Film Funding Blog

The Boston Motion Picture Awards (BMPA) is a competition that started three years ago with the goal of helping independent filmmakers jumpstart their film careers. The awards are tied to several means of film funding. Winners of the competition not only receive money and resources, they also benefit from a variety of other perks, ranging from free screenwriting software to free subscriptions to industry magazines.

With categories such as “International Short-Film Competition” and “International Spoof-Writing Competition”, winners can receive up to thousands of dollars in cash and/or a distribution agreement. The application date starts on July 2nd and goes until September 15th.

The competition also includes judges whose industry backgrounds range from actors in Office Space, Gilmore Girls and directors and producers from The Albino Code, and a film critic from “The Boston Globe”.

The idea behind the BMPAs is the acknowledgement of the fundamental issue behind amateur filmmaking: money. While musicians can create hundreds of songs in their garage or authors can write a variety of short stories, filmmaking is an artistic medium that simply cannot exist without a significant amount of funding. Thus after winning a BMPA prize, filmmakers have a foot up in their future film ventures.

Get more general information about this competition from its main website:
http://www.bostonawards.com/

Contributed by Christina Chen,
UC Berkeley student