Digital Departures - The Story So Far

LIVERPOOL is already widely viewed as a pioneering city for film initiatives, and known for having an innovative and forward-looking role regarding new media and the future of the screen industries.

With such a glowing reputation, therefore, the city’s very positive film brand is ripe for further development – so Digital Departures is Northwest Vision and Media’s answer to that progression.

Together with its partners, the Liverpool Culture Company and the UK Film Council, Vision and Media are radically transforming the feature film landscape of Liverpool and the broader Northwest by harnessing cutting-edge digital technology and micro-budget production methods.

Digital Departures is creating three innovative feature films in Liverpool, due to premiere in the city during the 2008 Capital of Culture celebrations, and each with a fully-funded budget of £250,000.

In February 2007 the Digital Departures initiative was officially launched, gaining both regional and national publicity, as filmmakers were encouraged to form writer/director/producer teams and begin to think about new and exciting stories they wanted to tell.

Over 500 would-be filmmakers went on line to register their interest in the Digital Departures scheme. When applications eventually opened in April filmmakers were asked to submit two-page micro-budget film proposals.

Although writer/director/producer teams were encouraged to apply, applications could also be made by individual filmmakers – provided they lived in Liverpool. Indeed, eligibility for the scheme depended entirely upon the main applicant being Liverpool-based.

With the submission deadline of 1pm on Friday 11th May 2007 approaching, Vision and Media stepped-up their search to find an Executive Producer to oversee the films and undertake key creative responsibilities.

In May Lisa Marie Russo was appointed. A highly regarded producer whose credits include Brothers of the Head, winner of the Michael Powell Award at Edinburgh in 2006, and Shiny Shiny Bright New Hole In My Heart for BBC Two.

Her first job was to narrow down the 156 Digital Departures submissions to a short-list of just 25 production teams, each of whom would be interviewed by a panel of industry experts, to determine the strength of their stories.

The panel comprised Lisa Marie Russo, Chris Moll (Northwest Vision and Media, Director of Production, Trade and Investment), Fiona Gasper (Liverpool Culture Company, Executive Director), Steve Jenkins (Head of Films at BBC Programme Acquisitions), the esteemed producer and director Don Boyd, writer Smita Bhide and Liz Rosenthal (Digital Distribution Consultant).

In June, after a hectic four days of interviews, 12 Liverpool-based filmmaking teams were told they’d made the long short-list, moving one-step closer to the filmmaking destination of their dreams.

Each team then took part in a three-day development workshop in Liverpool, from June 16-18, which helped them devise a development plan to take their early synopsis through to treatment.

After submitting the treatment, and being subject to a further panel review, a final short list of six movie making teams was announced in August – and given just eight weeks to produce a knock-out script.

Next, came the toughest interview of them all, as each team tried to convince a panel of top industry experts, including writer Tony Marchant, that their project should be one of three to be green-lit.

The decision was never going to be easy. And with each filmmaking team reaching different milestones at different times, it was inevitable the process of picking which feature was good-to-go would be spread out over several weeks.

As 2007 reached its close, however, the final three films were eventually chosen and in February 2008, director Don Boyd announced the the fabulous three films set for take off with Digital Departures.