FUNDING Baby Driver part of £415m tax relief benefit bill

For Indies such as Warp government finance through the BFI (previously the UK Film Council) and the still-operating regional arms of the old UKFC such as EM Media and Screen Yorkshire (significant distributors of EU finance which will soon disappear thanks to Brexit) are absolutely central to their ability to produce feature films. Without money in the form of non-repayable grants there would be no '71, This is England, Tyrannosaur and so forth.

The BBC and Film4, terrestrial public service broadcasters (with Sky, and its Sky Atlantic channel key to Warp's high-budget TV series The Last Panthers) are also crucial at this level of budget, very rarely exceeding £5m ('71 did, at £8m).

For the big six, and their subsidiary production arms, such as Working Title, just as crucial is tax relief, which will typically far exceed the entire budget of Indie films. 20 years after the Tory free market PM Thatcher scrapped the quota system that ensured cinemas screened a minimum proportion of British films (most European countries, notably france, still have such laws in place), the Labour government recognised the struggles of the industry with a range of tax relief measures, that the current Tory government has (reluctantly) kept in place.

The extent of this varies across the UK, with additional relief available in Northern Ireland (though even more is available in the Republic of Ireland), and indeed there is fierce international competition to attract film productions through tax deductions, including several US states offering high levels of relief.

The scale of this tax relief is clear from the report on 2016 payments, hitting £600m in 2016, including WT's Baby Driver. The tests for determining the 'Britishness' of productions are controversial, with minimal cultural consideration, more raw economic factors determining eligibility. If you read the BFI's annual reports (you should - an amazing source of learning) you'll find many clearly American films accordingly categorised as British.


Big-budget films receive increase in tax relief to almost £600m.

The government paid out almost £600m in tax relief last year to the makers of blockbusters including Baby Driver, Star Wars and T2: Trainspotting, as well as big-budget TV dramas including The Crown. 

The payouts were part of £751m that the Treasury awarded in tax relief to films, high-end dramas, video games, animations, children’s TV shows and theatre productions that passed a “cultural test” that qualified them as British. 

The government’s figures showed that the total awarded in tax relief in the creative sector rose by a third year-on-year from £564m in 2015. The test includes criteria such as the cultural content of a production, how much of it is shot in the UK and the proportion of stars and crew who are from Britain or Europe. 

The government’s tax credit system has proved hugely successful in stopping big-budget film and TV productions, as well as talent such as games makers and special effects workers, going to cheaper locations such as eastern Europe or to other countries offering bigger incentives.

It has also helped attract investment from the deep-pocketed newer arrivals on the film and TV scene, such as Netflix and Amazon, which have backed productions in the UK including The Crown, which had a total budget of £100m, and fashion drama series The Collection. 

Last year there were 175 films completed in the UK that claimed tax relief, with the Treasury paying out £415m, up from £339m the previous year. Relief payouts for high-end TV – dramas that cost £1m or more per episode – rose from £104m to £163m. 

Warp's £5m+ '71

(click through on to YouTube for the StudioCanalUK page)

I'll blog again on '71, Warp's highest-budget production to date, reportedly (Screen) around £5m ($8.1m), but take note for now that it is officially released on Friday October 10th, with screenings at the National Media Museum in Bradford amongst others:

I'm hoping to attend the 615 Friday screening - keep an eye out for any marketing of this film; if you spot any billboards or cinema stands, take a snap and pass on a picture!

UPDATE: DVD INTERVIEW JANN DEMANGE [Filmmakers' responsibility with representations; his own background/compare to Elizabeth; Film v TV; prioritising the grey or polysemy]

Would we really expect anything less from Warp ... the DVD (out March 9th; cinema release was October 10th 2014) has some useful extras: interviews with the lead, director and screenwriter. The following aren't quite verbatim, but quite close:

We have a real responsibility making films. This was about a really painful period in many people's lives, and we had to keep that thought and not just make choices for audience entertainment.

