Digital development site to launch at London Screenwriters' Festival

Co-founded with Hilary Beecroft, Parker said of the new site: “It could be a game changer, shaping the creative industries from a digital content point of view.”

BCre8ive is an online development resource that can help nurture new work from filmmakers, writers, game designers and illustrators. The site is aimed at everybody from “individual creatives to production companies.”

“We have massive creative overload on the web. There is no quality control,” Parker said.

He also pointed out that in the UK, most creative companies “are less than 10 people” and that they don’t have any resources to invest in development. This is the “structural problem” that the new website aims to address.

“We have a lot of creative talent, a lot of small companies, a huge number of wannabes who have no way into the market at all except to upload things on YouTube.”

The website is intended to create a space “where all of those players can essentially meet and filter their work.”

Three stages

There is a three-stage process. There is the “mash up” section where individuals and groups can work on developing ideas. This is open to anyone and free to join. Participants can hire professional advisors, paid for by the hour.

Then, there is the “Creative Workshop” where the idea is refined further.

The third part of the process is the Lab, where animation companies, games companies, transmedia groups and visual effects companies (including Framestore) are expected to participate.

They will select projects that have been filtered through the workshops and develop them further for three months.

They do this for free but, at the end of the process, they have a six-week first look option on the projects on which they have worked.

BCre8ive Ltd was set up by Parker and Beecroft in 2010.

The new website, which has received support from the Technology Strategy Board, has just gone “live.”

The company takes a small amount of money for “every hour of mentoring” as well as a 10% share on IP (Intellectual Property) of everything that goes through the Lab.

Parker will be talking at the London Screenwriters’ Festival on Sunday.

“BCre8ive is a very exciting and imaginative way of building ideas in a safe, collaborative forum,” David Sproxton of Aardman Animation commented of the new venture.