A New Methodology for Feature Film Production in Australia – Robert Connolly 2008

“We have a chance to re-invent our industry, putting in place the solid foundations needed to effectively confront the changing landscape for feature film production in Australia and throughout the world.”

Robert Connolly’s “Embracing Innovation” is a paper filled with practical solutions for Australian filmmakers.

As technology changes, the film industry faces an era of uncertainty as well as opportunity. Other national cinemas appear to have adapted to the opportunities offered by new technologies where we have not. New avenues for marketing and distribution of film content have popped up all over the Internet and are becoming an essential arena to exploit our content.

Traditional production and financing models are perhaps not invalid as Connolly suggests, but need to be extended or re-worked. Having said that, would it be more effective to abandon old models and start again rather than re-work them?

A major problem Connolly identifies is our mini-studio model and ‘no-man’s-land’ financing model. Our industry is run by a mini-studio production model ill equipped to cope with large productions. Our financing model sees our budgets increase rather than decrease. It seems they are not large enough to compete internationally yet are too big to effectively sustain an innovative industry. Even investors at 2007 Cannes festival critiqued Australia’s feature film budgets as too high.

Connolly points out that a more sustainable business model is one driven by lower budgets, tighter turnaround between productions and a share of gross revenues for the producer.

Connolly makes note of the counterproductive and costly business practices serving our industry:

- Fees based on a percentage of the budget forcing producers to increase budgets to achieve a reasonable fee.

- Profit arrangements that do not seek to support producers so they glean from within the budget.

- Government funding with strict conditions such as attached marquee cast increasing the budget again.

- Government investment based on budget percentages forcing the producer to find expensive support rather than valuing the strength of sales and distribution partners.

Overall producers have been forced to push their budgets to new heights not because it will benefit the production but because it is financially essential to do so.

Connolly proposes we abolish percentage based remuneration to stop driving budgets to the extreme and suggest the government commission an investigation into this issue to develop a new financing business model. Connolly suggests wages should be paid according to time, experience and commitment. We need to keep developing models that reward filmmakers for their effort. Providing creative incentives for filmmakers to work effectively with small budgets should be introduced. We could even consider funding for producers based on their track record. An important consideration Connolly points out is the avoidance of incentives based on box office returns as excessive expenditure may be spent on the release and may take precedence over the film – I certainly agree with this but believe more funding and planning needs to be considered in a filmmaker’s business model. Connolly also proposes we provide a realistic wage for cast and crew. Two final solutions are to cap legal fees and simplify agreements.

Connolly has provided very real, practical and appropriate solutions for our industry’s broken production model. How do we go about implementing these solutions and changing the mindset of those stuck in an age old static way of thinking?

Oz Ploitation

Here is a fab link to a pdf file of notes from the Australian doco Oz Ploitation. Lots of great insight into the Aussie genre films coming out of the 70s. They were incredibly successful. not-quite-hollywood-production-notes.pdf

What do you consider Australian content?

Screen Australia (a government funding body) introduced the Producer Offset Scheme in 2007. One of the criteria for Producers to receive a 40% rebate on their film’s budget is if they have ‘significant Australian content’.

They measure ‘significant Australian content’ according to:

- subject matter

- where the film is made

- the nationalities and places of residence of those who make the film

- the details of production and expenditure

For those of you who are thinking “Oh no not another Aussie nationalistic film” don’t despair. I have just been advised that there is a minimum threshold of 30% Australian content. The new film Daybreakers released in cinemas Thursday 4th Feb is an Aussie and US co-production and is a fantastic zombie film! The script was written by two Australians, who hold the rights, there are numerous Australian actors in the film, even though they speak with American accents, Producers both from Australia and the US worked on the film and this is enough to satisfy the Australian content quota.

I must admit I was a little dubious about this clause at first glance. However it appears that I was wrong and it’s not that bad after all. The 30% allows for our production crew and cast to make money in our industry and the some 70% allows us to take our films to other parts of the world and gather funding from various sources.

Aussie talent misses out!

Blockbuster Justice League left our Aussie studios for the US because of financial reasons. Why don’t genre films get supported by the government??!! We can not sustain production!

Martin Walsh leading the way in social media marketing

http://cid-7a5f7e0b9a293e9e.profile.live.com/

This link provides some incredible powerpoint displays about social media. The Australian film industry needs to utilise these free distribution networks as part of their marketing campaigns. As technology changes, so too does the way we engage audiences.

Thanks Martin, you’re a genius!

One opinion with a good point!

What is our national identity? Is this relevant? Is nationalism dead? Do we make films about global issues with an Aussie viewpoint?

My Top Aussie Flicks

The Future of the Australian Film Industry

Response to Dr Karen Pearlman’s “Make Our Myths”

Featured in AFTRS LUMINA – Australian Journal of Screen Arts and Business issue 2 – Pearlman’s article certainly has something to say and reminds us of our purpose when it comes to making films.

The fist thing that comes to mind….I hear you!! The Australian film industry has too often used the justification “tell our own stories” to gather funding from Government bodies. If this is the criteria the Government accepts for funding Aussie films then we have a problem. We are dealing more and more with an international audience and ‘our own stories’ aren’t popular in our own country let alone on the international stage. We are just not competing effectively and with the incredible talent we harbour in this country you can’t help ask where did it all go wrong??? Why don’t we think of our audience first? What do they want? How do we deliver this?

Business models often have a customer focussed approach. There is a correlation between happy customers and large profit margins. Simple right?! Using these business models on the Australian Film Industry becomes difficult because there are so many variables involved in the creative arts. It becomes even more difficult using traditional marketing concepts to market films. More about marketing later! This doesn’t mean that we can not develop our own business model. This proposed business model will be specific to our industry so we can start treating the creative arts with a business twist.

