Free Money!

Okay, there are some catches but if you're a short film maker in Canada trying to figure out how to fund your film, here's something you might want to look in to. Or, rather, if you don't look into these, you're just plain dumb and don't deserve to get your film made. When people offer money to make your film, you should take them up on the offer, okay?

Toronto's Worldwide Short Film Festival have a pair of contests running to help short film makers fund their projects.

First is Pitchin'. Sign up, pitch your idea and if they like it, you get money. Nice. Projects for this contest must qualify as Canadian Content under the arcane funding laws up here and must include a foreign langauge element - i.e. some of it must occur in a language other than english or french - but the winner pockets a cool three grand while second place pockets 2K of their own.

The big contest, though, is the Screenplay Giveaway. Submit a script of forty pages or less for a crack at one hundred thousand dollars worth of production services to get your film made. It's that simple. The only real limitation on this one is that you must be a Canadian resident and registered for at least one WWSFF Symposium event.

I know we have some local film makers reading here every day, so get to it boys. Hit those links for details.