THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG

I hate to admit it, but I'm a sucker for those TV property makeover shows. You name it, I'll watch it because their appeal hinges on impending disaster. In fact, it's just like the house down the road from where I live where the builders are renovating. They've been at it now for over eighteen months, which beggars belief considering they had a house to start with.

Which got me thinking...

It's as good an analogy as it gets for Scottish Screen's doomed Fast Forward scheme. While fed-up Scottish filmmakers light a fire under the funeral pyre of the agency and while 'industry insiders' (usually code for SS feeding a line to the Scotsman) accuse those same filmmakers of squandering lottery funds on duds, what everyone seems to have forgotten is the total incompetence and bad juju surrounding Fast Forward. My point being - Scottish Screen and their partners, BBC and ContentFilm - unlike many a remortgaged producer - had a house to start with.

For months I've been keeping an eye on the FF scheme. The aim - to commission three feature films each co-funded to the tune of £1.2 million. In a blaze of expensive PR, Fast Forward was hailed as a great opportunity for emerging talent when announced in May 2004 at the Cannes Film Festival. Not surprisingly, local filmmakers got all excited - and why not? To not have to raise money for a film is like finding the proverbial suitcase full of used notes and reads like the plot of any Danny Boyle film you care to mention, eg. Shallow Grave/Trainspotting/Millions.

The original press release - http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfilms/press/fastforwardrelease.shtml did raise hope among filmmakers, many of them friends of mine who applied in vain. Now, over two years down the line they - and I - would like to know what became of it all.

They had the moolah, but who was really providing? Not Content, according to a press release in May 26th 2004.

"Content International will handle international sales and UK distribution for a slate of three new feature films emerging from a low-budget production initiative backed by BBC and Scottish Screen. Fast Forward Features, to which ContentFilm has no upfront financial exposure, is focused on developing new Scottish talent. It aims to fully fund three low-budget features with a target budget of up to £1.2 million per film".

Of course Content wouldn't be exposed - because it was never going to happen. Those in the know may recall Content pulling a similar stunt in Ireland in 2002 by announcing a slate of 12 pictures in association with Rapid Films. Nothing came of that either. Meanwhile this left SS and BBC to fund the three pictures between them - a big bite out of a meagre Lottery pot.

The cast list of this sorry drama, long on names but short on credibility, reads as follows -

Frank McAveety - ex Scottish Culture Minister
Steve McIntyre - ex CEO, Scottish Screen
Alyson Hagan - ex stand-in CEO, Scottish Screen
Ray MacFarlane - current chair of Scottish Screen's board
Claire Chapman - ex Head of 'Talent and Creativity'
Carole Sheridan - ex Development, now Head of 'Talent and Creativity'
Barbara McKissick - ex Head of Drama, BBC Scotland, member of SS board
Nadine Marsh-Edwards - ex BBC drama producer
Laurence Gornall - ex ContentFilm, ex member of SS Lottery panel
Celia Stevenson - Head of Communications and 'Inward Investment'
Ken Hay - current CEO of Scottish Screen
David Thompson - Head of BBC Films
MacDonald and Rutter - PR company hired to launch FF
Portland - ContentFilm's PR company - ditto

Here, anybody might suppose, was a dream team - including a public body, a broadcaster, a sales and distribution company and the best PR money could buy. If anyone could make a film happen, surely they were the key enablers. So when did it all go wrong? Well, as recently as October last year, in a report to the DCMS, Scottish Screen was still claiming Fast Forward as a go-ahead project in a case study - 17 months after its initial launch and with Ken Hay already six months into the job as SS boss.

Which is strange, because by October last year Content had pulled the plug and the key players at the BBC had quit their jobs, leaving the project in limbo. Presumably this left only SS holding the baby, but with the climate at West George Street turning chilly against the very idea of film, it grew increasingly unlikely that the scheme would go ahead. There was also the vexing question of the films themselves - the shortlisted scripts had been chosen but to date - 26 months later - no overall winner has been selected, no doubt to the frustration of the hopeful filmmakers, especially the writers, for many of whom FF was their first foray into features and who knows, maybe their last.

Are there lessons to be learned? Yes, definitely. But who am I to dare offer an opinion to the collective expertise listed above? You'd think the troubles faced by the parties involved might have provided a wee bit more insight into the same problems faced by filmmakers at the bottom of the food chain. And though I'm sure the intention behind FF was admirable, maybe before embarking on the scheme SS should have consulted local filmmakers who had actually produced a film in the £1.2 million bracket - or less. But no. This seems to be the beginning and the end of the problems with the agency, who in their own lack of confidence and low opinion of the talent on their doorstep instead tuned in to the forked tongues of Content - looking for free films to punt - and the BBC - looking as always for cut-price TV filler.

Returning to the theme of DIY, in Scotland on Sunday, Alex Kapranos criticises Glasgow Council for allowing UPVC windows to be fitted in the Art Deco Baird Hall. As he says, 'they see creative people as the enemy'. I couldn't put it better myself. As I say, a plague on all their houses. Never mind a lick of Dulux - it's time for the wrecking ball.