The screen industry should run on ingenuity, not politics
Popcorn Taxi’s Chris Murray suggests a taxi service and pie van could keep the industry moving – an industry that should be founded on ingenuity and creativity rather than politics.
It would seem, based on serial offenders to the numerous blogs in and around the Australian Film Industry, that as a generalisation, filmmakers have a lot of time on their hands.
Unless you’ve succumbed to the evils of commercial TV, or worse still, commercials themselves, you’ll be one of the countless many touting their writing/directing abilities to funding bodies as the 120-page screenplay to your feature film Independent-genre-feature-with-commercial-potential-that-still-adheres-to-a-distinctly-Australian-sensibility sits atop a desk (or indeed buried under numerous coffee rings) in every Govt department.
You spend most of your time scouring the ‘interwebs’ for news of what jargon is being sprouted at industry workshops and how the producer offset is that one step closer to being as easy to negotiate as driving in India.
Fear not, for we have a cunning stunt that surely will have the industry again thriving, and hopefully minted.
‘Screen Workers Combined.’ This is a small fleet of taxis (owned by The Writer’s and Director’s Guilds, with a small ‘Silver Service’ style fleet for SPAA members) which keeps scribes and creatives engaged in the greater community where the ‘real stories’ are to be found, plus earning everyone a quid.
Imagine it – potential audiences usually allergic to Australian Films (unless it has a dog, a bogan or a combination of the two driving a ute) are now guaranteed to grab a lift with an industry professional who literally has a script under the seat and will pitch it en-route. Punters can thus be immediately fueling the film industry at ground level while also offering advice and feedback. The funding bodies must use these cabs exclusively among their busy schedules; thus inadvertently funding prospective projects first-hand as they pop off to an important meeting or business lunch. In fact, the entire public service could be helping the arts with no middle management.
Of course, I jest. As such an idea would come under too much fire from those with bad driving records and poor eyesight whom are unable to partake in this ingenious revenue model. The alternative here would be a fleet of permanently parked ‘pie and peas’ caravans where visiting VIPs, highly paid actors and off-shore producers can purchase a tasty snack from a film scribe and enjoy the view while also being pitched the ‘next-big-thing’ – all the while safe in the knowledge that it’s pretty hard for anyone to actually get out of the caravan in a hurry (locked from the outside) so a fast escape is easily achieved if need be.
In all seriousness, if there’s a problem there’s usually an answer, or at least an idea. The trick is to be open to thinking about a solution to industry problems that doesn’t require mountains of red tape, jargon, double-meaning and outdated methodology applied at the speed at which a Koala does aerobics to help and support an industry that is founded on ingenuity and creativity, not politics.
It is, however, a ‘business’ and thus if the people aren’t consuming your product (and let’s face it – they are always right), perhaps it’s a good idea to try and improve it and experiment a little more. The artistic nature of the film should come from within regardless; not be the excuse for failure of incorrect investment or poor support at distribution and exhibition level. An incentive for local exhibitors to actually screen a smaller Australian product over another film involving a talking cat, may also be another idea. I’m not talking an ‘Aussie quota’ – no way – just an incentive so that exhibitors feel less reluctant to take a punt in a dangerously fickle world.
But hey – what the fuck would I know?
Chris Murray is the Creative Director of Popcorn Taxi.
October 5th, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Comments
6 Oct 11
10:01 AM
Chris- great idea, how is it going to evolve into a reality? I often scratch my head and wonder why all the funding bodies and SA aren’t combining to create an exclusive VOD platform for Australian productions and embracing a range of other business models that could help develop obvious talent. We simply can’t afford to have the current attrition rate of talented people struggling to build careers giving up or moving overseas. Meanwhile we keep shoving students into film schools, racking up massive debts hoping they will find a career in an industry that seems to have been built around cliques. Post Production businesses are being constantly dumbed down as agencies force filmmakers to trim their budgets to absurd levels..the flow on effect being highly skilled people with an enormous amount of knowledge and talent are finding it increasingly difficult to survive in this industry. What will this industry look like in ten years time if we keep this up? The brain drain and cynical nepotism is really doing lasting damage.
6 Oct 11
12:16 PM
Nice article and I actually really like the taxi idea. It’s hard enough to get any feedback from the people who make the decisions at Gov funding bodies. Trapping a writer in a cab with the bureaucrat who turned down their life’s work would definitely make for some good conflict (could there be a screenplay in this!?)
But honestly, if I could have one thing change about Australia’s funding bodies it would be 100 times more transparency. Let’s see what projects are being picked up and turned down. Let’s see which taxpayer-funded executive is giving the greenlight to some of the rubbish that get’s funded and produced.
