Developing, Supporting, and Sustaining a National Film Industry - Essay Example

Developing, Supporting, and Sustaining a National Film Industry Developing, Supporting, and Sustaining a National Film Industry Australian national cinema is primarily government-supported, with limited infrastructure, and with a small population. The Australian film industry has as a result faced inconsistent level of interest shown by domestic audience in locally produced films, which is one of the most persistent issues confronting the Australian film industry since its revival in the early 1970s. This inconsistency is evident from the box office results which showed that since 1995, the local box offices taken by homegrown has rarely gone beyond five percent. Ginnane (2009) suggests that the key to a successful film industry and ample percentage of the Australian box office (minimum of 10%) is the number of titles totaling to more than five million dollars box office every year. To attain this, it is fundamental for domestic filmmakers to uphold a trend of stable growth to bring about some measure of economic self sufficiency in the domestic film industry. Various issues are associated with developing, supporting and sustaining a national film industry. This essay will focus on these issues in the context of the Australian film industry. In order to develop a large scale national film production, a country needs to secure a secure domestic distribution base that has well developed exhibition circuits. Litwak (2003) suggested that the major impediment facing most filmmakers is how to secure distribution for their motion pictures. Without a secure distribution, the likelihood of a profitable return on investment in film production is nonexistent. O’Reagan (1996) argued that Australian cinema needs to interest different agents such as cinema marketers, producers and critics so as to translate the purposes and ends of the Australian films. Distributing films is one of the challenges that most filmmakers face once a film has been completed. Finding an audience locally and internationally can be resolved by a secure distribution. The objectives of the federal regulatory and financial support in Australia have always been strengthened by a cultural as well as a commercial mandate. Cones (2010) points out that in case a film successfully acquires a distributor, the producers makes every efforst to cooperate with the distributor to come up with the most favorable release pattern in all pertinent constraints. The scope of distribution progressively expands, adding theaters and cities to meet demand as the film meets is audience base. This means that a country needs to secure a domestic distribution base for developing, supporting and sustaining a national film industry. The second most important aspect in developing, supporting and sustaining a national film industry is to understand people viewing habits, the kind of movies that they want to view. The Marketing Branch of the Australian Film Commission (1999) highlighted that it did not find as much support for alternative films or specialist as it did few years ago. According to the commission, the younger generation who were used to start off being involved with those alternative films at the university level no longer frequented foreign movies any longer and they also preferred the bigger films. A survey conducted by Roy Morgan Research (2010) on Australian films, documentaries and fictional television revealed that fiction television viewership is driven by strong existing personal preferences and passive factors showing dependable repeat viewership. Most of the Australians experienced high levels of satisfaction with the Australian screen content nonetheless they did not enjoy screen content because of aspects related with badly written and unbelievable writing and also slow, boring and non entertainment across documentary formats, feature films and television fiction. O’ Reagan (1996) argued that Australian cinema- like those of other countries- is more effectively understood as a set of processes rather than as a fundamental nature. Film making should thus be apprehended as a set of social and discursive practices and not a neutral collection of facts. In developing, supporting and sustaining a national film industry, the industry has to be seen as a dynamic and many-sided entity. Film workers, film critics, policy audiences and policy writers all take part in shaping the possible manners in which any country film can be understood. Film making thus requires numerous actors unlike the small population in Australian national cinema. Australia needs to create an audience for more local films as opposed to imported foreign films. Films around the world feel the sting of the basic film making fact; it costs money to make movies. Normally, it costs a lot of money, regardless of the level of production value. Australian national cinema is not different. Since the 1970s, the federal government in Australia has used an array of policy instruments to make sure that a diverse slate of production is upheld- including tax incentives, direct and regulating the broadcast of the content produced in the country (Collins & Davis, 2004). Generally, Australian national cinema is primarily government-supported The local films in Australia are financed by Australian Film Finance Corporation (AFFC). The AFFC is basically commercially orientated and considers deal aspects such as crew, cast, marketing, distribution, script and budget in assessing proposals for possible financial support (Collins & Davis, 2004). To fund projects, the AFFC needs market interest evidence to a specified amount which varies depending on the budget of the film in the form of either a distribution or pre-sale guarantee. Nonetheless, have these elements in place doesn’t automatically gain funding. This has led controversial organization funding decisions. Investments by Australian exhibitors and distributors seldom afford the full production cost and thus very few Australian films are made without the government assistance. This has made most of film production in Australia to be government controlled. The Gonski report discovered that international distribution guarantees and international pre-sales are therefore important to assist in raising money for production and maximizing the potential for the programme to return its costs to investors. Curtis & Gray (1996) pointed out it is unlikely that the Australian film industry will ever be self funding although the country continues to lose its key talent to Hollywood. Achieving funding for an Australian film has become increasingly complex and some films are made despite failing to attain money from AFFC. There is need for more foreign investment to ensure that the film industries prosper (Collins & Davis, 2004). There is also need to account for downstream viewing which assumes a distribution course from cinema to DVD to television-this is more characteristic of the film industry in the western countries than it is of the Australian industry. Hollywood cinemas dominate most of the national and international market and this poses a challenge for the Australian film industry, they are also a point of reference for most national cinemas. Most financial and regulatory frameworks that offer support for the local industry have changed as a response to the challenges brought about by the western countries. However it does not follow that the engagement of the audience with what people loosely term as the Australian film should