In partnership with the Producer's Forum in Birmingham, UK, EAVE Plus held
two workshops for film producers in November 2007 and February 2008.
The first 2 day workshop focused on project development on the first day and
film distribution on the second. EAVE script consultant Clare Downs (Forever
Films) spoke about the work with writers and directors during development.
She also went through script development strategies during a film analysis
of "Fucking Amal". Adam Hamdy spoke about legal aspects of development.
EAVE consultant Liz Rosenthal (Earthly Delights Films) introduced new ways
of distribution to the particpants on the second day. She showed the
opportunities of distribution new technologies offer with the case study
"Four Eyed Monsters". Another case study was done by Matt Hanson about his
innovative project "Cinema 2.0" and "Swarm of Angels", a project to make a
£1 million film and give it away to 1 million people in 1 year by using the
flexible digital-age copyright of Creative Commons so people can freely
download, share, and remix the feature film.

In February 2008, EAVE Plus returned to Birmingham to run a two day series
of masterclasses about business planning and marketing. Topics covered
during the business planning day included company support and investment
opportunities in the West Midlands, writing successful funding applications,
financing and recoupment for feature films. Rebecca Knapp (Spark Pictures),
Martin Carr (Formosa Films) and Neil Thompson (Director, Clubbed) were
speakers on these subjects.
EAVE marketing consultant Fiona Mitchell (Migrations) and EAVE CEO Alan
Fountain took over on the second day that was dedicated to marketing and
pitching. Fiona spoke about the principles of marketing also in relation to
distribution, and did a case study where she gave an overview of 3 marketing
campaigns assessing successes and failures of marketing. Alan did a
introduction into successful pitching.

Thanks to Forum Manager Tom Norton's great support these EAVE Plus workshops
were very successful and well attended by producers of the West Midlands.