In anticipation of the new shorts emerging from the London Calling scheme, we got in touch with some members of SP who’ve had projects selected this year. We spoke with them about their experiences with the scheme, their careers so far, and the projects they are developing.

In this guest blog, we speak to SP member James Berkery, an emerging movement director who has been involved in a number of projects via SP recently, and has great prospects ahead of him. He outlines his practice as a movement director, explains what constitutes this work and how he got involved with it, and explores why filmmakers should consider involving movement in their productions.

In March, Shooting People worked with filmmaker Anna Biller for our Film of the Month competition. Judge, Biller is known for her use of classic genre modes in her films as a means to talk about women’s roles within culture. Read more about Anna’s filmmaking career, and her two feature films here.

Anna shares her insightful view on the top three films from March’s competition below.

For February Film of the Month, we were extremely lucky to welcome legendary producer, distributor and exhibitor Stephen Woolley, a man behind some of the most exciting and important independent British films of the last thirty years. He was pleased to view the films, but found ranking them a difficult demand. We present his insightful comments in full, which will surely be of benefit to our winning filmmakers.

Stephen, commenting on the selection said that he “found it very difficult to judge these films in competition with each other because they were all attempting to achieve different things from stylistically different angles.”

Dear Shooter writers, directors and all interested filmmakers,

One of the greatest opportunities for filmmakers and writers, Jameson First Shot is back for 2017, with Detective McNulty himself, legendary British actor Dominic West, as your lead star. We’ve been saying it for years and years… this is by far the best film competition out there and we’re determined to see UK­-based filmmakers triumph.

In this guest blog, we are featuring Ian Neil, a music supervisor for the film industry, and a member of the advisory board for the UK & European Guild of Music Supervisors. Neil has supervised for projects such as Free Fire, High Rise, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. He explains this area of the industry, what it entails and who might be suitable to excel at it.

LOCO’s London Comedy Film Festival returns to the BFI Southbank this May, marking its 6th year. The non-profit organisation is praised for discovering, developing and screening the world’s most original comedy filmmakers. LOCO prides Britain on its sense of humour, and its tradition of comedy. This makes it so much more exciting to announce that this year, SP’rs are filling out the shorts section and appearing with features all throughout the festival.

Film London’s annual short film scheme, London Calling, returns this year, with 21 new curated projects from breakthrough filmmakers. Entering its 5th year, London Calling continues to offer production funding, training and expert mentoring to its participants. We are incredibly proud to announce that more than 21 SP’rs can be found within the filmmaking teams with projects included in the London Calling 2017 slate.

Jenny Gage is a photographer and filmmaker whose directorial debut, All This Panic, has been gaining consistent acclaim since its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Working alongside her partner Tom Betterton, the pair initially established themselves as fashion photographers, before deciding to pursue an interest in storytelling and move into the world of filmmaking. With Betterton as producer and herself as director, , together they followed seven teenage girls over the course of three years for All This Panic, capturing the minutiae of their lives, their struggles with social drama, mental health and sexuality at this crucial juncture between teen and adulthood.

Frames of Representation looks to find a home for “new visions for documentary cinema,” in whichever form that might be interpreted and shape it may arrive. When rounding up his favourite films of last year, festival curator Nico Marzano stated that his ambition each year is “to be inundated by films that are both able to inspire and to take a risk or and to challenge mainstream cinematic languages.” Frames of Representation is the result of this, posing a cross-section of the abundance of creative, challenging documentary films arriving from around the world. Here, we select five options from the team’s eleven film and eight event proposal that this year is focused around the theme of ‘work’.