The horror at the heart of Australian cinema

Well, apart from the fact that the real issue has not been touched upon in this otherwise very good article, it takes more than one or two very good actors to make a film work and I don’t much else in evidence in the case of Patrick.

We must take charge of our own film industry and make it easier for Australian productions to see the light of day as well as to be seen by the maximum audience numbers possible.

A new distribution model would mean a radical change in the existing one and that is directly linked to the main problem facing everything else.

Correction for above “I don’t see much else in evidence”

perhaps we should not kid ourselves.

PATRICK was a schlocky remake of a schlocky 70s film.

seriously, who was going to pay to see it ?

the fact that so many in the — cough cough — Australian film industry have failed to work this out says all we need to know …

not sure that’s exactly true Rutegar, I haven’t seen it, seen some lenghtly clips, which seemed to be quite good…in any case the thrust of the article was that Australian films aren’t on that legendary level playing field with their Hollywood competition.

There’s plenty of schlock from Hollywood that does reasonable business in this country …much better than it should. Aussie films seem to have to set a much higher standard to win favour with the exhibitors and get the critical mass of screens to ensure a fair go at cinema audiences.

Schlocky is a good word to describe Patrick, and I accept that there is a lot of entertainment value in schlocky, and some people even like it.

The Turning had moments of real greatness and as a whole came close to being a very fine film. The major problem apart from length, was the fact that the makers allowed it to become too too precious, too moody and self interested.

While I’m on the Too word, it is also said that too many cooks do something to the broth; perhaps this also applies to film making. The Turning was a fine idea, approached with great skill and with some very fine talent, but it was perhaps over indulged by its parents and became some what introverted and confused as a result.

It is certainly true that we need to explore new distribution models for Australian films. However it is equally true that we need to take a closer look at the Australian films currently getting Australian subsidy and how the subsidy system has worked. Patrick is a good example. Its first reincarnation was mediocre and unoriginal. The same producer held on to the rights and decided to make it again knowing it would make no money in Australia but that it would sell well internationally into non theatrical markets offshore. The producer does well with first dollar returns and the taxpayer loses a motza. Mystery Road was always going to be a hard sell, an earnest Aussie feature, exactly the kind of film with little breakout potential but would do a lot of festivals where it earnt nothing. The Turning is an anthology feature film, a genre which has had almost no commercial success anywhere. That alone should has disqualified it from Screen Australia funding. At $25 a ticket it has grossed around 1.1 million which translates to an audience of 44,000. Let’s assume Federal and State subsidies to produce it were $3.5 million which means the taxpayer has subsidised a theatrical release to the tune of $80/ticket. All these films will of course have an ancillary market in Australia.

The biggest problem for Australian films has always been Hollywood but an even bigger issue is that in order to defend the idea of a national film culture every developed country (and also emerging economies) is spending a huge amount of money on local films and there is simply not a large enough theatrical audience for them. Aussie films must also compete against the very best of these films which get local release here. And frankly we make few films which can compete against them.

A much better model is the UK model where both BBC and Channel 4 have always had a local feature film budget and program schedule and at least ensured films have a good TV time slot while leaving theatrical windows for the films with breakout audiences. Slumdog Millionaire is a great example and our own film Shine could not have been financed without the presale the producer secured from BBC Films. But the politics of our local state broadcasters is such that neither SBS or ABC have ever had a fundamental role in feature film funding and always struggled even to ensure a reasonable output of drama. If we want to see ourselves on the big screen then subsidy is here to stay but it is actually government which has failed to put in place a considered and sensible strategy to disperse subsidy and ensure tax payers have an opportunity to see these films. It needs some vision but I won’t hold my breadth.

No doubt distribution is up in the air at the moment.

But geez, some local filmmakers don’t do themselves any favours, either. Lost count the amount of times I’ve watched an Australian film and wondered:

Who is the audience for this film? Is there an audience for this film?

Often the answers are “don’t know” and “no”. From the films mentioned in the article…

– MYSTERY ROAD is something you’d watch on the ABC or SBS.
– PATRICK: target audience is the almost dead DVD/Blu-Ray market.
– THE TURNING did remarkable BO considering what it was: a three hour anthology film.

And for everyone’s sake, we have to stop the comparisons with/bleating about Hollywood…

Excellent article Lauren. I also agree with many of the points Harry makes. For years I have been surprised at the lack of general understanding of film distribution models.

In no other industry would a business spend millions of dollars manufacturing something without understanding how to get it to customers. A robust ‘go-to-market’ strategy must be at the heart of every business case.

