RP DVD Extras 📀 April Edition

Hey! First of all big sorry for no dvd extras last month, after the big fuss of launching a second newsletter and how it was to show you the behind the scenes, we then got bogged down with….the behind the scenes and it fell off the list.

So what were we doing? We were very deep into a funding application for the BFI Exhibition fund and at the same time my children decided to bring home a lovely treat, double chicken pox! So my days were balanced between proof reading and being honestly…. a bit freaked out by medieval looking boils appearing all over my children.

But I am very pleased to share that we won the funding grant! This is huge for us, but I understand funding wins can be confusing. Are we rich now? Absolutely not. Will there be a Champagne fountain at the venue? No, imagine the risk assessment. Is the festival going to grow? Slightly yes, so I thought I’d use this newsletter to break it down.

First of all, it’s so much more than just filling out an application form. Our work for this fund began in OCTOBER. I feel a timeline coming on…

October: We reviewed all audience feedback and data from the 2024 fest, what did audiences like, what was most popular, what else would they like to see, what went wrong, what could have been better.

November: We started RESEARCH pouring through audience data of our festival home Darlington and surrounding areas to learn more on behaviour, trends, attitudes and ways of outreach to better engage people in cultural film.

December: Okay we didn’t really do much this month, but it was CHRISTMAS let us be.

January: Film hubs host online sessions where you can learn more about the fund and TALK through your application, we had concerns this year as we weren’t repeating some aspects from last year like the archival screenings or a feature presentation, so it was great to chat through things and have all our questions answered.

February: We printed off our previous application (Can you tell us we’re old) and scribbled, highlighted and got to work on what needed new DATA to back up our points, what additional research we needed, what new policies needed to be written, what gaps we needed to explore, and how we were going to show that we achieved last years goals and what % of audience growth we realistically were going to aim for.

March: Application WRITING TIME, lots of proofreading, sending Whatsapps of “Does this make sense?” “Is this even a word?” along with putting together an entire box office prediction breakdown, 360 marketing plan with some new approaches and that all important budget, identifying where every penny will go.

April: WAITING. God the wait is awful. You start to think about how you’re going to pivot, what you’ll need to cut, how you’ll break the news to the team, googling how to rob a bank, exploring other methods (and careers) so getting that email through when I was sitting in the garden enjoying the Spring sunshine felt amazing.

And then it was STRAIGHT back to work, now contacting everyone we had been wanting to work with to check if they were available as we could now afford them!

So it’s certainly not a quick thing, the work is long and in depth and such a team effort. 

The first time we won some money from the BFI [Not the big fund, we were rejected] I received a message from another festival who questioned why we had won it, when they had applied previously and never had it. It was probably was an innocent genuine question but It felt like such a gut punch, as if they felt we had just ticked a box, made no effort, sent off a little form and hadn’t worked tirelessly on research and evidencing and funds just landed in our account later that day. #Girlboss

A big misconception about Filmfreeway submissions fees is that they all go to greedy festival pockets (I mean…some of them probably do) but at Women X it is the lifeline to simply cover our venue and running fees. 

Plus, with the criteria of our festival being focused on women in leading creative roles it means we receive around 60% less submissions (and therefore fees) than other festivals, plus we always ensure we’re at a fair submission price point (more research we do) so we always have to do more with less.

Funding is competitive, confusing and so hard. So celebrating the wins are important, we had over 40 sponsorship rejections/no shows to meetings/ghostings last year, so let me assure you - it is not just about ticking a box.

Thanks for reading, I’m off now to research the cost of Champagne fountains

Yours,

Caris

P.S Our next RP: Evolve development day is happening in June in Manchester and Earlybird tickets are on sale!

RPeaPod our OG newsletter will be back next month with your industry news and opps.