Chris Jones Blog

UK Tax Credit For Short Films? Get 20% of your budget back...

Leafing through this months Moviescope Magazine (in which I have an article), I noticed an article by Stephen Follows. I met Stephen for the first time a few years ago and I was impressed with his energy and enthusiasm – he seems to be capable of speech at about 150% normal human speed. Lord only knows how his brain doesn’t fry. Anyway. He spotted an opportunity in the UK Tax credit which is this…

There is no duration specified with regard to the length of a film...

This means you can conceivably make a short film and then put it in for the UK Tax credit, which is 20% of your budget spend – that’s right, the government will give you 20% of your budget back, they just send you a cheque! Now hang on there, there are a lot of hoops and caveats. This isn’t a simple freebie.

First off you must spend the money, so no deferred fees and the like. Only real cash spend

Second, you will need an accountant at some point.

Third the film MUST be intended for UK theatrical release, not just DVD, but the cinema.

Fourth, it must pass the UK cultural test.

And then there are bunch more things you need to do.

All of these points mean that micro budget films really just don’t cut it, you need to spend a fair whack of cash to make the whole venture viable. Over the coming months some test cases will start to appear and we can all see how it evolves. But potentially, it’s VERY interesting as it represents some real cash coming back to the film makers.

You can read an extended article on Stephens website here…

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Cape Fear Independent Film Festival, Wilmington, NC, May 4th

Some time ago I asked if any of our 175 Associate Producers would like to attend a film festival on behalf of Gone Fishing (I have run out of money!). Of course there would be no expenses or flights, but certainly a ripping time and life experience to be had. From my home town, Wigan in the North West Of England, Louise Steggals said that she would like to go to one. And Cape Fear on the Eastern seaboard of the USA was the festival of choice.

Louise got involved in Gone Fishing when she read an article in the local newspaper about what I was doing – she didn’t know me or my family, but she responded to the write up and sent us £50 toward the budget. Every little helped as you know.

And like so many Associate Producers on Gone Fishing, Louise maintains that it was the was the best £50 she ever spent! I now hope to get that same newspaper in Wigan to run a feature on Louise and her leap of faith, and (spoiler alert) take some pics with her and the trophies we won!

Anyway, here’s the Cape Fear Experience in Louise’s own words.

At the time of writing, I am currently sat in Wilmington International Airport waiting to start the long journey home, keeping a close eye on my suitcase which has Gone Fishing’s TWO awards carefully wrapped up inside (I should get a third award for the most creative use of bras) with my fingers and toes crossed that I don’t smash our glass gongs en route (“glass gongs”…now there’s a euphemism). 

Yes, the momentum has yet to falter as we claimed the Best Film award for our category (Faith-based/Family) and the Audience Choice award - the culmination of a crazy 72 hours at one of the most fun festivals I have ever been to.
 
Back-track to the beginning and I didn’t know what to expect as I landed in North Carolina.  It’s easy to understand how celebrities can get into that whole lifestyle; I have never been taken care of so well in all my life. 

Random strangers would offer me rides to get downtown (included one lady who started giggling hysterically and insisting she wasn’t crazy as she turned the wrong way into a one-way street), I had a very nice hotel by the beach, and the festival host, Joe Manganiello (who played Flash Thompson in Spiderman and Owen in One Tree Hill) very kindly gave me rides around the festival locations (I will have to scour Us Weekly to see if there’s any mention of Joe being spotted in town with a “mystery brunette” – that would be hilarious!)

Gone Fishing, as you may have guessed, was really well received.  Everyone wanted to know about how the trick with the ducks worked and they loved the scene where Devon Murray battles to catch Goliath.  The film-makers really loved the whole feel of the film, how slick it looked, how complete the story was…I was very honoured to be basking in Chris’ reflected glory as the accolades and compliments flowed and I got a handful of cards from film-makers and actors interested in any opportunities with Chris - when Joe himself asked to be considered for future projects I nearly fell out of my chair (a potentially fatal move as we were in a moving car at the time).   

There were some really amazing short films that deserved to win recognition – the competition was stiff in my opinion – and I answered questions as best I could.  We didn’t win the grand prize – that went to a very compelling documentary called “I am a Man” about the civil rights movement - but a lot of people had said how much they enjoyed the film and knew it would do well. 

Several producers have been talking about replicating Chris’ ingenious funding model for their own future projects.  And they’re very interested to see Rocketboy come to fruition.  I would thoroughly recommend this festival to any film-maker.  The people are wonderful, the creativity is amazing and it’s been a real pleasure to come out here and fly the flag for Gone Fishing, which continues to prove to be the best money I ever spent.   

