As director Alex Ruhl’s “Rock, Paper, Scissors” continues an international festival tour, the project’s funder has sent out a message to other immersive titles considering public support: BFI Network is open for business.
“We are open for all applications, and accepting narrative fiction VR projects,” says BFI Network talent exec Alexzandra Jackson. “I had such a good experience working with Alex [Ruhl] on ‘Rock, Paper, Scissor’ that I would certainly love the opportunity to work on more.”
The new and emerging talent arm of the BFI, BFI Network looks to invest in filmmakers outside of London and Southeast England, keeping scouts in a number of English regions and satellite offices in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Since 2018, the development org has held an annual call for projects, offering up to £25,000 ($31,500) for short narrative fiction development titles.
“We’re looking for talent who have been under-represented or denied opportunities in the past,” says Jackson, who has helped fund more than 40 shorts in the past five years through her Midlands-based branch. “We’re seeing how to remove barriers for people to enter the film industry, [because] hopefully more production could happen outside of London.”
If film was once the (lone) operative word, in 2020 BFI Network took a chance on a Leicester-based, new-media creative running pop-up VR Cinema.
“Alex’s VR Cinema would consistently sell out,” Jackson recalls. “She would have two, three rounds of audiences coming in to watch the same experiences. She was so fascinating and engaging and enthusiastic about immersive stories – and that’s kind of infectious. You start thinking, how can we fund this kind of work?”
An interactive family saga in miniature, “Rock, Paper, Scissors” follows a mother-daughter pair that develop a foolproof way to resolve conflicts through a one-and-done, winner-takes-all match of the titular schoolyard game. Using hand-tracking tech, narrative elements change according to the signs the user plays.
“[At first, BFI Network] didn’t know the process, as this required a totally different creative workflow than for a feature or for traditional animation,” says Ruhl. “You need to think within that gaming, iterative mindset. To test early [because] new media’s bloody hard to work in. You’re not just a creative director, you’re also kind of a CTO of a mini company; you must translate your creative vision into technical jargon.”
After premiering at last year’s Venice Film Festival, “Rock, Paper, Scissors” was at this week’s NewImages Festival in Paris, and was picked up for distribution by powerhouse label Astrea. While Jackson is on the lookout for her next immersive venture (“We’d love to do more; there’s a real appetite,” she says), Ruhl is developing a follow-up that deals with questions of diversity and inclusion.
“The project is centered around my experience as a woman in tech,” says Ruhl, who doubles as head of metaverse technologies at PWC UK. “Now that we’ve done what we could do with ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors,’ [the next project will be] a bit longer, a bit bigger in terms of tech, and will do things on a slightly grander scale. And BFI Network has left the door open to bring the project to them.”