Is PATRICK symptomatic of a lack of commercial acumen within our film industry? If so, what responsibility do Screen Australia, Film Victoria and Screen Queensland have? All three contributed funds to the making of Patrick, and while return-on-investment is a complex calculation for government bodies, surely each must be somewhat accountable for a film’s commercial success.

Do we need further scrutiny of the allocation of funds by these bodies?

A revolutionary idea might be to re-direct public funds from film production to digital film distribution. Screen Australia should have a dedicated “Screen Australia Films” section on video-on-demand platforms. If S.A. fund the encoding, uploading & metadata entry there would be no reason for the platforms not to make as many films available as possible.

The only trick would be to ensure the digital rights are captured prior to signing off support.

The Australian state and federal government is entirely to blame for the poor state of the Australian film and television industries.

As much as we all hate to admit it, adland, government and the old-school TV broadcasters in Australia are hanging on for dear life – but broadcast TV is dead. The sooner we can acknowledge this and move to an entirely digital on demand model to replace current broadcast and subscription TV in this country, everything will get better.

The state and federal funding bodies fund the wrong part of the industry. In an environment where Australian content doesn’t make any money, they keep throwing money at producers to make more, poorly performing content.

The job of government in our society should be to provide funding and implement policies that allow for industries to become self sustaining, rather than continually dishing out endless handouts.

At present the government treat the film and tv production sector like desperate struggling artists who are provided ongoing welfare under the agenda of documenting and archiving Australian culture and history. Not exactly a winning formula for creating a vibrant and profitable production industry.

As I see it, governments should STOP giving money to producers and make it easier for producers to raise money privately, but use it’s position to help Australian producers compete in an environment where their work can generate a profitable return for investors. Currently the government does nothing to assist with either of these things.

Whilst 10BA was a scheme that was often abused, the over-arching idea of providing a tax break to investors in film should be something that is re-visited. A better framework and regulation will stop the abuse, but could lead the film industry to a future where producers can successfully fund their projects from private capital without the need for government funding.

The producer offset is a great tax incentive scheme and should continue, but the rules need to be relaxed and made open to international productions wishing to film or finish in Australia. The problem with the producer offset at present is it is limited only to Feature Films with certain conditions pertaining to theatrical release. It should be a blanket 40% offset on all money spent on Australian in a production, for productions of a minimal value. All the nonsense relating to market interest, or the content having to feature ‘significant Australian production’ only hinder producers in negotiating profitable distribution deals, or restricting producers from making content that people may actually want to see. Imagine the boost to the film industry if American producers could bring their film and television productions to Australia and receive the producer offset for all money spent in Australia. More productions would create more jobs, but more importantly give Australians in the film industry the opportunity to work on more creative and interesting projects that would improve their creative and technical skills making Australia more globally competitive, which at present it is not.

The second problem with the tax offset is that it is a a cash rebate that can only be realised after the entire production is shutdown and books are closed off. Whilst this model has been of great help to well established producers in Australia, it hardly assists new and innovative filmmakers who want to be able to use the offset to help finance their production. The tax offset should be refundable as part of quarterly or monthly BAS statements for the SPV and the production approval should be given at the commencement of the project once the finance is in place and production is scheduled.

But the real area where the government needs to be throwing its dollars is fixing the exhibition problem that all Australian film and television content faces. We need to recognise that all existing cinema complexes in Australia exist simply to profit from the content produced and marketed by the Hollywood machine. The productions are completely different and should not even be price similarly. When an Australian film comes through the traditional cinema complexes they get minimal screens with one or two session times a day, practically no marketing and we all sit around later scratching our heads saying ‘what went wrong’ or blaming piracy for the reason why nobody saw our film.

The only way to fix this is for the government to invest in a chain of not-for-profit, government invested but community run cinema complexes in every capital city and regional centre – like public libraries in a way. These complexes need to have the same quality of projection, audio and comfort as the top commercial theatres in Australia, but need to exist to provide an exhibition space for films produced in Australia. Australian films could get long theatre runs on hundreds of screens across the country where audiences could pay $10 – $12 a ticket, having a generous profit split like 90/10 in favour of the producer, whilst leaving just enough to the theatre owners to cover ongoing administration and maintenance.

Whilst investing in theatrical exhibition, we need to recognise that DVD / BluRay is dead for home video, but without any real on-demand service in Australia, most Australians will resort to piracy. Here lies the opportunity for the government to be on the front foot yet again and create a universal on-demand platform for Australia.

