BoostHbg’s primary community are the digital audio-visual production industries and the projects we support must be relevant for the questions that we explore. The reason that we point this out is that as a resource centre we want to be able to gain knowledge together with you and through that enhance our shared community. We are open for different and boundary pushing projects that might not fit into any specific category, as long as the learnings relating to audience empowerment and content overload can be extrapolated to our core industries.
Realistic goals
Relevant projects can be films, digital games of various kinds, TV series, and stories that transcend these boundaries. Just remember, this is not a production fund. That means that the 50 or 75 000 SEK that you are granted are not meant to be a part of a larger production budget that you then have to wait to complete through other funds. This is rather a step before you get the big bucks, a way for you to develop the project in order to then attach further funding.
The thing that you want to do during the project period should be realistic to achieve with the money you receive. The process starts when you get the grant and the point is to use that time to its fullest extent.
Meet you audience
During this process you will have to meet your audience in some way. This can take many shapes and could be a wide audience or a smaller group of key individuals. Perhaps if you are developing a game you will test it by creating an analogue prototype that you invite a group of people to play? Maybe you explore how to tell your story by developing the script together with your target audience? Maye you want your TV series to be the next SKAM so you create an Instagram pilot? We are open to many different processes as long as they relate back to our key questions. It is about having the courage to invite in feedback and achieving your goal by finding the right steps to take.
Two examples
The goal with the grant is that you will after the completed project period have through active development accumulated new insights that will bring you and your project forward. To illustrate how this works we would like to highlight two projects from our prototype scheme in 2019 that can be viewed through the Exploration and Optimization lens:
EXPLORATION: The Eye and The Index by Jocelyn Ibarra
This was a prototype that wanted to explore the questions: Are we, in Skåne, interested in exploring storytelling together with others who have a different background/age/profession/gender/etc from our own? If so, how? Jocelyn tested this through a method based on blockchain and DAO (decentralised autonomous organisations. The process was that Jocelyn facilitated a diverse group of people who created stories and art together over a few weeks (both in person and online). Someone came with a proposal and others joined the project if they felt like they had relevant resources.
Looking at the prototype from BoostHbg’s perspective this was a way to explore how such a process might lead to new structures and methods for local collaborations between actors from different industries and backgrounds and this could generate new, relevant stories. Taking it a step further, there is potential to see how such a system – since it was based on people working from different geographic locations – could address the goal of ’act local, reach global.’ Could this be a process by which you could live and work in Skåne but still collaborate with people outside of the region where there are other resources (both financial and creative)? It can also relate to the ’content overload’ challenge since it is about creating a working system where competent creatives can connect beyond their boundaries and thus generate stories that stand out in a crowd. This was an explorative project since the purpose was clearly to see if such a process would even work to achieve this goal.
OPTIMIZATION: Ever Girls by André Hedetoft
Ever Girls is a project that started as an idea for a feature film for young adults which through both exploration and optimisation changed and developed. Before André applied for the grant he had already started working on the project and developing it into a feature film. He created a script for the film in a process where he hosted a series of workshops together with the target audience to ensure that the characters and the story appealed to them and felt relevant. He discovered during this process that the story might be relevant, but the format was not a perfect fit. When he applied for the prototype support from BoostHbg, Ever Girls had morphed into a TV series and the goal with the grant was to create a prototype of what this could look like in order to present to potential distributors. Through this process he created a clear vision for the project as a relevant, global series for young adults and a digital pitch he could bring to financiers.
From BoostHbg’s point of view, Ever Girls addressed both the challenges that ’audience empowerment’ and ’content overload’ have created for filmmakers. By engaging with his target audience in the development process he gained valuable insights about how young adults consume these types of stories and what resonates with them. This allows the audience to both engage actively with the story but also creates the opportunity for him to create such a relevant story that it stands out of the crowd. This process resulted in a strong pitch that he presented to financiers which will then help him realise the full project.
