Spring is officially here, not that you can necessarily tell yet, and its the busiest time for production. Join SP (at 50% off until April 5th) to meet fantastic collaborators like those below, and get those productions rolling going forward into the summer.

In case you are not familiar, Shooting People is the largest and best network for independent filmmakers in the UK, a 38,000 member community that is host to filmmaking events, opportunities, training and funds, in which 200+ projects are casted and crewed weekly.

Please check out our community, ask your friends about us, say hello at one of our events, and join us and start making great films with other talented and emerging filmmakers. Independent filmmaking starts with collaboration and spirit, so make those initial steps with SP and you never know what you’ll have made or where you’ll be come summer. Have a read of what some of the membership has been up to this year so far.

Much has happened already in these early months with films made by the community. At this year’s Academy Awards, SP member Benjamin Cleary picked up the Oscar for Best Live Action Short for his debut film ‘Stutterer.’

Also, Jameson recently announced the winners for this year’s First Shot competition, and we had a winner amongst us. Sheffield based SP’er Kat Wood is one of the 3 winners this year. Fittingly, considering her script was titled ‘Home’, she received the news via a billboard announcement in her hometown. She’s off shooting with Maggie Gyllenhaal in LA as we speak, but we will hear more from her soon, so in the mean time a small note to offer our congratulations to her, and we look forward to seeing and screening the film she wrote and is now making.

In the HP ‘Keep Reinventing’ competition, the winner came from the membership. Joshua Jackson’s film ‘Neil.’ Made for $20,000, Joshua’s cyborg led short was shot on 35mm and features colourful visuals and particularly interesting use of sound. ‘Neil’ is available to view above.

One more project, one that most members will be familiar with that is worth noting is Ben and Chris Blaine’s ‘Nina Forever‘, which after an extended and highly successful festival run was picked up and distributed by Studio Canal for theatrical and home video exhibition, around about the same time the film picked up a BIFA for lead actress Abigail Hardingham. We screened the film at the beginning of its UK theatrical tour, and are very happy to have followed the film and its filmmakers along their journey.

Additionally at festivals in the new year, members have screened frequently. The early year American independent frontliners saw a good representation from within the community, with 16 members screening at SXSW, 3 at Slamdance and 12 at Sundance across the various programmes. In the UK, things are still warming up, but January’s London Short Film Festival there were over 100 members screening projects, as well as 11 recently at Flare, BFI’s LGBT film festival.

Through our recently initiated partnership with Kickstarter, a number of great films at varying stages of development were crowdfunded successfully. Director Ashvin Kumar, who was the youngest Indian nominee for an Oscar ever when he first got involved with SP, successfully raised £70,000 for his latest feature ‘Noor‘, as well as posting a casting call on the site with Shakyra Dowling Castings. The Truthful Phone, a Welsh creature feature based on a Terry Jones story successfully fundraised a £25,000 campaign, attracting the attention of Michael Sheen as voice talent in the process. As we speak, a very interesting project led by BAFTA nominated producer Elhum Shakerifar ‘Even When I Fall‘ is in the final stages of the campaign.

Now, more than ever, as the year begins to roll forward into a second gear, is the time to get your film made. Join SP before April 5th at 50% off and get your cast and crew together and get to work.