He raises his background - you could usefully compare this to Shekhar Kapur getting the gig for Elizabeth (Indian, no knowledge of the era!), an instance of WT taking a big commercial risk (that paid off handsomely: a $30m film that made $82m and spawned a sequel/franchise).

I'm not your natural choice for this film: my background is French-Algerian, I grew up in London, I'm not even a WASP. But I wanted to focus on the story of the challenges facing young men, not make a political film. It was very important to me to bring out the shades of grey with all the different players, and I made this clear when negotiating with the producers. I have no links to Belfast, it was the screenplay that drew me to this.
Working with television you have much more time to draw out an epic character arc, whereas in film its a mere snapshot and you have to work to make every moment count.

UPDATE: DVD/BLU-RAY SLEEVE DESIGN
Rather stumbled upon this, but very useful context, and real micro-level detail:

I started working on the initial packshot for ’71 back in August 2014 and the final artwork files have just been sent. It’s rare for me to spend so long on an individual title (unless the delays are due to production issues!).
The Blu-ray and DVD packaging has gone down a slightly different route to the Steelbook release. Although using the theatrical artwork as its base, we wanted to create something that had a more military feel. The colours were adjusted and a new textures were added to the background, giving it the khaki texture. There’s also a little adjustment to the composition in “’71” as well a colour change. Both the Blu-ray and DVD releases have a cardboard o-ring sleeve, which has an overall matt varnish with spot UV gloss. The Blu-ray has a cut down O-ring, which shows the black Blu-ray case at the top.

Source: Rogue4 Design.

Khaki colourscheme the key to this design

(NORTH LEEDS LIFE): WARP MOST IMPORTANT FILM CO OUTSIDE LONDON?
Great quote here, and a useful one to use in an essay:

“The acclaim for Yann Demange’s ’71 comes as no surprise”, said Hugo Heppell, Head of Investments at Screen Yorkshire and Executive Producer on ‘71. “Its selection for Official Competition at the Berlin Film Festival is much deserved recognition for Yann, Angus, Robin and the whole team at Warp. We are immensely proud to have supported Warp over the last ten years and to see it now as the most significant film production company outside London.”

Screen Yorkshire 2013 £3.5m includes Warp's '71

News that Screen Yorkshire' Yorkshire Content Fund, launched in 2012, has a 2013 budget of £3.5m, investing between £100k to £500k in film, games and TV projects. Its total budget is £15m:

The Yorkshire Content Fund, launched in Feb 2012, will invest £7.5m of European Regional Development Funding into growing TV, film, games and digital business across Yorkshire and Humber. That figure will be matched by a further £7.5m of private investment, bringing the total fund value to £15m.

Much of Screen Yorkshire's money comes from an EU fund, the European Regional Development Fund. Here's SY's chief exec on how the YCF works:

Sally Joynson, Chief Executive of Screen Yorkshire, said: “We’ve had an incredible first year for the Yorkshire Content Fund with TV investments such as Peaky Blinders for BBC2 and The Great Train Robbery heading into production soon for BBC1, along with features such as Warp Films’ ’71, Emu Films’ Catch Me Daddy and Ecosse Films’ Girl’s Night Out. We now have a number of financing structures in place with co-investors that are working very well for the film and TV sectors so I’d urge producers to contact us now with their latest projects so we can continue to invest in the some of the most creative and commercial UK productions.”

Note the Warp Films movie in there: '71. You can discuss the funding of this (production practices) even if it hasn't been shot yet, let alone released (due for a 2014 release according to the IMDB entry). Here's the Wiki info on '71:

'71 is an upcoming film set in Northern Ireland. Written by Gregory Burke and directed by Yann Demange it stars Richard Darmer, David Wilmot, Martin McCann and Charlie Murphy, and tells the story of a British soldier who becomes separated from his unit during a riot in Belfast at the height of the Troubles in 1971. Filming began on location in Yorkshire in April 2013. The film is funded by the British Film Institute, Film4, Creative Scotland and Screen Yorkshire.^[1]

Read more from SY's press release here.