Training

What is Future Producer School?

The programme aims to:

Give producers the training they need to take their careers to the international documentary industry.

Prepare producers to work internationally with directors, funders, distributors and festivals.

Prepare producers to access and capitalise on international festivals and markets.

Build alliances and spark collaborations between documentary professionals across the world.

Increase the number of highly trained producers in the documentary industry and create a self sustaining peer-to-peer network of ‘Future Producers’.

The Future Producer School programme is comprise of three distinct stages:

Stage 1: The programme begins with a three-day
residential workshop where you are trained by executive producers, experts and mentors from all over the world.

Stage 2: The participants are provided with bespoke one to one mentoring with industry experts.

Stage 3: The producers then take their learning to one of the world’s leading documentary marketplaces Sheffield
DocFest and are given access to Decision Makers in a specifically designed match-made one-to-one meetings session.

Programme Overview

Stage 1

Residential Workshop

The programme begins with a three-day residential workshop where you will hear from a range of leading documentary experts from across the world on all aspects of the producing process, in a number of presentations and workshops aimed at developing your ideas and you as a producer. The residential creates a very special and intimate setting to start learning about how you can develop your career, to create new connections with these experts as well as your fellow future producers.

Stage 2

Mentoring

All participants will have individual mentoring sessions by the course leaders up to June. This will be led by mentors who are experts in a combination of market intelligence, information on access to funders, and creative development of specific projects. Mentoring will be project- and individual-specific. Individual mentoring means that real personal nurturing can take place. As part of this mentoring we will continue beyond the period of the mentoring to support and promote the work of the participants.

Stage 3

Marketplace Sessions, Sheffield DocFest

Participants will attend Sheffield Doc/Fest’s Marketplace with a “Golden Ticket” opportunity to take part in match-made one to one meetings with feature funders, national film institutes, distributors, mentors, VOD providers, and other key international documentary representatives (meetings to be brokered by DocFest).

Who is this for?

You should want to develop feature documentaries with the ultimate goal of multi-platform releases in several international markets.

You will have some professional experience behind you this programme is not an entry-level talent programme.

You should be working and living in the UK.

You will have some experience of reaching audiences already (whether online, on TV, at festivals, on DVD or
elsewhere) and will be aspiring to make the step up to making a feature and reaching broader audiences.

You should be motivated to join a network of committed and mutually supportive filmmaking peers.

We are looking for producers from across the UK and welcome applications from any gender and ethnicity.

You should be working on or have an idea for a feature documentary project that you would like to develop through the course.