The Irish Film Board has announced the new deadline of their short film scheme Virtual Cinema. Applications will be accepted until Friday, November 21st.
Officially launched at the Cork Film Festival last year, Virtual Cinema is a scheme dedicated to the making of high-quality short films that are suited to the new forms of digital video consumption. Virtual Cinema aims to encourage the exploration of fresh filmmaking ground, with no creative holds barred. The scheme is looking for creative ideas which will exploit interesting, new and traditional filmmaking techniques but can hold the attention of the YouTube audience.
Criteria for the scheme asks that films can be live-action or can use any kind of animation technique and can be fiction or non-fiction. Films may be made in Irish or English with Irish language applications actively encouraged. This round the IFB are funding up to 10 films with duration of approximately 2 minutes and a maximum budget of €2,000.
The first round of Virtual Cinema shorts, which premiered at the Darklight Film Festival in June, can be viewed on a number of websites including the IFB website and YouTube. A number of the shorts have had a huge number of hits, including ‘The Perils of Internet Dating’ which has had over 17,000 hits on YouTube to date.
For more information on making an application and to download an application form visit the Funding Programmes section on www.irishfilmboard.ie
