The Bridge Festival: Call for filmmaker pitches


March 4, 2022

Help us create a striking documentary of The Bridge Festival.

Scottish Ensemble and the partners of the Bridge Festival are seeking to appoint an experienced filmmaker in the creation of a visually-striking new documentary film capturing the essence of the Bridge Festival – a unique pan-European collaboration between Europe’s leading string orchestras, celebrating classical music for strings in unusual settings and through contemporary, innovative approaches to performance.

The Bridge Festival will take place in Glasgow from 21st to 24th April, in iconic venues like the Barrowlands, St Lukes, Mackintosh Church, Tramway and the Glad Cafe, as well as cafes and public spaces. The festival aims to open up contemporary classical music to diverse and younger audiences.

We are looking to create a 15 minute documentary film to bring the essence of the festival to life on screen. The festival has innovation, community and Europe at its centre and we hope to capture what it means for us and Scotland to welcome 30 incredible European musicians to Glasgow, especially after the pandemic; for Glasgow to be alive with string music, and for the audiences to discover something unexpected. We would look for the film to be public-facing, finding the expected and unexpected highlights of the weekend, including filming of some of the rehearsals, vox pops of audience members and brief interviews with project partners reflecting on the Bridge project. Long-term, the film should encourage people to find out more about the Bridge partner ensembles and their innovative work.

Audience: The festival aims to engage our usual concert-going audiences as well as new online audiences unaware of our work or unfamiliar with classical music in general, but who are looking for interesting digital experiences. We want to bring our innovative approach to live performance into a digital context and work with experienced filmmakers to devise and deliver something that captures the dynamic energy of the ensembles, as well as the impact of this international collaboration.

Outputs: We are looking for a 15 minute documentary style film as well as full-length simple capture of the festival’s opening concert. The final products must be easily accessible (i.e. no special technology required to experience it) and reflect the high quality output of the Bridge partners’ live experiences. The documentary will be shared for free online via all Bridge partners’ digital channels (eg. youtube / partner websites) as well as forming an essential part of our reporting to our funders Creative Europe.

Timeline: Filming to take place from 20th – 24th April 2022, with rehearsals taking place on 20th April (all ensembles together), and other individual rehearsals and ‘pop up’ performances throughout the days as well as capturing the evening performances. Editing to take place directly after filming to allow for launch by mid-June 2022.

Budget: £4,000 to cover all film elements of the project (crew, equipment hire, editing); audio recording and sound engineer costs for the concerts will be budgeted for and organised separately.

How to apply: If you are interested in being considered for the project, please submit a pitch document of no more than two pages outlining the following:

– why you would like to be involved in the project
– roughly how you would allocate the budget
– examples of relevant previous work

Deadline for applications is 5pm on Monday, 7th March 2022. If you have any questions about the project, please contact the Bridge Producer Jana Robert to arrange an informal chat.


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