The BBC has recently announced it will be cutting its online budget by 25%. And that’s a huge shame.
BBC Shropshire – our local bit of the BBC – has been very supportive of some of the projects we’ve worked on in the last few years, but as the “local sites will no longer publish non-news features content” it looks like those opportunities won’t be there in the future.
There’s quite a list of what’s going – including Blast and Video Nation.
I gained some of my first short film experience when a BBC Local TV producer entrusted us with a camera to shoot the series of short Shakespeare films that I pitched her. It was a brilliant opportunity and the five films we made were not only broadcast on Local TV but were also on the BBC Big Screen in Birmingham for a month.
More recently, our community doc project getting older… we’re all doing it – talking to people of all ages about their experiences – captured the imagination of BBC Shropshire, who spread the word about getting involved online and on the radio. As well as the 10-minute cut of the film that’s on the BBC website (the link above) they also ran a week-long series with audio excerpts from the full 20-minute doc on the radio.
So thank you for your help and support BBC Online and BBC Shropshire. I hope there will be other ways to support young and emerging filmmakers, and community film projects, in the longer term.