Marketing challenge?
Universal knows it has a marketing challenge on its hands (the R rating and the Australian cast isn’t helping either).
The Hollywood Reporter thinks Australian underwater 3D thriller Sanctum won’t be an easy sell in the US. Read more »
2010: The good, the bad and the ugly in film
Encore was asked by Matt Riviera to provide its list of the Top 10 films released theatrically in Australia in 2010 and, even though our specialty as a publication is local productions, it was a pleasant surprise to look at our final list and see two Australian films (and one with a considerable amount of Aussie talent) that deserved a spot in it. It wasn’t a pat on the back for the local industry, but a genuine recognition of the power of their stories and the skill of its execution. Read more »
Aussie industry, ‘a dud’ – and so is its media coverage
Just last week we were discussing the cliched negativity of the mainstream media’s coverage of the Australian film industry, and today, The Herald Sun‘s Sally Morrell has confirmed our theories.
Morrell claims that, if it weren’t for Animal Kingdom, the industry would ‘again’ have been “exposed as a dud” this weekend, as the AFI Awards would have been “embarrassing”. Read more »
The Animal Kingdom show
Glenn Dunks was at the AFI Awards 2010, and although his favourite film didn’t win any, he will always remember the night Animal Kingdom ruled the world.
And with that the 2010 Samsung Mobile AFI Awards are over and done with for another year. David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom dominated the ceremony as everybody expected, but the refreshingly diverse roster of Australian films from 2010 brought about winners from period romances to action adventures, musicals to vampire horror films. Of the six projects nominated for Best Film only one – Julie Bertuccelli’s poetic The Tree, my personal favourite Australian film of 2010 – left empty handed. Read more »
The real ugly truth
Terrified of being dismissed as a bimbo – easy on the eye but with no real substance – this mindset has fostered an industry adept in producing relentlessly bleak, allegedly thought-provoking tales.
That’s what The Daily Telegraph‘s associate editor Sarrah Le Marquand said today in her column, entitled “The Ugly Truth of Australian Film”. She also talked about it on Seven’s Sunrise this morning.
Early December seems to be the only time of the year when the mainstream media pay any attention to the local film industry – courtesy of the AFI Awards – and the real ugly truth is, they can’t seem to stop printing the same old cliches about “depressing Australian films”, and perpetuating the audience’s already negative perception.
Australian film ‘blossoming’
I love how each generation has its own burst of energy. You just have to look at the youngsters and what great work they’re doing. Our cinematographer Adam Arkapaw is still in his 20s. Our editor Luke Doolan just turned 30 and was nominated for an Oscar for a short film. David’s only in his 30s; they’re all part of this clique of filmmakers who care about each other’s work. It’s a real community spirit; I love it.
Jackie Weaver agreeing with Vanity Fair‘s John Lopez, who feels “Australian film is blossoming right now”. Read more »
True brains make better content
In this guest post, Dylan Watson, co-producer of Movie Extra Webfest finalist project True Brains, talks about his experience working on a web series.
Movie Extra Webfest is the first competition of its kind in Australia. With the webseries being a fairly new format, we weren’t sure what to expect when we entered with our trailer True Brains. Now we’re in the final 15 out of around 100 original entries. Beyond that, we’re part of a competition urging Australians to put quality content online and see what happens. We’ve seen short films, trailers and teasers launch international careers thanks to viral media, YouTube links and Facebook. Any one of us could be the next big thing and all we need to do is indulge our little filmmaking fantasies (not just the clean ones) and hit “upload”. Read more »
There’s always a first time
MIPCOM took place over a month ago, but its effects can still be felt – particularly by those who had never been to an international market. James Boyce, on behalf of Dog Money World, shares his first experience with Encore.
It was not just any other Sunday afternoon in Sydney. Our hearts beating with excitement at the prospect, ‘this time next week, we could be touching down in France for MIPCOM’. Our decision was made, after months of working on our cross-media concept Crime Plays and a great response from a pitching panel, it seemed that this project would be the one that would take us to our first international market. Read more »
No filmmaking crisis, just a loss of focus
I absolutely refuse to accept the fact that any country in the world goes into a kind of filmmaking crisis. What happens is they lose confidence, they lose focus and the young filmmakers of any particular generation can very easily get lost in that mix. It’s happened in Italy, happened in France, happened in the UK during my lifetime.
Lord David Puttnam on the challenges for Australian filmmakers. Read more »
Development, no guarantee for success
Filmmaker/journalist James Ricketson finally got the answers he was looking for. In this guest post, he discusses the Aurora development program with Screen NSW.
It all began with a simple interview request: ‘Would love to talk with you or whoever the relevant person is at Screen NSW about the Aurora initiative.’ I had in mind an article about the Australian film industry. It would take nine months and dozens of emails and letters… but perhaps the following questions and answers will generate some dialogue, debate, amongst filmmakers about a topic relevant to all of us: How do we develop first class screenplays that can be produced to make films that Australian audiences want to see? Read more »