Screen Australia CEO pledges to halve decision-making time, but criticises ‘sense of entitlement and negativity’
Screen Australia CEO Graeme Mason has told Mumbrella he plans to halve the length of the funding application process as he seeks to build a self-sustaining screen industry in Australia.
Mason said he has been working to cut the time to decide whether to green light projects by around a third since he joined the industry body in November, and plans to reduce that further still.
“I do think we should give people a steer very early if we see the a life for their project. I’m trying to get you to know very quickly, like in a matter of weeks, if we see potential for it or not. And I would hope to halve the time,” he said.
“We’re also trying to do two stages for most applications. I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask you all to give us an encyclopaedia in hard copy, not even online, I think that’s daft. So we need to speed that up and make it as fluid as possible. At least a fast ‘no’ is better than a slow ‘no’.”
Screen Australia is the main national funding body for the screen industry in Australia, covering film and television along with new media and the games sector.
Mason said it was his goal for the industry to make it self-sustaining and was looking at schemes to attract investment and help business.
However he criticised “the sense of entitlement in this country, but also the sense of negativity”. He said he scored the health of the industry at seven marks out of ten.
Responding to a question posted on Mumbrella by a viewer of the live video hangout, Mason said the Producer Offset scheme brought in after the 10BA tax perk was scrapped had been successful across the board as production had increased.
However he said it had not been as helpful for feature films, as the 10BA tax write-off incentive had been much more advantageous to private equity.
“Something I’m really keen on is to try and attract investment,” he said. “I do not believe the government or Treasury would look at that kind of favourable alteration at this exact moment when they are trying very hard to contain costs.”
Mason said Screen Australia was working towards helping the industry to sustain itself.
He said: “I think its a moment now for Screen Australia to be seen as a part of the industry, to work with the industry, to best develop their careers and stories but recognising that we are also part of government. All the money we’re spending is coming from government. So they have aims and desires, culturally, creatively, capability building, and its working out where we fit with the film schools, with the people doing it themselves. But we can’t do it all for everybody.
“Our brief is to build an industry that is working towards sustaining itself,” he said. “So we’re obviously trying to bring new people through but as we bring them through we need them to get to a point where they can be more in charge of their own destiny and move on.”
- Screen Australia’s chair Glen Boreham announced today that he would stand down when his term expires at the end of June.
Megan Reynolds
A media organ as big as yours and you don’t have the facilities for a neck mic? 30 mins is too long to listen to ambience sound, struggling to heard every word. This is important stuff, Graeme is an important man and you put an item up that looks like Bathurst High School film class did it.
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Hi Bill,
Thanks for the feedback.
We learn and experiment all the time. Our video hangouts are still evolving (I think it’s fair to say the quality of the vision is now much better that we’ve mastered the ability to run our pro camera through hangouts rather than a webcam.
But we still learn as we go. And yes, at some point soon, we would probably look to move to lapel microphones away from the podcasting mic which can have mixed results.
And of course, we will also need to add complexity with an audio mixer at that point.
But hopefully we’re slowly improving…
All the best,
Tim – Mumbrella
So the CEO of Screen Australian concedes that the Producer Offset has not helped Australian feature films. It never was going too because the so called incentive for producer to attract private investors through the offset was fundamentally flawed and poorly analysed by its proponents. They blamed the GFC which is just absolute tosh. With economic recovery things will not get better.
The only private investors who have benefited have been third party lenders who have lent money at exorbitant interest/legal and establishing fees to cashflow the offset which is paid on completion. None of this money is put on the screen.
The only part of the feature film industry that has benefited have been those companies which have manipulated the Producer Offset to produce Hollywood films such as The Great Gatsby, Gods of Egypt. Lego Movie, all American films with the copyright and international distribution controlled by the likes of Warner Bros.
Television drama is controlled by Australian quota rules and in real terms there has been no increase in the hours of commercial free to air Australian drama produced, just more dramas of shorter duration. The increase is due to the extra money for drama given to the ABC by the Labor government five years ago.
So the end result has been a clumsy, expensive system which has cost the tax payer a lot more with no real tangible benefit for tellers of Australian stories while bestowing 40% subsidies to Hollywood films which deliver only short term employment, and no sharing in returns or profits. It is a level of manufacturing subsidy to Hollywood which would embarrass even General Motors, Ford and Toyota in Australia.
I would call this a stunning failure in government policy formulated by bureaucrats who had never really thought it all through but knew what story to spin to the Coalition in 2006 and then the Labor party. I think government can feel rightly pissed of by the result and Glen Boreham should leave now. Treasury should be reviewing the absolute inefficiency of this system. Support our industry by all means but just call a spade a spade and say it is a cultural industry with a cultural subsidy. If you stuck to this reality you could actually make more real Australian stories with more money and by cutting Hollywood out of the subsidy trough you would actually reduce subsidy for the sector overall.
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I’m sorry I can’t let it pass. The comment that “Our brief is to build an industry that is working towards sustaining itself. So we’re obviously trying to bring new people through but as we bring them through we need them to get to a point where they can be more in charge of their own destiny and move on blahjang blahjang is both hilarious and sad. Check out the state of the film sector 12 months from now to see if I’m wrong.And by the way the Board should all stand down. Their management of this sector of the Industry is a disgrace,
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Here here Ken…negativity and entitlement…well if successive Producers who have made utter dross for years would stop getting funding continuously…we might have an industry..repeat offenders and gatekeepers asleep at the wheel have wrecked this whole industry
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And Mumbrella 5DK3 and a light, get yourself a decent camera and a rode stereo mic ( I’m sure they will sponsor you…no excuses here, Vimeo is full of tutorials on how to do this..
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