possible, and it is the perfect time to be involved in something as special as Digital Departures.”
The completed films will be distributed nationally and internationally across a variety of digital platforms including the UK’s rapidly-expanding Digital Screen Network. The BBC is taking UK broadcast TV rights.
(DS)