NBLB Films

Community Cinema Network & Audience Development

The "Community Cinema Network" model involves film makers in local areas across Scotland connecting with the local venues so that independent films can be seen and generate income to the film makers, growing the network over time across Scotland and beyond so that opportunities to generate viable income from existing films and the scope to have more realistic budgets for future films can grow, too.

The aim is to identify 20 to 30 venues (independent cinema's, conference centres, film societies, etc) to create a group of "Cinema's" that can show the same independent film (with 2 or 3 short films of a similar nature and a level of advertising) on the same night, with a new film shown every month initially, with a view to having this different cinema experience every 2 weeks - tapping into an audience looking for more story and less hype. The costs would be less than the current cinema experience and the style would be very different.

Key to this will be the need for the venue and the film maker to accept a share of the return, effectively creating a partnership between the venue, film maker and NBLB Films that can help develop both the product and the audience into a sustainable and commercially viable activity for all 3 partners over time. If this becomes successful we are likely to be able to add further venues, perhaps building to 50 or 60 "cinema's" across Scotland.

Nano and Micro budget film makers might, for the first time, be able to make some financial contribution to those who helped to make their film and establish a more realistic budget (without crowd funding) to make their next film.

Having established the model in Scotland we already have film makers in London, Dublin, Canada, parts of the USA and South Africa keen to replicate this approach, with others connecting from around the UK and other parts of the world. In addition, connections in mainland Europe and Asia offer a wide distribution of quality Scottish films and access to quality films from abroad.

These film makers will offer a larger choice of full length feature films in the short term and the potential to connect up these cinema networks to create a more global "co-operative" of cinema outlets for nano and micro budget film makers well beyond Scotland.

The aim is to develop a sustainable audience from the Scottish, UK and wider global networks of 350,000 to 500,000 people, which would ensure that venues would generate a valuable income, film makers could deliver higher quality and better funded films as well as pay cast and crew - allowing many to become full time film makers, releasing talent to further develop our country's output of high quality creative films.

A second strand to this is to develop a University/College based Community Cinema Network, building positive links with key film making learning institutions, future film makers and audiences of the future to extend the scope of the model. This will also link directly with the student film festival project (scheduled to start in Summer 2016).

The Community Cinema Network is key to the development of a sustainable and viable nano/micro budget film sector. It is one thing to make a good film or tell a good story but if it cannot be distributed it will only get a tiny audience and drain resources. By creating a sort of "underground" independent distribution model in Scotland that can link with similar projects in the UK and other parts of the world, inspired by the work we do here, sustainability and viability can be achieved.