Opinion

Are international ‘gurus’ doing their homework?

When questioned about the local market, visiting ‘gurus’ are often vague in their response. Why? Most of them haven’t done their homework; they’re here to talk about themselves and their places of origin, but should they do a Google search before boarding their LAX-Sydney flight?

Peter Broderick is a familiar face at SPAA Fringe, where he has spoken for – at least – the last three years.

While he always has something interesting to say, it is unclear whether Broderick does his homework by studying the Australian market and what’s been done here. The numerous case studies he covers in his presentations tend to be US or European-based.

For example, last Saturday he spoke about the crowd-funded sci-fi parody Star Wreck, created by Finnish director Samuli Torsonnen, and his current film about Moon Nazis, Iron Sky – yet he failed to mention that Australia’s New Holland Pictures has joined the project to form a German/Finnish/Australian co-production.

When speaking about crowd-funding, Broderick discussed The Age of Stupid and other projects, as well as the US website IndieGoGo.com – ignoring similar initiatives such as The Tunnel and Fundbreak.

He’s not the only one. At Encore, we’ve interviewed countless international visitors who struggle when asked about the latest Australian film or TV show they’ve seen – we wouldn’t be surprised if they said Muriel’s Wedding.

It’s not about patriotism – we’re not saying everything has to revolve around Australia and the local market. If anything, the point of bringing international speakers is to learn from other markets and other ways of doing things, to inspire our local industry to think outside the box… but it’s always “In the US we do this; in Europe they’re doing that” like it’s the only thing that matters. Sometimes we don’t have to be told about what’s been done elsewhere; someone here is probably doing it already.

It’s not like there are no cross-platform or crowd funding efforts in Australia, and international gurus could refer to them and analyse how they compare to their international counterparts, and why they worked – or failed.

Yes, international gurus are here to teach, but wouldn’t it be great if they also learned a little from what we are doing here?

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