Wow, thanks Louise.

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

If You Build It They Will Come...

Extraordinary news! We have managed to secure corporate sponsorship for our endeavours over the next few months! What does this mean? In short, we can make sure that we attend all the big events and that we can video blog it fully. But you were already doing that I hear you say. Yes, you are right, but now we can really go for it, and it will free me to get on with more important stuff, like taking meetings at 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers!

And remember, the coming months promise to be the most exciting, with the BAFTA's, the Oscars and the Santa Barbara Film Festival coming up.

So how did all this come about? Those of you who have taken any of my courses will know that I am a great believer that if you commit to excellence, somehow the money and opportunities will find you. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s happened so many times to me now that I know it to be true. And if you make this commitment, you also get to make something GREAT too (or at the very least learn an important lesson or lessons). So aside from the work load (and lets face it, film making is never really work, stocking shelves at the local supermarket, now that’s work!), everyone is a winner.

So… Late last week I got an email from a chap, Chris Larmour, who I had some brief communication with over ten years ago – he had also met up with Dave Hardwick, Executive Producer on my last feature Urban Ghost Story. At that time we had had a pleasant chat about film making and then went our separate ways.

Since then he has pursued an incredibly successful career in the telecommunications sector. Last week a Google search led him to my blog and he was immediately intrigued enough to re-establish contact, and offer some support for the push over the coming months. As we got chatting, exchanging emails and digging deeper, we discovered an even greater philosophical alignment, almost a meeting of minds… It was extremely exciting!

So please, everyone welcome to our stable, supporters and allies in Team Living Spirit’s ambitions for 2009, Actix.

Here’s what the press blurb says they do…

UK-based Actix helps wireless carriers enhance revenue growth and improve operating margins by delivering intelligent, automated network performance engineering and network status management systems.  Actix solutions feature embedded wireless expertise, automating key processes and enabling very significant efficiencies in the deployment and operation of carriers’ networks, delivering measurably higher performance at lower cost.  Over 10,000 engineers from 227 operators – including Verizon, O2, AT&T and T-Mobile – in 106 countries globally depend upon Actix software every day to help improve coverage for more than 1,100,000,000 subscribers.

What I do know is this, Chris Larmour, the guy who contacted me and has now ‘got on board’ with Gone Fishing, really does aspire to the peak of Everest too, and his involvement and all the infrastructure and corporate might he can bring to our team is an extremely welcome booster rocket. Actually, it feels like three or four booster rockets, so we are VERY excited about this new development!

I can best characterise his position by sharing part of an email he wrote to me about how one achieves what others consider impossible…

Talking about the Obama campaign's strategy to enlarge the Democratic electorate, Steve Croft of 60 Minutes asked: "How did you win states like Indiana and North Carolina?" (traditionally Republican states, that were widely considered to be unwinnable by Democrats). David Plouffe, Chief Campaign Strategist, paused and then responded simply: "First of all, we believed we could."

I now have my sights on another ‘impossible’ task with Gone Fishing. I will reveal this goal in due course, but it’s a cracker!

So, I am really looking foreword to a long and prosperous relationship with Actix and Chris Larmour.

Blimey, blimey and thrice blimey!

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Exec Producer Dave Hardwick gets onboard Gone Fishing!

Great news! Executive Producer David Hardwick has come onboard Gone Fishing, adding to our coffers. This is particularly good news for me as Dave has now invested in every single film I have made! He should be given a knighthood as a patron for the arts! The pic here is taken in Cannes a few yeas back, with (from left to right) Dave Hardwick (now EP on Gone Fishing), Simon Cox (second unit director on Gone Fishing), Claire Trevor Roper, Jason Connery, Me (Chris Jones), Carmen Dyer and Genevieve Joliffe.

So how did Dave get involved in the first place? Well, Dave met my brother in a lift in Germany many years ago, they got to chatting about the films I had planned, and Dave then got in contact with me and subsequently involved in each and every one of our films.

Best of all, Dave has also introduced another Executive Producer to Gone Fishing, Manu Uppal of the Net-link Group.

In between films, Dave has also been pursuing a music career, and you can hear some of his music here.

To date, we have now raised somewhere in the region of £21k, leaving us only a couple of thousand short of our target which I am now convinced we will achieve.

Blimey!

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]

Gone Fishing gets its 100th contributor!

We hit our 100th contributor last night (thank you Wendy!), bringing the total raised so far to…

£19,685!

Blimey! I mean really, BLIMEY!

