A NORTH Yorkshire film company is hoping to do the double at this Press Business Awards.

Harrogate-based Reel Film Media has put forward a submission for the Small Business of the Year category, while it’s offshoot venture Harrogate Film Festival is vying for glory in the Business Innovation of the Year award.

In 2013 at the age of 20 years, Adam Chandler founded Reel Film a video production company, from his bedroom in Harrogate.

In July 2015, what once filled the shoes of a sole trader, became a Limited company, and now at the age of 25, Mr Chandler is managing director of both Reel Film and Harrogate Film Festival.

He employs five staff, (and intends to expand to 15 rapidly) at Reel Film, has office premises in Wetherby and works with international brands such as Disney, Santander and the BBC.

Mr Chandler grew Reel Film successfully in such a short space of time. But, never one to let things rest for too long, he came up with the concept of, and implemented the Harrogate Film Festival single-handedly, at the same time as growing his other business.

Harrogate Film Festival is a local festival with worldwide reach. It offers three strands, a worldwide filmmakers competition, workshops and one-off experience events featuring star names, but also secret cinema venues.

Formed in the Summer of 2016, the first festival took place in March 2017, with 1000 people attending and an estimated marketing reach of half a million people.

The second festival in 2018, despite the Winter storms, achieved similar figures.

Mr Chandler started Harrogate Film Festival to give both local and far flung filmmakers a voice and platform.

Submissions for the independent filmmakers’ competition come from countries such as Iran, Australia, Russia and the US.

The festival has grown alongside Reel Film, which started out using a handy camera for video production.

Reel Film now has more than £30,000 of its own equipment to take out into the field. Also, with only commercial video being provided initially, Reel Film now offers video, animation, drone footage, time-lapse video and Virtual Reality too.

This diversity has enabled the company to expand its services quickly and it has moved into providing internal communications content too, relevant to company areas such as HR and Health and Safety, amongst others.

With 160 clients, and more than 700 successfully completed projects, the company has filmed in eight different countries.