Screen Funding and Commissioning as Interventions

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel explores current funding and commissioning interventions by publicly funded screen intermediaries, organizations and broadcasters in Northern Europe. The panel examines the intended and unintended consequences of specific initiatives, practices and funding measures that regional and national screen funders and broadcasters put in place to stimulate and nurture screen economies, boost production, and develop talent in their particular territory.

The four papers of the panel examine interventions into the screen economies from the perspectives of the screen intermediaries, funders and commissioners themselves. The panel thus investigates larger cultural policy considerations and frameworks for funding and commissioning new screen works, while also discussing how to think of the role of commissioners and agencies and how different notions of complex concepts such as quality and value can lead to very different forms of interventions.

It is important to move beyond the policies and remits themselves to gain a nuanced understanding of the possibilities and problems related to various frameworks. Accordingly, the papers analyse the ways in which funders and commissioners who implement the remits on a day to day basis, evaluate and reflect on their practice as well as the overall reasons for instigating specific funding initiatives.

Each paper is based on elite interviews and on having obtained unique access to screen intermediaries, film funders and television drama commissioners in Denmark (Danish Film Institute and New Danish Screen), the Netherlands (Screen NL), Sweden (Swedish Film Institute), Norway (Norwegian Film Institute and NRK), and the UK, specifically Scotland (Creative Scotland) and England (Film London).

The first two papers are based on a series of workshops with national film funders on ‘Commissioning Creativity and Funding Films’ (supported by the Scottish Government’s research fund, RSE) where academics and commissioners from Northern Europe met to exchange their national experiences with funding and commissioning to see what could be learnt from mirroring the practices between different countries. The two other papers are based on elite interviews with policy-makers, producers and commissioners at the British Film Institute and Film London and with the television drama team at Norway’s national broadcaster NRK respectively.

The panel will stimulate rich discussions on how to think of funding and commissioning in the current media industries and present important theoretical as well as empirical perspectives, not the least by mirroring the Northern European experiences from publicly funded production cultures with the research and experiences of scholars from other parts of the world.

Sub Unit

• Media Industry Studies

Individual Presentations

• Film and Television Commissioning as Different Degrees of Creative Interventions: Commissioning Roles in Film and Television Drama - Eva Novrup Redvall; Inge Ejbye Sorensen, Centre for Cultural Policy Research, U of Glasgow.

• The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Automatic Funding - Inge Ejbye Sorensen, Centre for Cultural Policy Research, U of Glasgow.; Eva Novrup Redvall

• Commissioning Creativity: Strategic Interventions in Public Service Drama - Vilde Schanke Sundet

• Building an Audience: VOD, Digital Distribution, and Independent Film - Philip Drake, Edge Hill U