A highlight of the year was getting my first film fest 'Official Selection'. I would thoroughly recommend the wonderful Isle of Man Film Festival it’s a great event. The film was Mars Diffracts, a 12 minute look at how we’re searching for life on Mars.

I had the highly unnerving privilege of watching my film on a cinema screen sat next to Mark Kermode. The standard of films was fantastic, and the people involved were so lovely. A real personal highlight of my year was hanging out on the island, marinating in the friendliness, enjoying stunning countryside and trying to befriend seals. I really want to make it back there next year.

I also blogged here about where to apply for awards, grants and festivals.

I made a couple of short teaser trailers for the movie. Should we send humans to Mars and How do you design an instrument to work on Mars to tell a bit of the story; and hopefully inspire a few more viewers for the full film.

The stop motion skills I developed in that film ended up in a collaboration with the fun people at Nature. Proving that Smarties do have the answer when it comes to intergenerational co-operative economics.

I made a music video with uber-talented, genre defying T.J Owusu. Practicing my slider skills and hopefully doing justice to a fantastic interpretation of Beethoven played on slide guitar.

I made this film about one of my favourite events of the year. 120 mile overnight bike ride the Dunwich Dynamo. Hopefully this film might inspire a few more people to join us in 2015.

I performed some poetry this year at Rhymes with Orange. Played around with some digital publishing platforms like CowBird and Medium (Shipwreck). I won the open mic in July and was asked to do a ten minute set. The result was my analysis of careers lows and internet culture - Work History.

I directed several Bandstand Busks again this year. I think Tom Brosseau was probably my favourite. Check the website for the rest of them.

I took part in a couple of competitions, which I would highly recommend. Really helpful to have deadlines and boundaries to experiment with some new things. The 24 Hour Radio Race was a fun project, you have 24 hours to make a 4 minute radio piece. My piece got bought by the Public Radio Exchange Network! Definitely up for trying this again next year. Safe to say it's as tough as it is rewarding...

I did the Vimeo Weekend Challenge - slightly less insane deadlines, but a great test, to make a film over a weekend. Mine involved making a scary film for Halloween. ‘Are you Afraid of the Dark?’ was poetic fiction, both things I want to play around with more in 2015.

I continued my part time work with the awesome team at the British Medical Journal. Mostly working on strategy, educational films, and trying to make novel digital things. Our YouTube channel has been a real success this year.

The silliest film I made this year was a reaction to the insane trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey. I couldn’t help but think it looked like The Apprentice, and so I made my homage ‘50 Spoons of Sugar'.

It got retweeted by Lord Sir Alan Sugar himself, which was one of my most confusing highlights of the year.

I finally put together a little showreel of my science and documentary work from recent years.

Please join me on the social medias (usually @thomhoffman) and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you haven’t already.

I reviewed the year in things other people have made here, and I’m lining up my next projects to work on in 2015. I want to keep making films about science, art, education, and weird life. Both fiction and non-fiction, using comedy, poetry, documentary, film, sound and photography. If you are interested in collaborating or commissioning me, or just want a chat about digital things, get in touch, it’s going to be a big, bold, 2015.

Thanks to everyone who helped, and pushed things forward, you’re the best, let’s go again.

Here's to 2015 pic.twitter.com/SPHt1qY0gM
— Thom Hoffman (@thomhoffman) January 2, 2015

Comment

Grants/Festivals/Awards/Screenings

I was looking to see what sort of opportunities are out there for filmmakers like us who are in to a bit of everything. I do mostly short documentary pieces, but with one eye on science, narrative, comedy and music. I’ve gathered together a few short film festivals/awards/grants, screenings and stuff that are particularly relevant to people like me; but hopefully interesting and relevant to others. Please email me or leave a comment if you have anything else I could add to this list, as sadly, I couldn’t find that much stuff, and I've got to believe there's more out there... right...?

First things first if, like me, you haven't won any awards yet (apart from that Wii Tennis tournament in 2011). You can still easily get some of those nice leaves around your name by using this leaves award meme generator.

http://www.laurelleavesawardmaker.com/

OK, on with the show...

Festivals/awards

Sheffield Doc Fest (and interactive)

'Brings the international documentary family together to celebrate the art and business of documentary making for six intense days in June'

http://sheffdocfest.com/

Not taking any more submissions but there are a couple of pitching sessions where you can pitch shorter ideas for exposure or some funding. One for 2015 perhaps...

Encounters - Bristol

Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival, is the UK's longest running competitive short film and animation event.

http://www.encounters-festival.org.uk/

Deadline - 16th May 2014

Also includes: DepicT! - 90 second film competition - £2500 prize (as part of Encounters) any style/genre, from documentary to narrative. It's fun to work within the constraints of time limits.

http://www.depict.org/

7th July 2014 - free entry

Imagine Science Festival - New York

http://www.imaginesciencefilms.org

‘The Imagine Science Film Festival exists to promote new dialogues between art and science, between specialists and the public, and even between fact and fiction in portrayal of scientific information.’

http://www.imaginesciencefilms.org/

Submission deadline August 1st

Expression - Dublin

UCD Science Expression is Ireland's first and only dedicated science film festival; a dynamic public engagement programme invigorating conversation around science, technology, research and innovation through film and new media

http://www.ucdscienceexpression.ie/why-science-expression/

Likely to be in October 2014, no submission date yet

The International Festival of Science Documentary Films Academia Film Olomouc

next round - April 2015

has a category for -

The Best International Science Documentary Film Award

The Best Science Documentary Short Film Award

http://afo.cz/index.php?lang=en

Grants

Wellcome Trust

Needs a biomedical angle, but around that there seems to be a lot of flexibility, well worth a look if that’s your area of interest.

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Public-engagement/Funding-schemes/Broadcast-games-and-film-awards/index.htm

Interesting Channel 4 collaboration - BritDoc

http://britdoc.org/

The Bertha BRITDOC Connect Fund

Strategic outreach campaigns for completed or almost completed films - See more at: http://britdoc.org/real_funds/bertha-britdoc-connect-fund

Feature Journalism fund - 5-50K

The Bertha BRITDOC Fund for Journalism is an international film fund dedicated to supporting long form feature documentaries of a journalistic nature. We are looking for films that break the important stories of our time, expose injustice, bring attention to unreported issues and cameras into regions previously unseen

http://britdoc.org/real_funds/bertha-britdoc-documentary-journalism-fund

Arts Council England don’t fund films unless they are very specifically about an artist/art - what they do support is listed here http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/pdf/gfta_information_sheets_june_2013/Artists_film_and_the_moving_image_June_2013.pdf

Other things of potential interest

US TV Screenings on Independent TV, could be interesting extra avenue for showing your work - http://www.kcet.org/about/submissions.html

Film nights - Doc Heads, - http://www.docheads.org/ I’ve been to this in East London, very nice people, good fun night, always good films, they take submissions for anything from 2 - 30 minutes.

Saw this amazing film at Doc Heads, really worth a watch. Let's not let it put us off applying for stuff though!

Dir: Alex Nicholson

My London - film competition as part of the East London Film Festival -

What films are we looking for?
All sorts. There are two main rules: all entries have to be no more than three minutes long, and all entries have to fit the brief ‘My London’.

http://www.timeout.com/london/film/my-london-a-short-film-competition

Deadline for submission Midnight May 16th 2014

Thanks, hope that was useful. I found it interesting, but a bit depressing that there isn't more support out there. If anyone has any smaller festivals, competitions, grants, screenings, please do get in touch.

I'm on Twitter @thomhoffman

Speaking of which, here are some interesting twitter people to keep an eye on: