The 15 teams formed of directors and producers selected by Alberto Barbera, together with the Biennale College – Cinema team, have been invited to attend a first ten-days workshop, going on in Venice during these days. The teams are working with an Academic Team formed of international and italian professionals and experts. The purpose is to discuss all aspects of the projects and share experiences about low budget filmmaking, giving and receiving feedback directly from tutors and other teams.
Depending on their role, tutors and consultants (you can find their bios in the Team section) have specific tasks, and they work in different ways with directors, producers or teams:
- 4 Group Leaders: Michel Reilhac, Gino Ventriglia and Amy Dotson/Scott Macaulay
They are working with 5 projects each, mainly with the directors, but often with the teams. Each group is discussing in detail all aspects of their project, giving and receiving feedback from the other teams, and pulling together all different inputs they are receiving during the other sessions.
- 2 Producers Consultants: Mike Ryan and Tristan Goligher
Each is working with a group of 7/8 producers, and sometimes together with all 15 producers. They are discussing the production aspects of each project with the teams, making use of all the knowledge that is in the group to share experiences and best practices in the field of micro-budget cinema.
- 5 Script Consultants: Franz Rodenkirchen, Nicola Lusuardi, Anita Voorham, Marietta von Hauswolff von Baumgarten and Antoine Le Bos
Each is working on 3 projects. Every team has 3 one-to-one sessions of 1,5 hours with the script consultant to discuss the script.
- 2 Experts: Pierre Cattan and Jon Reiss
In the groups, the teams are discussing audience engagement, cross-media potential, community management and other topics related to building an audience for their project.
- 1 pitching trainer: Stefano Tealdi
In groups and one-to one sessions, the teams are receiving help in presenting their project in public by learning to describe the core of the project.
- 2 Guests: Nekisa Cooper and Tomas Leyers
Nekisa and Tomas are sharing their experience in micro-budget filmmaking and on distribution in late afternoon plenary sessions.
In particular the workshop schedule is formed of several different moments, and the teams work in group or in plenary:
- Group work: in different group combinations;
- One-to-one sessions: mainly with script consultants and the pitching trainer (teams/directors only);
- Case studies and lectures: in plenary;
- One-to-one meetings with another team: each team is matched with another project, and they give special feedback to each other.
- Writing time: time for individual work or to discuss within each project team.
The sessions and lectures will conclude on Wednesday 16th January. On Thursday 17th January every project will be presented at Biennale. Then we’ll have just to wait for the up to 3 final selected projects in February.