How to catch the eye of The Yorkshire Content Fund

The Yorkshire Content Fund, part of Screen Yorkshire, invests up to £500,000 in selected projects. CEO Caroline Cooper Charles outlines the boxes that need to be ticked to receive finance.

The Yorkshire Content Fund (YCF) was established by Screen Yorkshire in 2012 to support film and TV projects that are filmed in the English region of Yorkshire and the Humber. The fund was set up with money from the EU’s European Regional Development Fund, which provided a further tranche of funding in 2014.

Since then, the YCF has relied on returns on its investments to keep the money coming in.

“We don’t get topped up in the way some of the other funds that exist on a regional basis do. So we have to make smart and commercial decisions about what we invest in,” says Screen Yorkshire’s CEO Caroline Cooper Charles, noting that the amount of money the fund has to invest each year “literally depends on how smart we were the previous year.”

The YCF’s first investment, season one of Peaky Blinders, was certainly a smart investment, with the hit BBC period crime drama going on to run for six seasons. Another success was Paramount-owned Channel 5’s period drama All Creatures Great & Small, which the fund supported for two of its soon-to-be six seasons.

Other, more recent, TV projects the YCF has supported include Bradford-set crime thriller Virdee, which premiered on the BBC in February, and the pubcaster’s upcoming revenge thriller Reunion, which comes from Sheffield-based prodco Warp Films. For Channel 4, the fund has invested in Duck Soup Films’ coming-of-age drama Dreamers, which premieres this month.

Cooper Charles says projects don’t necessarily have to be set in Yorkshire in order to receive YCF investment, as long as they are filmed in the region and create jobs there. She notes, however, that “if a project genuinely has a story setting in Yorkshire and is from a Yorkshire-based writer, then obviously we love that.”

The fund also doesn’t focus on particular genres, although “high-end TV drama will work better for us than anything else because it has the highest international value. When you’re trying to sell stuff overseas, it’s much harder with high-volume, low-budget factual, for instance, which isn’t going to get us the returns we need on an international sales basis,” the exec adds.

The YCF will invest up to £500,000 (US$648,405) per project, or 15% of the project’s budget, whichever is lower.

“Because we are a returning fund, we have to look at the commercial nature of the project and invest against other commercial money on identical terms. What that means is we can’t match against licence fees, because obviously broadcasters are buying the rights to broadcast and we’re not a broadcaster, so that’s not identical terms. So on TV projects, nine times out of 10 we’re investing against the distributor,” Cooper Charles says.

“There are no guarantees a project is going to make its money back, so we’ll look at the sales figures for the international territories and we’ll make an assessment. If on paper it’s not looking like we’re going to make our money back, we won’t even consider it because otherwise we’ll end up with no funds at all to distribute.”

When assessing a project that has been submitted for application, the YCF considers “the package as a whole,” from the production company to the quality of the scripts and, crucially, who else is backing and co-investing in it. It also assesses the amount of regional spend, the proportion of the shoot that’s taking place in the region and use of regional crew and supporting artists.

Cooper Charles also notes that a production company that has been based in Yorkshire and the Humber long-term will “score more highly than a company just coming in and wanting to realise a project in the region.” She adds that equally “there’s a bit of a halo effect if it’s Yorkshire on screen as Yorkshire,” rather than being filmed there but set elsewhere.

“It’s competitive, so you need to score well in all of those areas,” the exec adds.

In terms of the actual application process, there are two stages to it, the first of which consists of a one-page expression of interest, the purpose of which is to filter out the projects that don’t meet the criteria, usually the applicants who haven’t read the guidelines.

A response to this is typically provided within 48 hours, which will inform the applicant if a project is suitable to proceed with the application or not. If suitable, the applicant will be directed to a form to be completed for the second stage of the application process. If an application looks interesting but lacks clarity on certain areas, that will also be fed back to the applicant before they can proceed.

“I like to think the process of making an application to us is very much a discussion. Generally, we try to make it as swift a turnaround as possible and as much of a discussion as possible so people can present their best case,” Cooper Charles says.

If a project is encouraged to proceed to the second stage, the applicant must provide a business case, a budget, timeline, sales projections and financing plan. Existing businesses must also provide three years’ historic accounts and current management accounts.

The turnaround to hear back on whether an application has been successful or not, from submission of the application to the final response, is four-to-six weeks.

As for the longevity and future of the YCF, Cooper Charles says: “This depends on how well we invest and what our returns are,” noting that the aim is to keep a mixed portfolio of feature film and television projects “because we know the returns from TV run over a longer period and the returns from film come in quicker, so that influences how quickly we can get that money in and back out again.”

Since the YCF is part of Screen Yorkshire, productions it invests in also benefit from the agency’s film office which can connect them to local crew and filming locations, while negotiating logistical issues such as road closures. Screen Yorkshire also does skills and workforce development work. This, Cooper Charles says, enables a holistic approach to support, making the fund an attractive proposition.

“It’s so challenging out there for people to get money from anywhere at the moment, so having a regional fund is very appealing,” the exec says. “But it’s not just the fund; it’s more the fact we can offer this interconnected, holistic approach in terms of what we’re trying to move forward with in Yorkshire.”