Australian film is in trouble  – and here’s what we can learn from HBO to fix it

Australia’s filmed content investors should (and certainly do) look at what they’re trying to achieve and invest appropriately. The FTA networks want Aussies watching TV, and the cinemas want Aussies watching films. Film Australia wants Australians watching things about Australians as much of the time as possible (aka nationalism). The state film finance corporations want local production and people oversees to visit.

Many of these goals are well achieved with highly popular Australian movies (like Red Dog) and TV series (like Dr Blake). Would more money spent on scripts have got Miss Fisher or A Place to Call Home on the BBC like Dr Blake was? Or should they have cast a Neighbours star instead? (Good luck Jack Irish).

What nearly everyone wants to avoid is making content that nobody watches. Most TV production avoids this, however our movie industry seems to have a marketing/distribution problem for it’s more niche titles. I’ve never understood why the commercial FTA stations buy broadcast rights, then bury recent Australian movies late at night in the summer with barely any promotion. Could Film Australia perhaps force funding recipients to get prime TV spots, or otherwise have the movies screened on SBS? They would love to feature them. The ABC would also treat them with respect.

I think there are a few errors in this article starting with the statament “Screen Australia is doing an amazing job at giving opportunities to first-time filmmakers from all walks of life’ Since the creation of the “super agency” in 2008, Screen Australia policy has been to cut off emerging filmmakers from funding, instead supporting only “experienced” filmmakers. Funding to specific emerging programs dropped by more than half over the last decade. Screen Australia’s position was that the state agencies should look after emerging filmmakers, but they didn’t seem to get the memo as their funding of emerging programs (in aggregate) also dropped by half. Some states, namely SA, WA, and Tasmania have (out of necessity?) re-developed great programs for emerging filmmakers, but the larger states have focused their efforts on providing production support to projects that are also largely driven by “experienced” filmmakers. It has literally only been in the last few months, since the changes of the funding guidelines and the departure of COO Fiona Cameron, that the agency has opened up funding to emerging filmmakers. The programs are definitely exciting and refreshing but it’s a little too early to assess whether the job they are doing is “amazing”.

The other “error” (and I used the term loosely) is based on the observation that HBO is the appropriate business model for an entire local industry. The information asymmetries that exist in entertainment-based experience goods (“nobody knows” both in terms of demand and quality supply outputs) implies an inherent danger of “putting all your eggs in the same basket” – a risk that is generally best mitigated by spreading your risks across a wide portfolio of investments (if you believe financial literature). The “error” in the statement also lies in the assumption that the folks at Screen Australia and their “pivotal buyers” (the broadcasters and distributors) who co-invest are able to spot quality/talent walking through the door. Mounds of academic research on the area “expert judgements” and human psychology suggest that the myriad of human biases (Optimism bias, confirmation bias, Dunning-Kruger, to name a few) show that way is fraught. Indeed, the current CEO of NZ film agency referred to the challenges of screen agency decision making when she coined the phrase “excellence on their own terms” (investment committees that choose projects and teams that, consciously or unconsciously, reflect their own values, which may or may not reflect the values of an audience at large) in a little known report on emerging filmmakers in 1998. David Gonski, in his review of the industry in 1997 also raised the great likelihood of decision-error as a challenge for the industry in his call for a “many doors” approach to film funding.

So sure, Screen Australia should invest in less quantity and put the effort into more quality, but who gets to decide on quality? Screen Australia is a government agency who probably sees it primary role in dispensing public cash. Indeed, in a recent academic research presented at a cultural economics conference in Melbourne, it was shown that the Screen Australia policy of investing in more feature films with less investment per project has led to statistically significant better outcomes than the previous FFC model which invested more but in less.

HBO does make great content that have both high entertainment value AND high production value. Bigger budgets do tend to have a higher association with revenues and eyeballs (not profits). Sustainability comes from profits. HBO also got sold to AT&T. They were also part of a bigger conglomeration with direct access to a “customer pays” models – PAY TV. HBO are a production arm of a distribution system, which feeds that system and which pays them back so they can afford to pay for these big budget, high quality programs (what is it – $10 a month with 65 million subscribers), and they are closer to the coal face with a direct feedback systems where they can test/re-test assumptions of what quality is. Screen Australia has none of that. Screen Australia taps in to the public purse. They have no direct relationship with the audience. They co-invest with distributors who may have less than 5% skin in the game; or broadcasters who HAVE to take Australian content, but also have a range of other suppliers with proven content (proven in home markets) with global marketing campaigns.

I don’t think any filmmaker purposefully seeks to create a “low quality” project, and what might start out as a quality project in development may become low quality because of weakening of vision when a distributor wants one thing, a screen agency asks for something else, another investors adds their two-cents, and suddenly the project is incoherent, but all are in their own way, aiming to deliver a quality product. How quality is defined and how it is actually delivered is where the general proposition in this article is a cause for concern.