One aspect of this new proposed business model is to consider Pearlman’s argument. Don’t “tell our stories” make our myths. This is a variable we can control. Pearlman states that there are three main distinctions between “telling our stories” and making our myths: scale, dynamics and ownership.

Scale: The cinematics of the feature film experience need to be given stronger consideration if they are to survive the digital revolution. We need to make the cinema a ‘sensual…transformative experience’ composing ‘this art of movement on the scale of symphonies’. Pearlman likens the traits of Greek gods to our protagonist’s feelings. These traits are large in scale and Pearlman argues that this essence of myth needs to be established in our protagonist. It’s a sort of ‘beyond naturalism’ state where the human qualities are recognisable but perhaps not  something you might ‘really experience’. This means that we are not only challenging strengths and searching for truths in our ‘immediate circle’ but we are discovering what it means to be human. This doesn’t have to be dark and depressing by the way!! A couple of tapping penguins taught us about being different and standing up for ourselves in a beautiful musical rendition. It can be done!

Something Pearlman points out, which I admit I had not considered, is that our movies shouldn’t just be happier, but sadder also. My main argument has sided with the fact that our movies are too depressing and we need to make them happier. I agreed with film critic Gary Maddox. However Pearlman is right in saying that our films need to be sadder, they also need to be ‘scarier, angrier, wittier, more satiric, brave, biting and altogether BIGGER’ – ‘A disaster movie is not a happy movie, but it is still a popular movie. Why? Scale.’ Genre films deal with inner human struggle but on a ‘scale that resonates across the broader culture’ – the global audience.

Myth is also created through dynamics and dramatic questions. Pearlman argues that the dynamics of story and dynamics of image and sound are not paid enough attention when it comes to composing a film. The audience goes to the cinema ultimately to watch moving images and to supersede regular physical experience. ’Story dynamics are the rise and fall of movement and energy in the story events’ Will someone do something and what is at stake. Make the audience care.

Pearlman holds a strong case to resurrect the terms genre, emotion and entertainment as viable films to fund. In order to make the film industry academically sound, these types of films were virtually stripped of any credibility and banned from the “study list”. In order for our industry to claim “success” we need to ‘resurrect the debate about purpose and offer a challenge to assumptions about genre, emotion and entertainment’.

Pearlman’s ideas culminate in her argument about ownership. Here she suggests the owner of ‘our stories’ needs to be confronted. ‘Our stories’ implies the ownership lies with the people who fund the films and the filmmakers where as ‘our myths’ is ‘owned by everyone it speaks to’ – essentially humans rather than cultures or societies.

To finish Pearlman hopes scale and dynamics will not be interpreted as ‘Americanism’ because we do not do Hollywood very well. And we don’t want to either! If our stories ‘can be owned by so many, at any time, in any country and in all of the cultures and ethnicities that make up this country, it is mythic…they must have scale, dynamics and ownership by more than just their makers’

Dr Karen Pearlman (2010) “Make Our Myths” Lumina. Australian Film and Television School. Sydney. 2

Quality stories vs box office sales for Australian film

Mary Colbert writes in the Sun Herald Jan 24th 2010 about the relationship Aussie audiences have with Aussie films.

Two main questions were being asked: Who/What was killing the Australian Movie? and How Do You Solve a Problem Like Box Office?

There is a compromise between story and commercial viability that requires attention. Tony Ginnane is no stranger to ruffling a few feathers when it comes time to mentioning “commercial viability” and rightly so. How can an industry sustain itself when government funding is frugal and private investors aren’t interested because our track record on making a profit is so low? The tag line for Colbert’s article reads “Telling quality stories and winning committed viewers is proving more important than box office for Australian film”. I would tend to disagree with this comment. I come from a generation who are online, tech savvy innovators and are not interested in being bombarded by dark and depressing stories that cost way too much money to make and never recoup their costs. As an advocate for Gen Y I agree that there is room for cinema to challenge us and move us but these can’t be the only films we watch. We want to be entertained, removed from daily woes, forget where and who we are for two hours…no Australian film has done that for decades. They are constant reminders of a nervous history, cliched characters and a painful domestic life.

I agree with Robert Connolly as he states that the larger Australian film audience exists through DVD sales, computer downloads, pay TV and free-to-air TV platforms. Why are we wasting our money on theatrical releases of films that will never be watched theatrically? Aggressive marketing campaigns may be one solution for getting the audience back to the cinema but with the release of 3D in cinemas, a regular release won’t offer anything a DVD release can’t.

The answer is not to abolish theatrical releases altogether because we still want to compete in the commercial/international market…don’t we? Or are we all working in this arts industry not to make money? To satisfy the critics of commercialism, I don’t believe in “selling out”. I believe in providing a product to satisfy a need/want. Ultimately we are dealing with products. The film product. And the need/want is to be entertained/challenged. This is all basic stuff but it’s almost as if we’ve become too complex and anal for our own good, telling “our stories” that no one wants to watch.

I do love Connolly’s analogy of the Oz industry as the organic range in your local supermarket – niche quality products that are good for the soul – but we can not sustain an entire industry on this kind of product because not everyone eats organic!! Maybe the organic farmers can sustain this kind of productivity because the marketing is in place and we all have to eat to live. Aussie film marketing is pretty pathetic and we don’t all have to watch Aussie films to survive.

We are dealing more and more with a global audience and if Aussie’s don’t want to watch “our stories” I can’t imagine an international market would either.

Where are the solutions?