Very excited to announce that I have been selected for the 2013-14 LOCO London Comedy Film Festival with Sky Comedy mentoring scheme for my latest short film, Rest Stop.

Only three films were selected for development by the commissioning team at Sky Comedy and supported by Creative Skillset and the BFI. Our team was picked by Sky Comedy's Commissioning Editor Saskia Schuster.

The scheme is supported by Creative Skillset, which is funded by the National Lottery via the BFI and through the Skills Investment Fund.

The programme, which begins in July 2013, will give the filmmaker teams close access to industry experts working in comedy to help them further their careers and develop a short comedy film. Each selected team contains a writer, director and producer:

Staten Cousins-Roe and Poppy Roe, FLO
Kate Herron, Genia Sophie Krassnig and Monica Heisney, Rest Stop
Carl Rock and Christine Cheung, The Truthful Phone

LOCO will support each team by facilitating three development sessions with Sky’s comedy commissioning team and five tailor-made meetings with additional industry experts.

LOCO aims to help comedy filmmakers here in the UK develop the skills, relationships and original ideas that will launch them onto a lifelong career. Sky has commissioned some of the most exciting new comedies of the past few years, so I am very excited to have both these fantastic organisations helping me with Rest Stop.

Dan Simmons, Head of Film at Creative Skillset said, “Creative Skillset supported LOCO’s training during the festival in January, where participants had invaluable access to a large number of industry professionals. The fantastic mentoring opportunities now available are rare, taking the most promising comedy talent and their projects to the next level of their careers.

Saskia Schuster, Commissioning Editor, Comedy at Sky, said “I am thrilled to be on board with LOCO for this exciting programme. It can be tricky and sometimes daunting for emerging comedy writers to go from an initial idea to a first draft script and eventually to the first day of filming. I hope that alongside the other mentors, we can make the process a little easier and have some fun along the way.”