We are still short though, so if you know anyone who may want to come on the course or come to the premiere, click here. I have been working on the £100 film makers package, and there are details on our website here. Again, if you know anyone who may be interested, send them the link. I am working on adding extra content for the course too, and remember, for those who are interested, we will be allowing people into the final grade (at 2k film res) and final mix (Dolby Digital) just to get a taste of the experience.

So here is the roll call of the latest Associate Producers…

Tom Evans Marino Santirso Ruiz Tom Evans Jon Sorenson Martyn Bamber Jean Verdi Stuart Reid C K Chu Pete Bryden GF Ellis Simon Coddington James McGough Jonathan Wilkinson Emilio and Rosa Landino Beryl and Finley Ellis Andrew Welding Sarah Hickman nic hodgkinson Christine Cheung Amy Enticknap Desire Densiti Trevor Hughes Chris Wetton Conway Churchill Flo Churchill Ed Every Rachel Murray Ray Battersby James Lord Mary Long

Maria Landino Tamsin Stevens Adam and Tara Simon Van Der Spoel Alastair Nicholson Linda Potgieter Jan Potgieter Katherine Shannon Ian Seckington Ken Royall Susan Heneghan Russ Wharton Alex Clennel White Mark Fogwill Dominic and Jane Landino Stuart Teare Andrew Delaplaine Juill Greenman Parham and Lotti Margaret Smith Brendan Deere Phil Ashcroft Tim Mewton Scott Devenport Iain Spence Leonie Jones Lucian Cristian Branea Graham Inman Pasquale Bellini Wendy Pauw

You can read the original proposal here.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Bradgate Brings Some Finance!

I am delighted to announce that the production company, Bradgate Films, have come on board as a co-producer for ‘Gone Fishing’. Through their excellent connections they have managed to bring £5k of private investment to the project, which is excellent news.

Here is what Bradgate say about themselves…

'Bradgate Films are an emerging, midlands based feature film production company. Within Bradgate is a passion for film and over 20 years experience in production. They have produced projects in the

United States, Canada, Thailand, the Seychelles and Monaco in addition to the UK. From micro to millions Bradgate have worked on films including drama, thriller, science fiction, horror and children’s film genres.'

Here is what I can say about Alan and Maria who own and run Bradgate, after we spent a half day chatting over coffee – it’s rare to meet film makers with passion, business acumen and serious experience who are still willing to take a risk and get something special made. Most have been seduced into TV or corporate work, but not Alan and Maria – they still have the fire! So it’s GREAT news for ‘Gone Fishing’ that we have managed to expand our coffers and get a couple of extra experienced hands on deck too. 

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

A Further £500 raised!

As we hit the tarmac running today – Monday – just a recap on where we stand money wise. Over the weekend we received a further £500 in donations. So thank you to Paul Nugent, Huw Jenkins, Hazeley Wilson, Jurgen Wolf, Rod Duncan, John Basham, Steve Payne and Simon Reglar. Splendid. We are in the final negotiations with one of our major partners too, who would bring a third of the budget in one hit. Exciting I can tell you. 

I am meeting with DP’s and Designers this week and hope to have someone announced by the end of the week.

I also did a script revision over the weekend, but after consideration, I think I am going to re-tighten the narrative. I added a few ideas that I felt added charm to the narrative, but also added two new locations. Aside from the budgetary implications, I know in my heart that this redraft would drift into slightly slacker and perhaps a little more self indulgent story telling. So it’s got to go. 

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

More Cash and Crewing!

Yesterday I sent out a mail to my mailing list, asking for crew help and specifically a storyboard artist. Boy! I got about 250 responses, so it’s going to take me a little time to get through everyone. It struck me, there is enough enthusiasm and passion there to make five short movies! I think after all is done, I will try and get everyone together for a networking barbecue or something similar. It seems there are a lot of like minded people who are not quite connected to each other, so let’s help build those connections and get more movies made.

As for Storyboard Artists, I am hoping I have found someone in my 250 responses. We will see.

We also got more contributions in the last 24 hours, from Jack Marshall, Rachel Keig, David Bowen, Ghost Films and Susan Douglas bringing the total cash raised to £2,600. We have just managed to secure, for free, the whole 35mm scanning and, grading, mastering, DI, scanning back to 35mm, HDCamSR mastering and data archive – ALL FOR FREE! This is worth about £3k, and brings us much closer! BLIMEY BLIMEY BLIMEY!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

We are getting there!

OK so fund raising is continuing, and we now have a rather spiffy graph, to show us all where we are at. In the last day we had four more people contribute, raising the cash figure to £2,200 – they are Mike Mindel, Ross Edwards, Martin Bowen and Harriet Barbir. So thank you very much guys. As I said in the last mail, we hope to announce a bigger chunk of money in the next few days, getting us even closer.