And let’s see a better job done by ScreenAus and the State bodies at fostering young talent. The BBC has excellent programs where they’ll mentor young writers and then help the best of the group move straight into a job. All ScreenAus does is hire the odd American producer/director/writer to come and do a talk (about something you could easily read for free online or in a book) and then ask us to pay $250 for the privilege of attending.
The ABC is a taxpayer funded network. ScreenAus and the other funding bodies are taxpayer funded. How about these two start working together a bit more. Have one of the ABC’s many channels (ABC3 doesn’t even get used after 9pm or so) screen Aussie films that ScreenAus has funded. Run competitions or workshops to find new talent for current ABC shows.
There’s so much that could be done that isn’t being done. And that’s why there is so much resentment to a lot of those ‘making the decisions.’ We need more transparency and more opportunities from them. Considering we all pay a bit of their salary, it shouldn’t be too much to ask.
6 Oct 11
9:16 PM
“Some Australians talk big but actually think small, and politicians may be the worst offenders. They are often reluctant to get out in front in policymaking—on climate change, for instance—preferring to follow what bigger countries do. In the quest for a carbon policy, both the main parties have chopped and changed their minds, and their leaders, leaving voters divided and bemused. There can be little doubt that if America could come to a decision on the topic, Australia would soon follow suit.”
“None of this will get Australians to take pride in their achievements and build on them. Better themes for politicians would be their plans to develop first-class universities, nourish the arts, promote urban design and stimulate new industries in anything from alternative energy to desalinating water. All these are under way, but few are surging ahead. Though the country’s best-known building is an opera house, for example, the arts have yet to receive as much official patronage as they deserve. However, the most useful policy to pursue would be education, especially tertiary education. Australia’s universities, like its wine, are decent and dependable, but seldom excellent. Yet educated workers are essential for an economy competitive in services as well as minerals. First, however, Aussies need a bit more self-belief. After that perhaps will come the zest and confidence of an Antipodean California.”
Interesting article from the Economist Magazine http://www.economist.com/node/18744197
Now all we have to do is wait for is negative little Tony Abbott to turn the screw and take us back to the 1950′s when he becomes PM and it will be mission complete on a golden opportunity in Australian history lost because all we could do was talk big and think small. Bit of a shame really…when all we had to do is have a little self belief and create the kind of country we want to live in..not the kind our inept small minded politicians seem hell bent on carving out. Its our culture and its our industry and its up to all of us to turn it into what WE want not THEM.
Lets have some leadership and vision… pretty please.
RIP Steve Jobs.
7 Oct 11
8:16 PM
Bollocks!
Right now it feeds on stupidity – bullshit & arrogance.
30 Jan 12
9:59 AM
Bollocks! Bullshit and Arrogance
Well, that’s a title for a film right there.
B.B&A Productions.
30 Jan 12
8:23 PM
Like your initiave – putting yourself out there Richard Moss – however suggest in this increasing www age a contact email is a must?
2 Feb 12
1:59 PM
I have felt for some time that the independent film makers, I include actors, writers, directors and all technical crew by the way, (in this collaborative process we are all film makers) hold the key to that locked door behind which lurks the solution to the problems of low volume and the lack of funding. In many ways we are our own enemy in the struggle to develop an industry, a struggle which has been going on for all the forty odd years of my involvement and was going on long before that.
I have enjoyed a number of successes and I have suffered very dearly from as many losses. I have listened to voices that were, in their day, the voices of hope for a better future for Australian and New Zealand film making. The usual way to react to such a statement as the one I have just written (if one reacts at all) is to say “Oh well, that was then this is now” but I urge you to believe me when I say that what was said then is exactly what is being said today. A new flock of sheep, still bleating the old familiar chorus, and old rams like myself occasionally managing to be heard, perhaps by fewer and fewer of the flock.
The point of this Ovine reference, is to focus upon the fact that scattered amongst the flock are a number of young and old bleaters, or voices, that are worth cutting out and mustering. The smaller flock will still be heard to bleat, but with a sweet harmony, one with enough substance to develop into a symphony.
