Support Categories Film

Script development concerns the refinement of rudimentary film ideas, turning them into screenplays. A workable screenplay requires that the elaboration of plot and characters is consistent and exciting and that only minor revisions (for instance of the dialogue) are necessary. At the end of the prepping period, Medienboard GmbH determines the standard of the material. Here you can learn more on script development aid from Medienboard GmbH.

Project development is the packaging phase. At this stage film project financing, shooting and subsequent placement and marketing are carefully prepared. Specifically, this entails searching for shooting locations, planning sets, possibly creating a storyboard, translating, obtaining funding and concluding financial deals, advising on legal matters, finding a director and major staff members, casting, scheduling shooting and budgeting, obtaining a distributor and/or seller and finalizing the screenplay.

Support of project packages is Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH's way of aiding production companies who aim to develop feature films into box office attractions and television broadcasts or to produce documentaries to be screened initially in the cinema. Package promotion is focused on small and medium-sized motion picture and television companies in the region. Medienboard GmbH's package support is subordinated to the overriding objective of boosting film production firms in the high-risk phase of material and project development to increase industry viability in the region.

This part of Medienboard GmbH operations consists of nurturing three to five unripe movie projects in one bundle. The projects are either at the material development or project development stage.

Medienboard's package promotion amounts to a loan that is only to be repaid under certain circumstances. It is supposed to enable designated companies to perfect cinema productions with no "production pressure". It is not designed to set its own projects in motion.

In the production category, Medienboard GmbH exclusively funds commercially viable, i.e. feature-length cinema films, and shorts by way of exception. Medienboard distinguishes between six subcategories: mainstream, art house, documentary, animated, juvenile and short films. Production support is contingent on a distribution contract which guarantees commercial screening of the movie in German cinemas. Documentaries normally require prior conclusion of an international distribution deal.

Within three years of the beginning of repayment an applicant can ask Medienboard for a success loan for a new film project, which must meet Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH quality criteria.

The Miscellaneous Activities category generally concerns measures to improve film quality and moviemaking profitability, special marketing operations and programme placement.
Such measures are financed if

• a company based in Berlin-Brandenburg or Germany produces the film or
• Medienboard has financed the project or
• the project is deemed worthy by virtue of its outstanding potential to contribute to Berlin-Brandenburg cultural or moviemaking promotion policy.