Venue: CINEWORLD SHAFTESBURY AVENUE

The Smirnoff Experience Reel Talent Award was created by The Hospital and Smirnoff Experience to provide a genuine opportunity for aspiring filmmakers to develop their skills and networks by producing a five-minute film. This is the first festival screening of the three winning films, and the filmmakers will be on hand for a discussion panel after the screening.

The Smirnoff Experience Reel Talent Award’s call to entry for scripts demonstrating a ‘genuine musical heartbeat’ produced over 200 submissions. On June 1st 2005 at an awards evening hosted by The Hospital and Smirnoff Experience, three winning teams were presented with their prizes, each worth £10,000 and each including an intensive residential script development course run by The Script Factory.

The winning teams and scripts were:

Love Letter Dir/S’play Richard Fenwick, Prod Hayley Manning

A lovesick boy eventually plucks up the courage to give the girl of his dreams a love letter, only for fate to conspire against him

Take Me Back Dir/S’play Jonty Kenton, Prod Andy Hui

A boy plays records to his girlfriend in order to help her recover from amnesia. As the memories return, however, not everything is quite how it seems

Heavy Metal Drummer Dir/S’play/Prods Luke Morris, Toby MacDonald

A celebration of rock music in the Arab world and a portrait of a passionate young music fan

The teams not only received cash to actualise their scripts but also one-to-one mentoring by writers, directors and composers as well as use of The Hospital’s studios and other production facilities. Award winning production house Intrepido provided support throughout the programme and all three short films have premiered at VIP events at The Hospital. Finally they have been entered into the leading international film festivals, which in a sense, perhaps, is why we are all here.

The unique nature of the Award struck a chord with all the winners. Hayley Manning said that a key aspect of the award for her and Fenwick was the fact that that it incorporated a three day script development course ‘which we thought would be a really positive and beneficial aspect to us, as short filmmakers rarely get an opportunity to have experts working with them on script development. Plus the fact that there were a number of great partners involved who were of interest to us.’ Kenton and Hui revealed that ‘on every level we have gained so much from the Smirnoff Experience Reel Talent Award… it was an amazing opportunity to work with some of the best people in the industry and have the film pushed and promoted… it has been an amazing learning experience’ MacDonald and Morris also stated that ‘it’s great that Smirnoff Experience is supporting short film through the award and this is a great opportunity to show how important the influence music has in a film.’

All the films make excellent viewing and go to show what a wonderful idea the Smirnoff Experience Reel Talent Award has been, so do enjoy them. The Award will be back next year.

For further information regarding the Smirnoff Experience Reel Talent Award, visit www.reeltalentaward.co.uk

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