We, the film makers, have the talent and the drive, and either the means of production, or at least access to it. It does not take the entire fraternity /sorority of film makers to take up arms and begin production, it simply requires a few like minded individuals who are prepared, like the desperate king in Bosworth field, to set themselves upon the cast and stand the hazard of the die. Richard was defeated of course, but we, dismounted by the forces of selection and funding, will have a better chance of fighting to victory. We must be prepared to stand together and to take the risk together, we must work cheaply and in some cases for no money at all, in order to stamp out productions that will return funds for the common cause. Business is all about risk, greedy profit taking is all about no risk, that is why the film (Movie) giants have stalled and impeded the process for independents, that’s why funding organisations have closed the doors and windows to all but an anointed few, and it is the reason that, not all by any means, but a smug handful of wealthy post production operators refuse to cut a deal below their established fee structure.
Education makes money, that’s why we educate thousands of young potentially talented film makers every year, only to release them into a dead market, a waste land from which many will flee to the more active markets overseas. Don’t mind about it though, the education was paid for and the college is full again this year. We may not be known for our film making , but we will always be well known for our ex patriot talent.
2 Feb 12
5:03 PM
Great having you here Richard. You’re obviously an experienced talent in our industry, with a great understanding of its strengths and weaknesses.
It’s a bit off putting to know the same issues we complain about now (not enough films being made, the films that are made often stink) were the issues facing the industry 40 years ago.
If anything it gives us all motivation to stop complaining and to start doing. If Screen Aus want to give millions for subpar scripts like ‘A Few Best Men’ there is nothing we can do about it. But anyone can make their our own films, with their own funding, and maybe that is the key to driving up the quality of our industry.
2 Feb 12
6:20 PM
@ RM.
Or we do what increasing numbers of us are doing in this www era – forget this dysfuctional Soviet era mindset of local filmaking & move offshore.
2 Feb 12
11:32 PM
As a matter of fact, the arts flourished in the Soviet Union, I wish we were half so fortunate as they were in that area. We could strive to make our combined arts just as rich if we cared to form an alliance and work toward it. Here in Australia we would have the advantage of (within reason) pleasing ourselves what we produced, unencumbered as we are by the need to placate the Kremlin or to assure success by producing propaganda material flattering to the armed forces and the state. Success with the model I am suggesting, could turn the arts funding on its head by attracting investors, rather than having to beg and plead for their attentions. Truly, this is what “United Artists” should be all about.
3 Feb 12
12:08 AM
@ Brian
Thank you for your warm welcome. The best example that I can recall, in support of your last sentence, is this. I was present at a meeting of film makers, writers, television producers and theatre directors in Auckland NZ more than 30 years ago, where the conversation was exactly as we are having here, regarding the lack of funding, the lack of real scripts and the number of artists constantly out of work because of the low rate of production. We had an added problem in those days, one which has not entirely gone away. The powers that were at the time, considered that anyone who came from England and could quote the names of half a dozen big people in the British industry, was an automatic candidate for employment in the business. We used to call this phenomenon “Ra Ra Vanessa Redgrave” not because we had anything against that wonderful actress or any of her incredible family of artists, but in acknowledgement of those who would drop famous British theatre names in order to get work . I can remember when three quarters of the drama production and light entertainment staff in NZ radio and television were Brits. I digress. At this meeting I brought up my ideas regarding independent film making (don’t overlook the fact that I was 30 years younger then) and used as an example, the incredible volume of work turned out by John Wayne in the US when he had formed his own film company and worked on a shoe string budget to produce a host of entertaining westerns. I was met with a roar of laughter and several bad puns, before being told that the industry was looking towards a future filled with more promise than a bunch of sloppy westerns with poorly worded and moralising scripts. I understood their wish to do better, but where were the people doing as well? Of course we don’t want to make cheap westerns, but the majority of people in the US at that time were happy to pay a few cents to go watch them. An industry was allowed to grow from such effort. I think I have answered you also WWIP, we no more wish to copy John Wayne’s westerns, than we do to copy the Soviet Union, but their is much to be learned from both.
4 Feb 12
7:56 AM
Point I was trying too make in reference to Soviet era filmmaking is that SA & their multitude of State offshoots simply can’t – don’t – or won’t – understand that the primary function of this industries is to provide “entertainment”.
5 Feb 12
9:16 PM
I am with you now. I don’t know the specifics, but I can certainly understand the problem, which seems always to have been with us.
Arts Funding groups and/or committees are frequently in a quandry about the question of art versus entertainment.
Pure entertainment is a lowly order in their high blown minds, they fail to understand that Mozart, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini were in no such dilemma concerning Opera. Ibsen, de Vega and Shakespeare were in no doubt concerning theatre, Becker, Bertolucci and Fellini were in no doubt either, but funding groups, culture vultures and art baggers, all seem to suffer from a shocking schizoid dichotomy where the art of entertainment is concerned.
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