Envision Sound 2020/21 Scoring Commission for Animation & Moving Image Grants Open Call
Skwigly
As the British Council Ukraine’s Envision Sound programme for composers who want to explore scoring for moving image enters its fourth year, it has had to adjust its working to reflect the current situation the pandemic has presented.
Three grants of £1,500 will be offered to emerging UK composers to create a new original score to a piece of film, supplied by Envision Sound in Ukraine, so we can continue to create stronger links between Ukraine and the UK during the challenges posed by the pandemic.
In addition to the grant, each applicant will receive mentoring time with one of Envision Sound’s UK tutor alumni and consultation time with the director of the film they are composing music for.
The choices of source film material that will be available are:
- A short animation (post-production edit), courtesy of the Linoleum International Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival
- A short documentary (post-production edit), courtesy of the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
- A short archive film, courtesy of the National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Centre (Dovzhenko Centre)
In the case of archive film, a film archive expert from Dovzhenko Centre will be available to guide and advise around film context.
REQUIREMENTS
We welcome applications from emerging UK-based composers and musicians with diverse experiences and backgrounds in different musical styles to our programme. Above all we are looking to hear from those with a desire to write music for film and moving image.
HOW TO APPLY
Fill out the application form in English and submit it by 6pm GMT 21 November 2020.
Applicants who may have additional accessibility needs and would prefer to submit their application in another format should get in touch in advance. We will endeavour to do everything we can to accommodate any needs.
Grant
The total £1,500 value of the grant is to cover all costs incurred during the creation of the piece. This could include: hiring the services of musicians; fees for recording spaces; travel costs to specific sites.
The grant cannot be used for any costs relating to the purchase of equipment including software.
Key dates
- 21 October – 21 November 2020 – open call for composers and filmmakers
- 14 December – 18 December 2020 – announcement of the results on the website and social media of the British Council and respective partners
- 21 December – 12 March 2021 – music composing, mentoring sessions
- 26 March – 4 April 2021 – presentation of the winning documentary project at the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
- 1-5 September 2021 – presentation of the winning animation project at the Linoleum International Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival
- Date T.B.C – presentation of the winning archive film project at the Mute Nights Festival/Kolo Dzygy 2021
Assessment
Evaluation of applications will be assessed by a British Council Music Team representative, the project composer mentors and representatives of Docudays UA Festival, Dovzhenko Centre, and Linoleum Contemporary Animation and Media Art Festival.
The panel will consider the overall curation of commissions to ensure a diverse selection of applicants are supported. This will include achieving a geographical spread across the UK and the individuals and music genres represented. Weighting may be applied to achieve an overall balance across the successful applications.
Successful applicants to the animation and documentary film categories will be paired with the filmmakers who are contributing their works to the project.
For archive film, the successful applicant will have the opportunity to choose their film from a list provided by the Dovzhenko Centre, the Ukrainian Film Archive with own Film lab which collects over 5,000 titles of Ukrainian and foreign films. Additionally, they will be offered cooperation with Dovzhenko Centre in the framework of one of their projects: the Festival of Silent Films and Contemporary Music ‘Mute Nights’ or ‘Kolo Dzygy’ series of audiovisual performances.
It is our aim that each film complete with new soundtrack will be screened at the respective festival’s editions in 2021. We will support a total of three projects, one from each of the categories described above.
Profiles of the UK mentors
Enrica Sciandrone
Enrica studied piano and traditional and contemporary composition in Italy, gradually bringing her mastery and experience to screen composition since 2006. Since 2009 she has been living in London, where she got in contact with the high-profile world of the international film music industry. Music department credits include Wrath of the Titans (2012), Zhongkui (2014), Raoul Taburin (2018) – as assistant for Emmy award winner Javier Navarrete – Life (2017) and Mowgli (2018) – as assistant to renown orchestrator Nicholas Dodd. She has composed soundtracks worldwide for several films, documentaries, animations, TV commercials and libraries (EMI). Her music and arrangements have been broadcasted on BBC Radio 3 (UK), Radio Rai 3 (Italy), Amazon Prime Video, Channel 5,
Nainita Desai
Working at the forefront of a new wave of emerging artists, RTS and BIFA nominated composer Nainita is a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit, Ivor Novello 2020 nominee and is the International Film Music Critics Association Breakthrough Composer of 2020. She has scored countless BAFTA, Oscar, Emmy acclaimed productions. The PRS placed Desai at No 2 in their Top 10 female writers whose work was most used in Film & TV through 2018. Nainita’s most recent feature releases include OSCAR 2020 nominated and BAFTA, Cannes, BIFA, SXSW winning feature doc For Sama which was also nominated for Best Music at the BIFAs 2019. Other recent projects include Untamed Romania, the most successful Romanian non-fiction film of 2018, WW2 period drama Enemy Within, psychological horror Darkness Visible [BFI], and Interactive game / video game Telling Lies one of the top critically acclaimed releases of 2019 by Annapurna Interactive including Scala Radio’s Top 5 Video Game Scores of the Year and Music+Sound Award winning Title track.
Neil Brand
Neil Brand has been a silent film accompanist for over 30 years, regularly in London at the Barbican and BFI National Film Theatres, throughout the UK and at film festivals and special events around the world.
Training originally as an actor, he has made his name as a writer/performer/composer, scoring BFI video releases of such films as South (Shackleton’s Journey to the South Pole), The Ring by Alfred Hitchcock, Piccadilly (premiered at the Lincoln Centre) the great lost film The Life and Times of David Lloyd George and Early Cinema.
Neil is becoming well-known as a TV presenter on BBC4 with his hugely successful series Sound of Cinema, The Music that Made the Movies and Sound of Song, is a regular presenter on Radio 4’s Film Programme, a Fellow of Aberystwyth University and a Visiting Professor of the Royal College of Music and is considered one of the finest improvising piano accompanists in the world.