East Asian Co-Production in Film Industry - Research Paper Example

 East Asian Co-Production in Film Industry Introduction: overview to Co-Production in East Asia’s Film Industry The recent years have seen popular culture production in East Asia undergo various challenges due to the emergence of a system that has been instrumental in organizing and relocating production, distributing, and consumption of cultural products on a limited regional scale. As a result of being freed from the constraints of associated with autonomous national economies, it is now evident that popular culture has developed a transnational character that can cater for multinational audiences. `By use of insights drawn across a variety of academic disciplines, the authors of this model essay considers the implications of a region-wide appropriation under cultural formulas as well as the styles in the production of comic, movies, animations, and music. More thoughts will be directed investigating the regional economies of transcultural production, with the mindset of cultural imaginaries in the context of intensive regional circulation of both images and goods. Various scholarships have been offered on popular culture that is conventionally exploring the meaning of texts. This has resulted in popular culture co-productions and collaborations in East Asia, drawing on empirical studies of cultural industries in Korea, Japan, Indonesia, and Philippines (Yau, 2003). This has consequently employed the usage of regional framework in order to analyze the consequences of collaboration and co-production. Tracing East Asia’s Roots in Film Making In Asia, particularly East Asia, the rapid growth of creative industry has induced severe shortage of talented professional working force that includes the director, producer, and the scripter. The search to secure human capital is very significant to the success in this highly competitive field of creativity and artistry. However, the structure and dynamics of human capital development in this creative industry is yet to win full understanding of its assessors in matters of provision of efficient programs meant to accelerate human capital development. The resultant lack of understanding is caused by the complexity of work, as well as the fact that fostering creative talent requires relatively longer time that the rest of non-knowledge intensive industries (Chua, 2004). Japan is currently the nation under considerable critical spotlight in the continuing debate on the Asia imaginary. Japan’s long history of cultural and economic hexegony in the region has always been challenged by Korea and China as from early 1990s. The eagerness of Japan to emulate Asia after the incident of Second World War has manifested majorly in economic terms, in the realm of popular culture (Yau, 2003). Japan’s adoption of Asia’s images and cultural otherness, tends to constitute another center of gravity in the composite interplay of Japan’s post war identity crises coupled with a nostalgic yearning for Asia’s compatibility. Japan hopes that by so doing it will likely project its longing for lost dreams. Sources have confirmed that the cultural traffic in most of the East Asian nations does not just happen on a one-way street. The National and the Regional Co-production in East Asian Cinemas Cinema, so far, is the only key arena of cultural production in East Asian region that involves various localities of both production and consumption. The global success of the current East Asia films plus the internationalization of the region’s film industries has posed a heated discussion in academic scope in the last few years. With the exclusion of Japan, cinema took root in Asia at a time when various Asian states were besieged by grave domestic crises and foreign invasions. This looming darkness and uncertainty prompted the development of both national and local cinemas that later coincided with Japan’s rise to a main imperial power in the whole region. For instance, Japan’s annexation of Korea (1910), colonization of Taiwan in 1895, and full-invasion of China in 1937 formed the darkest moments of this concept of ``shared history’ ’of these countries (Zhang, 2004) . This left behind gory wounds of in the respective national psyches. The deepening incorporation of regional markets, intra-/inter-regional collaborations, and consolidation of industry structure have led to the creation of unprecedented occasion meant for the reconfiguration of these cultural pillars. The later portion of shared history delineates the political sensitive yet economically and culturally multipurpose space in which a variety OF films are produced, distributed, and consumed wholesomely. The puzzling question in the minds of many films analysists is that: a bustle of co-production treaties have been signed between Asian nations in the recent years, but with motive and necessity do they assist in the advancement of film life in the region? Global co-productions are a not a new phenomenon seen in East Asia. This is evidently seen in the way China and some South-Korean nations have co-producing for a long time. Over the past decade, East Asian countries such as Korea, China, Japan, and Hong Kong have consistently worked together (Richie, 2005). The perfect example of how East Asian formula operates is in the way romantic comedy named My Ex-Wife’s Wedding that had its world première at 2013’s Pusan International Film Festival. Here, different co-producers: Hong Kong’s Sun dream Motion Pictures, Beijing-based Polybona, and Korea’s iHQ, were involved. These co-producers raised and contributed finance, distribution, and talent in its respective territory. This rationale was adopted to minimize risk and expand the film market. Just like in majority of pan-Asian co-productions, the film was filmed in Chinese since China is the biggest potential market. Nevertheless, until recent times, none of these co-productions was produced under official treaties. In the past decade, Asian government officials took time and discussed agreements at both regional and national level. The figure of treaties is slowly escalating, where China and Singapore are recognized to be the most signees. The significant note is that there are pros and cons of co—production both within and outside the framework of every agreement. This also formed the major ground of debate at the year’s PIFF and the con-current event, Asian Film Policy Forum (formed by the Busan Film Commission [BFC] and Asian Film Commissions Network [AFCNet]. The likely advantage of these treaties is that enable producers to gain access to incentives and subsidies, now that more are being signed with the main sources of soft money in New Zealand, Australia and Europe. Co-producers are mandated with the task of choosing their respective partners well and ensure that the sharing ratios of benefits to each partner are beneficial. They should further allow a lot of time since there is a lot of paperwork and legal work involved during the whole process. Apart from Singapore, multiple nations have consecutively introduced subsidies. For instance, the Korean Film Council makes equity investments in qualifying projects; whist the Taipei Film Commission and Taiwan’s Government Information Office both award grants. Of key to note is that each organization has its own laid down requirements concerning local talent and content, meaning that bilateral treaties could make it easier to supply. Japan, which is among Asia’s more insular territories, has not signed any treaties but still considers doing so in the near future. Citing the chairperson of Japan Film Commission, JFC, ``Japan’s film industry has focused more on the domestic market, thereby having a low level of interest in domestic co-production. However, due to the changing nature of the industry, the Japanese government is eventually appreciating the significance of agreements at national level. Smaller countries, including Malaysia have started embracing the ignition of treaties. This is because of the coming of the Pinewood studios to Malaysia prompting the necessity for official co-productions (Iwabuchi & Chua, 2008). Conclusion Delegates drawn across the entire East Asia region have met and discussed the challenges facing Asia with regard to co-production whose level is low compared to that of Europe. This may be attributed to the huge differences in the size of nations, living standards, and costs as well. It is notable evidence that less developed nations experience rising costs especially when co-producing with an already developed nation. The level can escalate so high that it could cancel out the investment brought by the richer partnering nation. Resultantly, the poorer country may end up gaining a smaller equity stake in the production lest the purchasing power parity is taken into consideration (Zhang, 2004). Looking at the practical filmmaking, co-productions should only happen only when they make creative sense. To coin this, Korea and Japan have been engaging into multiple co-productions to attempt and draw audiences in both territories, yet only 10 % have been a box office hit in the two markets. References Zhang, Yingjin. (2004). Chinese National Cinema, New York and London: Routledge. Yau, Kinnia Shuk-ting. (2003). “Shaws’ Japanese Collaboration and Competition as Seen Through the Asian Film Festival Evolution,” in Wang Ain-ling (ed.), The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Services Department, 279–91. Richie, Donald. (2005). A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, revised edition, Tokyo, New York, and London: Kodansha International. Stringer, Julian and Chi-Yun Shin (eds) (2005) New Korean Cinema, New York: New York University Press. Iwabuchi, Koichi and Chua Beng Huat (eds). (2008). East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chua Beng-huat. (2004). “Conceptualising an East Asian Popular Culture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, 200–21. Read More