We are delighted to announce that we have secured all the 35mm film stock for free, raising a further £2.2k of  the budget, bringing us near to the £5k mark! Holy cow, we are getting there!

We aim to be around £10k by the start of next week.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Gone Fishing - the budget starts to flow in

I have just spent a frantic week, working on casting and all sorts of other stuff. There will be a script redraft very soon, and this little tweak I hope to be the final one. Most important though is that cash has started to flow into the production- pictured is a post card that came from one person wishing us GOOD LUCK! SO THANK YOU EVERYONE.

We have also had a huge amount of well wishers and we feel humbled by people’s generosity.

So far, hard cash, we have had £1,850 donated, mostly in £50’s and £100’s. But we also had one £500 donation! Blimey! We have also had promises of more from people who can’t donate just now, but who really want to be involved and help get it made. Literally, can you wait until I get paid at the end of the month! Amazing. Truly. 

There is a rumbling too, for a very large chunk of cash – we hope to make an announcement about that later next week. So we are well on our way to getting there, which is terrific news. But we are not there yet, so please, if you want to get involved, or know anyone who does, take action now and go to http://www.livingspirit.com/GFpayment.htm

Next week is a final week of gearing up before we actually move into a more formal pre production. 

So here are our Associate Producers so far…

Josh Halewood
Damien Donnelly
Kerry Finlayson   
Darren Horne
Merlin Ward
Matt Davis
Leilani Holmes
Gordon Mutch
Sarah Morrison
Tom Waller
Steve Wilson
Jonathan Musgrave
Ian Toulouse
Dean Ivemey
John Quinn
Geoff Moseley
Lyn O'Donnell
Mark Morris
Jane Clemments

You can read more about Gone Fishing here

Onward and upward!
Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

 

Gone Fishing Update

OK - Here is a brief update as to where we are at with Gone Fishing.

From this point onward, we plan to make regular updates to this page, but for now, here is a potted history of how we got here, to July 12th 2007.

Back in May, Marc Samuelson from Samuelson Productions, read Rocketboy and loved it. And I mean REALLY loved it. They wanted to make it. For $12m. Next year. The only problem is they didn’t want me to direct. So Cannes came and went and I hatched a plan to make a short film of such staggeringly high quality, they would have complete confidence in me as director. (this is phase one of my three part plan, which will be unveiled as we get there).

I had a number of boxes to check when devising a story to make into a short film. First, I needed it to be short, around 7 minutes. Maximise my spend against the knowledge that the important people who see it, will only make a minor time investment. Second, I needed it to be shot on 35mm, to give it the biggest movie feel I could manage. Third, I wanted it to be an Oscar contender. Seriously.

Next I needed to tackle head on, the concerns of the very serious backers of Rocketboy - which reading between the lines, I suspected were something like this ‘Can he handle big projects, and actors? Can he make something cinematic? Can he handle the kids in the story?’ Of course there would be other concerns for sure, but I suspected those were the main ones.

So I devised a short film that echoed the tone and feel of Rocketboy. It stars an old man, and young nine year old boy. The plan is to get a major name to play the old man, and a newcomer for the boy. This would prove I can handle the ‘big names’ and the kids.

I then set about writing down my key words - these are a few words that will guide my choices during the making of the film, essentially an anchor to keep me focused. These words I came up with are CONFIDENT, SENSITIVE and CINEMATIC. These words will inform my every creative choice. It means I can’t rely on cheap cinematic sleight of hand, or overly showy camera work, or oodles of over sentimental music.

In June I wrote the first draft, in a day, after a week or so of mulling the idea over. Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that it’s all done in a day. No, this was the first draft and I had spent a great deal of time sort of ‘stewing’ in the themes and ideas. The initial reactions to this first draft were very positive, but I knew there was more that could be done. A few weeks later, I re-wrote to arrive at draft 2. Essentially this expanded on one big story point and also clarified a major plot point so that audience would be in no doubt as to what was happening (something I had picked up on when people read draft 1). Now everyone loves it. This is really great news.

At this point, Producer Ivan Clemments came on board and together, we have been trying to find the money. If you are reading this, you will know all about these misadventures!

So that should bring you up to speed.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

The Funding Documents Arrive!

Finally, the funding proposals for ‘Gone Fishing’ have arrived from the printers.

In the next few days we are going to be approaching everyone we know to help out and get involved. We will almost certainly be contacting you too! And if we don’t know you, but you are interested, you can contact us at [email protected].

We have set a shoot date of September 3^rd, and Cathy Arton, Casting Director starts work next week.

The next major hurdle is to get the website up to date, which I hope will be done by weekend. And then it’s all systems go!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]