About Four Corners

What is Four Corners?
It is an attempt to bring together some of the most talented recent film school graduates graduates from around the continent, to help them develop, finance and produce new films that will thrive and prosper in the European and international market place.

Twelve groups will be accepted on to the programme. Each group will consist of 2-3 people, and each will contain at least one writer and one producer. Eight of the groups will come from the four founder members, while places for the remaining four groups (i.e., up to twelve people) are open to applications from other European film schools and countries. The four workshops will take place in England, Spain, Bulgaria and Greece, and the selected participants will attend all four events.

Participants will be taking their project through the development phase until it is ready to be presented to the market. There will be continuous work on the script, during, and in between, the workshops, supplemented by conferences on industrial and creative aspects of the business.

As an additional element to the development package, there will be the possibility for project teams to produce, in conjunction with their home film schools, a short teaser trailer for their film. Four Corners will be offering awards of up to €5000 each towards the production costs of the three best trailer proposals developed on the course.

Tutors
Ana Sanz-Magallón
Phil Hughes
Miguel Machalski
Svend Abrahamsen

Methodology
The pedagogical methodology at the workshops will be a mixture of the following, so as to provide the best possible balance of individual support and team networking:

• Interactive seminars of three project teams each, coached by course tutors.
• One-to-one project team meetings
• Plenary sessions, including lectures, relevant case studies, and screenings.

Participants will be required to help to develop each other’s work as well as their own. They will read and get to know the other projects, and work on them in a collective European environment, guided by the course tutors.

At each workshop, each project team will be allocated an individual tutor who will work with them during the course, and follow up online. These tutors will offer continuity throught the workshops.

The final workshop will be where the developed projects will be presented to the industry during the Thessalonica International Film Festival.

Objectives
Nurturing innovative new talent
The central idea is to identify and nurture the most talented European film students (and eligible postgraduates) who can demonstrate the potential to create economically viable new films and programmes that will find audiences beyond their own cultures.

This involves training these individuals into a European way of thinking, rather than just a national one. They will be encouraged to reflect their own national cultures, but with a European and international audience at the forefront of their concerns. Cultural specificity will certainly be encouraged, as long as it demonstrates a universal application.

Promoting internationalism
Part of achieving this universality is about networking face to face with practitiones from other countries, and this will be a vital element in the course programmes. Some of the participants will be nominated from the partners’ institutions, but there will be places kept available for an open call for participants, so that a wider European mix can be achieved. They will then work together on each other’s projects, and develop them collectively.

Identifying how to create and distribute commercially viable new media projects.
With a burgeoning new media market evolving rapidly, there will be sections fot eh workshops allocated to an examination of how best to operate with these new formats, and how to adapt to the changing audiovisual landscape.

Complementing the activities of the member films schools
The workshops will be designed to complement and build on the full time course that students have been on at their respective film schools.

A Unique Collaboration
This is a pioneering project between four countries from different corners of the continent. It will be forging practical cultural and commercial links between areas of Europe that are not traditional audiovisual partners, in the anticipation that new co-production groupings will emerge from the work.

Connecting Different Spheres of Influence
Each base has it’s own very different cultural and social geographical spheres of influence, which can be utilised in the training by taking advantage of each member’s special relationships with the creative communities there:\

• Spain has very strong cultural and historical connections to the whole of Latin America and the Mediterranean region
• The UK traditionally works with Northern Europe and enjoys the (in)famous ‘special relationship’ with the USA.
• Bulgaria will provide an opening for new talent from the Central and East European countries
• Greece represents a gateway of cooperation to the South East of Europe and beyond, to Asia

Collectively, these different catchments will broaden the internationalist nature of the scheme.

Eligibility
Applicants must be in their final year of study at a recognized European film school, or have graduated from one within the preceding 18 months of the application deadline. Evidence of this will be required.

An appropriate member of staff at their film school must personally recommend applicants, in writing.

Applicant teams must apply with a project in development that can be at treatment or first draft stage. Applicants are encouraged to support their application with example of their other work.

The project can be for a fiction feature or television film. Documentaries are not eligible.

Applicants must be European nationals.

Language
The course will be in English.

Selection
The selection of the project teams will be made by a selection committee comprised of individual representatives from each founder member, chaired by the Project Coordinator.

Who Should be in a Project Team?
Each team must have a screenwriter and a producer, who will be required to attend all four workshops. Directors may also be included, if they are actively involved in the writing and development process.

Fees
There is a fee of €200 for each selected participant. So if there are two people in the team, the fees will be €400, or €600 if there are three. This fee is payable two weeks before the first workshop. Apart from this basic fee, the programme members will cover the costs of economy travel, together with basic accomodation and a main daily meal, for all the workshops. Participants will need to supply their own funds for any extra-curricular activities.

Selection Criteria
Project teams will be selected on the basis of fulfilling the following criteria:

• an identifiable creative talent that is suitable for professional guidance
• an ability to develop and produce content that has an economically viable market potential
• a basic grasp of business and management skills, understanding of the area of the industry they wish to work in, and a broad cinematic knowledge
• a desire to be “a team player” and collaborate effectively
• a desire to operate flexibly in as broad an international context as possible, and not to be fixated on parochial issues and subjects.
  the ownership of a project in development that displays the potential to succeed
• creatively and commercially in the market-place.
• the ability to blend all these attributes in a constructive manner.
• the social skills to offer constructive critical advice to others.

How to Apply
Applications are now invited from European film schools for the four ‘open’ places available on the scheme.

Applicants should complete the application form on the website, and submit it to the scheme’s coordinator, together with a signed letter of recommendation from a senior representative of the film school.