IDEAS WANTED/25 WORDS MAKE A MOVIE

Yes, it's time to get out the back of the envelop again, jot down your best pitch for a film and sit back to become famous.

If you get the idea right, the hard work will be done for you by someone else, otherwise known as the innovative Movie Mogul Fund, which uses a combination of membership fees and industry sponsorship fund micro budget films.

For the Cardiff-based MMF has just launched a new and curious competition called the Micro Movie Lab.

First step: check in online and submit a "micro pitch", just 25 words or less, to go into a quaintly named Cherry Bowl.

MMF members will then vote on the pitches I the Bowl and the top ten will go on to be judged by panel of industry professionals, with the outright winner to be developed into a film.

That word "developed" is key here as subsequent rounds of this competition will be used to find, first, a writer to turn the idea into a script and then a producer for the film and a director.

As for the funding for the film, budgeted at £100,000, that will come from 20,000 shares sold via the site at £4.95 each.

With luck, if you wanted, you could be the writer, producer and director but, even if you don’t figure in the film beyond the micro pitch stage, your winning idea will get you £100 and a share in the future film’s profits

There are also two runner up prizes of £100 and £50, which is good pay for just 25 words by any standard.

For pitch tips, you could do far worse than to check out Movie Mogul’s site which features a hugely instructive and amusing video of how NOT to do it.

MMF aims to go into production towards the end of the year, under the supervision of the panel members Huw Penallt Jones from Capitol Films, Mark Sandell from Trinity Filmed Entertainment, Olivier Lauchenauer from Pogo Films, Ed Thomas of Fiction Factory Films and John Shackleton of Movie Mogul Ltd.

For further information see the Movie Mogul Fund site.

April 4, 2008.