Announcing the Winner of the Pro Bono Film by Catsnake

After careful deliberation we are ready to announce the winner of the pro bono film competition. Though we are not sure 'competition' is the right word to describe this initiative since it was not about picking the 'best' cause rather, we tried to identity the cause that we could help the most. So here are a few words from top filmmakers Catsnake about the selection process and hints about the winning film to come! We want to thank all of you who applied for the competition, we appreciate the work that went into your applications. And thank you to Catsnake for taking on this ambitious pro bono project - we look forward to viewing and helping to promote the winning film.

So over to Stephen Fellows from Catsnake to give their perspective on the selection process and to announce the winner...

Stephen:

Phew, that was quite a mission!

When we opened our competition to win a pro bono video we weren’t expecting quite so many applications. We received entries from a wide variety of organisations from one-person single-cause operations to national well-known names.

We approached the challenge of whittling it down to the final three quite seriously. We looked at two main areas – the Cause and the Need.

The Cause related to the organisation and what they campaign for/against. Did we regard their cause as one in particular need of attention? Is this something we feel able to relate to? Inevitably we found ourselves weighing up the merits of one special interest group over another – never an easy task when the gamut of entries came from parties looking after the interests of the young, the old, the sick, the infirm, the handicapped, the poor, the hungry and plants!

The Need looked at to what degree a web video would be of use to the organisation. In our opinion, some very worthy causes would not benefit much from having a new video online. We strongly believe that online video holds a power to move and motivate but even we acknowledge that it cannot solve all the world’s ills. We want to be making tangible difference with our video for this competition so we placed a lot of importance on the need.

The quality of applications varied hugely. A few seemed to be last-minute rush jobs but the majority seemed to be well researched and carefully put together. In the world of film we do not often need to make formal applications for grants and so are not as familiar as the charity sector is generally in form-filling. We got the sense that some applications were written by professionals long-experienced with tackling written applications. Much of my job as a writer is to find the emotional way of expressing a thought so I took some professional pleasure in seeing such well-written answers. (That said, I would hope that the quality of the prose had no bearing on our decision-making process – we tried to stick religiously to the Cause and the Need criteria laid out above).

In reading the applications it was interesting to see who the main point of contact was.  In some cases the Chief Operating Officer would be listed as the contact whereas others had the Assistant Press Officer. Obviously this had absolutely no bearing on our process but it did give a little insight into each entrant. With a small group it’s unsurprising that just a few people will take on many roles.

We managed to create a long-list of seven, which, after much agonising analysis, gave way to a shortlist of three – Full Circle, SHP and ChiLD Lung Foundation. We met with the three organisations – all of whom were fantastic – and then spent time brainstorming what a video for each would be like. In the end we felt that the organisation for whom we could do the most for was SHP.  They deal with a problem that is close to our hearts; homelessness in London. We live and work in London and so initially felt like we understood the problem. But after speaking with Dave and Katie from SHP we came to understand that the problem of ‘homelessness’ is not as simple as its most visible symptoms. SHP also work with what could be called the ‘invisible homeless’; i.e. people moving who don’t have a permanent home but whom find some shelter in hostels. SHP also work with people once they have left the streets in order to help their rehabilitation and re-entry into ‘normal’ life.

Our film for SHP will use the Christmas period as a backdrop to highlight the effect SHP have for those most at need. We’ll be revealing more about the film in forthcoming blog entries.

We would like to offer our deepest thanks to everyone who applied and our profound apologies that we needed to select just one winner. Given the right resources we would currently be embarking on about twenty new pro bono videos!