With the rollout of the NBN, the technology would exist where DCP’s could be transferred over the NBN to hundreds of theatres in a matter of minutes without any cost of hard disk drives or having film prints made. In the same way, the NBN could support a universal on-demand platform. Just picture if the government paved the way, in partnership with NBN Co to deliver a set to box (or 2 or 3) to every home in Australia, capable of streaming 4K, encrypted and watermarked (to curb piracy) video to people at home in Australia. Producers could sell their films to the Australian public for a small viewing fee (or rental fee), where majority of that fee would go back to the producer. Dying broadcasters or subscription TV could adopt the platform to offer their content on-demand, streamed live, and offer a combination of pay for view services, or free content that is ad supported for the benefit of adland. The platform could be opened up to international channels so perhaps Netflix, HBO, Showtime etc could sell their content legally to Australians at the same time as it is made available to Americans.

A model where the government supports both the theatrical exhibition and at home rental / pay per view platforms so producers can realise the profit of their content would have other major benefits. An at home platform for example could provide ongoing free advertising to all Australian films that are screening in the ‘Australian’ theatres, thus allowing for all Australians to see trailers and learn about Australian films without having the ridiculous Hollywood marketing budgets thus negating the need altogether for a distributor.

This idea and concept wouldn’t necessarily kill off Australian distributors, who at present are a part of the problem, but would change their role. Distributors could still act as a middle man and take a cut, but they would move more into a capital raising role and mass marketing role to help Australian films become even more profitable or find audiences abroad.

In a world as described above, what it would force producers to do is make content that people want and love. It would also open up more international production to be made in Australia. In a world where Australian producers start producing great content, regardless if it has an Australian flavour or not, the rest of the world will then start to build a demand for our content, much like the world has a demand for American, British, or even the content made in New Zealand recently.

It’s time our government and industry start looking at the film and television industry as a major industry that should employ thousands of people and generate significant domestic and international revenue. But before it can get to such a point, it needs the government to invest significantly in it to become sustainable on its own, because it will not and cannot be fixed without government intervention.

But of course, I doubt anything of this nature could happen here in Australia. We are a people who like to protect vested interests and resist change at all costs. So for the young, ambitious, talented and creative filmmakers in this country, our best bet is to get the hell out of here and move to a place like America where we we actually may have a chance of success.

Well, the above is one of the longest ever, it gives some new insights, it covers some new ground, yet generally, it says the same old things.

We should have a man in a white coat and a tram conductor’s hat, handing out tickets as the carousel churns slowly behind him. Soon, one lot alights, and those with tickets climb up and embark on another set of circuits of opinions and experiences on the Great Australian Film roundabout.

“This is what is wrong and this is how to fix it.” “Here is the culprit and here is the saviour.”

The villains are the money people, the percentage mad deal makers, bean counters and the greedy art baggers, they have always been the problem with theatre, they have killed more theatrical tradition , more art and more creativity than fly spray has killed flies.

Start story telling, this is what sits at the base of all good theatre, story lines and actors, whose job it is to “hold as ‘ twere the mirror up to nature” ( who said that?) and get on with story telling in both a scripted and filmic way.

These stories must be handled in a way far from the treatment handed out to RED DOG and that dreadful toilet film, they must have truth and a soul which entertains, educates and stirs the bio chemistry all at the same time.

Get the amateurs and the percentage people out of the picture entirely, sack the first person who refers to Hollywood as the “bench mark” or to a thing called “world class” avoid as if it were the plague, any inclination to be funny or to “keep it in” and please don’t allow anyone to include any people to work or appear as (so called) actors, solely on the grounds that they have contributed funds ; not, that is, unless you are also prepared to replace the artistic director or the lighting director with a similar applicant.

Start a film by telling a story, spend as much time as is available upon the thing that will ebventually constitute your finished product….ie the performances, the story and the acting. Yes the lighting and the art work and the language of film are all part of the finished product, but what is it that you are lighting, dressing, shooting and shaping with the camera? The story and its performance.

Get away from this dreadful US habit of star f**king, the so called small parts are every bit as important as the star parts, the story depends upon the lady in the sweet shop who hands a bag of butterscotch to the star in act one scene three and is never seen or heard again, as much as it depends upon the star and every player in between. Never accept less than the best an actor can give and the best you are able to extract from each and everyone with whom you are involved.

If the film flops, at least you will know that you and all those you worked with gave the best that was there to give.