be understood through the industrial structure that characterizes most cinemas in Hollywood. The Australian national cinema has diversifies across numerous media platforms. It has changed through financial, institutional and regulatory support into a quite particular ecology and economy and this requires to be viewed in the government reporting structure. FitzSimons (2002) offered a summary of the numerous institutional and regulatory changes that have been set up in the film industry since the eighties and how the changes have influenced the practices of documentary distribution, production and exhibition. One of the main changes that FitzSimons (2002) suggested took place in 1998 and is related to the establishing of Film Australia Corporation and the Film Finance Corporation (FFC). Before 1988, the independent documentary sector largely produced content which the government involved in directly or through the Australian Film Commission (Fitzsimon, 2002). Most independent documentary producers caused a major problem of limited chances for the distribution. The statistic released by the Australian Film Commission efficiently consigned the domestic film industry to nothingness. Although the commission spent a lot of money in making movies, Australian audiences managed to all but ignore locally produced movies. The films produced in the country produced less than 1.3% of the box office roll-over prize which was a low record proportion (Ginnane, 2009). Australia companies do not produce great movies hence the low record proportion. Great national cinemas produce more than just outstanding films- they produce audiences and movies. Most countries with great national cinemas like France, US, Korea produce films whose people attendance inspire and impress. In the mid 70s, Australia established a film production funding which raised people expectation about the movies produced (Ginnane, 2009). People lacked the chance to tell their own stories because after 30 years of government production subsidies, the assumption that supply normally creates its own demand proved wrong. In Australia, people like to watch movies, however they do it in a manner that has almost no connection to the national agendas. This catastrophe can be solved by increasing the Australian government subsidies for film production. The Australian films have failed to find a large audience and this calls for an increased self reflective responsive that the film industry typically handles (Ginnane, 2009). In other countries the kind of box office figure experienced in Australia normally prompt a spate of policy initiatives and inquiries designed to boost the number of people watching the movies. More than five years ago, the Canadian film industry found itself under similar circumstances, with less than two percent of the local generated by locally produced movies. The main funding agency, Telefilm, decided to improve the situation by initially identifying a particular growth target and also sought to reassure the local film industry of its commitment. The figure was set as a fundamental criterion for assessing its own effectiveness. This was a practical way of ensuring that the film industry did not experience such low figures again in the future. Nonetheless, the Australian film funding agencies have rarely become apprehensive of the low interest in the local cinema. The Australian Film Commission is responsible for development policies of the audience and downplays the importance of box office as a measure of the success of the film industry. This has capably diminished the role of the commission (Kuhn, 2009). The AFC has pointed out the inadequacies of box office as a measure of the film industry. The AFC argued that box office cannot tell people whether a film has generated profit or is a critical triumph. There are apparent limitations in attempting to comprehend film audiences on the basis of these yearly delivered figures. Audiences normally opt to view films as any amount of sales figures which the AFC should also follow (Collins & Davis, 2004) In developing, supporting and sustaining a national film industry, the national cinema also has to function as an object of knowledge. It has to be put into discourse; narrated, discursively represented by archives, verbal associations, texts and words. The Australian cinema can also be turned into a natural entity and a social bond in a bid to endow it with meaning and importance. The national cinema poses the relation between the nation and local cinema, between society and state as a knowledge category. Any national cinema has diverse agents and thus it needs to organize the connections between themselves and things so that the agents can generate ways of reading, knowing and appreciating these genres, films, things, movements and histories. The national cinema has to be expansively produced (Fischer, 2009). It has to be shaped by different manners in which the public come to know about it through the agents who are concerned with it. It also has to be a domain in which different knowledge is produced and brought into relation-this entails knowledge about production approaches, distribution and exhibition expertise, taste cultures and markets, political investment, political development as well as significant protocols that are developed by cultural critics (Kuhn, 2009). Australian national cinema should interest numerous agents. The cinema marketers, producers and critics need to invite these agents so as to translate their ends and purposes through the film industry, which entails shaping it for their own ends. Any national cinema is an extensive social structure (Kuhn, 2009). The cinemas entertain people in numerous ways; film makers, audiences, policy makers and critics routinely sociologize the cinema world. The Australian cinema connects, detaches, celebrates and excoriates people. According to Frow (2005) it is a means of transmitting cultural values and thus the national cinema is important to activists, government as well as critics alike because of its capability to mediate in social life ways. Australian national cinema or any national cinema is not a separate integrated object but a series of diverse objects which are realized differently. In order to develop, support and sustain a national film industry, the national cinema has to be taken as a descriptive instrument for bringing together diverse cinemas produced in the country. References Collins, F & Davis, T 2004, Australian Cinema After Mabo, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne. Cones, J 2010, Business Plans for Filmmakers, Illinois, Southern Illinois University Press Curtis, R. & Gray, C. 1996. Get the Picture: Essential Data on Australian Film, Television, Video and New media, Sydney; Australian Film Commission. Fischer, L, (ed.) 2009, ‘Out of the Past’, Cinema Journal, 49 (1): 128–97. FitzSimons, T 2002, ‘Accords, Slates, Slots, Strands and Series: Australian Television Takes on Independent Documentary’, Metro Magazine, 129, 172–83. Frow, J 2005, ‘Australian Cultural Studies: Theory Story, History’, Australian Humanities Review, no. 37, Ginnane, A. I 2009, ‘Where are We Now? The Australian Film Industry in Mid-2009’, Metro Magazine, no. 161, June, pp. 130–33. Kuhn, A 2009, ‘Screen and Screen Theorizing Today’, Screen, 50(1), 1–12 Litwak, M. 2003. Distribution and the Indie Filmmaker, viewed 31 October 2011, http://www.marklitwak.com/articles/film/indie_filmmaker.html O’ Reagan, T 1996, Australian National Cinema (National Cinemas), Routledge Read More