Re Oz Industry
On the two occasions I have pitched to the funders in Oz I have not managed to secure funding.It’s a hole for your energies and time because it’s such a lot of work for such a long-shot lottery. Some say “that’s just the way it is, you have to keep on applying, eventually it works.” I lost interest long ago.Worked in the industry as a techie for hire full time, then contract/part-time over many years.I know of others who did get funded (sometimes more than once), and didn’t finish their projects, or who expect to be funded because they always have, and yet when they succeed once again, have a cavalier attitude to their projects, “maybe I’ll finish it, maybe I won’t, what’s anyone going to do?” is something I was a bit stunned to hear last year.
Great projects get funded as well. I think we still should fund those cultural projects, and I support that need to have our own voices. We like that stuff.
But yes, wouldn’t it be great if we could have that vibrant local commercially successful machine that lets you live and work here. That can produce those films that will work in the world, but with the imprint of Oz there as well.
Re types of projects: Maybe we just need to re-invent.It’s time to take risks with what’s possible because  something new is needed to divert us.The stuff that has worked till now has become too “known”. It’s the way our media seem to be constructed, our audiences are nurtured to look for the newest etc. Consumerism. Why not take a Branson-style swipe at something new – bold, daring and low cost. With your finger on the pulse. Something that will capture, resonate, entertain and nourish/address real issues and therefore satisfy real needs at the same time.
But reality tv – what the!?When the reality of the world is as it is? ”Real” as branded in the US. “The real thing”? To me those shows seem to have a pretty good fit with the “individual uber alles” view of the world.But then there are those clever, inventive, creative, hard-ball playing yanks working in the industry – able to take risks and fail, because there is enough of a machine and population size to underwrite it all.
Those careful, frightened, cautious yankie execs, trying to pick a winner, and opting time and again for formulaic or “proven” material. Relying on the smaller players to take the risks on something new, then swooping in to scoop it up when it hits paydirt. Those mega-media corp board members, relying on the nervous execs to deliver, and trying to kill off the opposition with the FTA. There’s a reality tv show for you right there. Reality tv and Australians – are these markets created, or are they just there? Is there anything stopping Aussies from coming up with ideas that can take off like that? Can/do local execs take a risk on new ideas? What is the machinery? What are the barriers?Who pays? How is it tested.Surely it’s easy enough to do? Doesn’t need to cost too much, and not too hard to find guinea pig audiences?
In animation and tv, bring on the entrepreuneurs like Lili and Eddie. You guys are an inspiration as you navigate this path and share it with the rest of us.
Here’s my ol’ HS story once again.Helma Sanders said here in Adelaide in 1978, as she presented her films for the Festival, that she had paid for her actors by working in a factory, as well as having the money that the German govt takes at the box office – a percentage that goes into the local industry. But her message was “I have the impression here that if you don’t get funded, you don’t do anything”. “It’s not an independent filmmaking community, it’s a dependent filmmaking community.”
So yes fund the culture as necessary, and maybe work in your mother’s kitchen cupboard if you have to, to do that. And also yes encourage the entrepreuneurial spirit. Maybe it can be “and/and” rather than ”either/or”. Make great projects like “Spirited Away” that are creative masterpieces, can appeal across cultures whilst being rooted in a particular culture, and are bound to be a commercial success.
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Heard on the radio last night: The future of film … is movies delivered directly from the studios in US to loungerooms with home theatres, onto computer screens and large screens in cinemas around the world, via an online pipeline. No more video/CD/DVD to pirate. Goodbye processing labs, goodbye distributors in each country, which in Australia means goodbye to more $$s for funding local shows, as the distribution deal for a project is part of the package to get a project off the ground here.Intriguing demanding times. Entrepreuneur’s delite!