Mentorship

We match and facilitate funding of director mentoring for confidential creative and moral support.

Overview

Finding a Mentor
Mentoring involves being matched with a fellow SDGI director for informal advice on how they might approach an aspect of directing. Mentoring is project-based only, so you’ll need something specific a director can advise on.

Funded Mentoring
Screen Ireland can fund a mentor when a mentee project has gone into pre-production with Screen Ireland funding, as assessed on a case-by-case basis. Mentoring is usually a set number of hours during any stage from pre-production to final picture lock.

Conditions
Mentors are for confidential creative or moral support only. For pay, legal and employment-related issues, please see support or contact the Guild, your agent or lawyer. Requesting a mentor doesn’t guarantee being matched.

Do you need to bounce an idea off a director outside your project? If you would like some informal advice from a fellow SDGI director on how they might approach an aspect of directing? This is project based only so you must have something that a director can give you advice on.

Specific areas for advice might include:

Script
Scene breakdown, casting, HOD choices, working with actors, navigating a challenging production, edit advice, etc.

Development & Preparation
Working with writer, story boarding, shot list, pilot, location, casting, rehearsal, choosing DOP’s.

Production
Creative Decisions for each shot, framing, camera position, lighting coverage, sound style, design, performance, movement, number of takes, eye-line.

Post Production
Editing, which take to use, pacing, music score, titles/credits style, grading, special effects.

Career
Finding/ Managing Agent, Finding working with Producers, writers, Self Promotion, Interviews.

Apply for a Mentor

Being an SDGI Mentor

Joining the Mentorship Panel
Joining our Mentorship Panel makes you eligible to offer mentoring. It’s a great way to give back to other directors and the industry and share your directing wisdom. Your mentoring will be project-based and involve limited calls and/or meetings.

Take on a ‘Shadow’
If you have a project coming up in the next few months, you might allow a director to shadow you for between 1 -3 days over the course of your shoot. SDGI has a waiting list of directors waiting to go on set to watch directors in action.