Man, I was thinking about going to film school in UK. Might be a good choice...

The problem is that unless you're good mates with the people with the money or you're Robert Altman, the odds of getting funding from the British taxpayer for your movie are slim. Historically, most of the money seems to have gone to friends of the people who hand it out, which is one reason why most British movies of the last decade or so have been so bad.

Certainly very few people I know consider even applying for the funding to be worthwhile: and one guy I met not long ago was complaining that they did get funding for a short where they weren't allowed to pay the cast and crew but were forced to pay thousands of pounds to a professional production company to 'manage' the project... where their idea of 'management' was apparently to call them every few days and ask how it was going.

Personally, as far as I'm concerned, the sooner all tax funding of British movies is ended, the better. Tax incentives, fine, but the government should not be giving out taxpayers' money to people making bad movies.

IMHO Britain is probably the worst country in the world to be making movies at the moment: the only real benefit is that it's relatively easy to get to Hollywood if you are successful here.

Without going into gorey details, most of the UK tax incentives for film production are aimed at investors, not producers (sale and leaseback aside of course). Investors in British feature films can obtain some tax relief on the money they invest, however they obviously have to have the money to invest in the first place (and a big enough tax bill to make it worthwhile).

On the issue of grants, the UK certainly has more public money available than the US does. This money is administered by the UK Film Council, and regional government film offices. As you'd imagine, competition for this cash is fierce.

None of these programs are directly available to non-UK residents. The only way you can access these if you don't live here is to set up an official international co-production with the UK.

Ben.

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