Caught the rather excellent interview with the Spierig Brothers in the Main Theatre earlier today. I won't go into a whole lot of detail, but one thing they said really stood out. I'm paraphrasing, I'm sure, but the idea was that making Australian films for Australian audiences makes no commercial sense because of the relatively small size of the Australian market. (I'd also add that given the current antipathy the general Aussie public has towards Australian films it makes even less sense). Michael further suggested that if we film-makers are serious about making decent money we need to look seriously at moving to LA.
This makes sense to me, and yet I know it causes problems for AFTRS and, more specifically, the tax-payer who funds us - that money is supposed to be re-paid with the creation of a viable and sustainable Australian film industry, it's not supposed to be recouped out of whatever the Hollywood returnee spends in the pub on his visit home at Christmas. It's also supposed to go towards the creation of Australian work that supports and inhabits Australian culture, since a culture is in many ways defined by the stories it tells itself and others.
These aims may not be compatible with each other, and they may not be achievable on a commercial level.
I have a little perspective to add.
Those of you who've met me will know that I'm Irish.
Ireland is a market roughly the size of greater Sydney. Like Australia we love our cinema, last time I looked we had the biggest cinema-going public by head of population in Europe. We make a good number of features every year, and we have the likes of Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan as local heavyweights, along with John Boorman (who has lived in Ireland since the 70s) and some promising newcomers.Film funding in Ireland is always contentious, and Irish films tend not to do well. Unless they are created for a wider market, from Michael Collins which was led by Neil Jordan and driven by Irish creativity while supported by Hollywood money, and The Commitments which had a similar success story - a substantial Irish story that rang true and became part of Irish culture - to the utterly dreadful Far & Away, with their awful accents and worse script, that was roundly ridiculed in Ireland, and became a by-word for all that is wrong with "Irish film".
In terms of indigenous cultural content Ireland has focused in recent years on micro-budget productions. This is fine, your film's not going to lose more than a hundred grand or so, and if it turns out like "Once", which shot for €100,000 and ended up winning Glen Hansard an Oscar for best song, you're flying. This is not, however, going to support an industry long-term.
In terms of pure production, Ireland has a similar story to Australia, and more specifically Sydney, as far as I can tell. Much of Braveheart was shot in Ireland, and the entire opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan was shot on a beach in Co. Wexford, (both with the co-operation of the Irish Army). Even turkeys like King Arthur and Reign of Fire provided valuable work and training, and the Irish gained a reputation for quality work. We also offered attractive tax breaks for incoming productions (plus we were English-speaking and you could fly in direct from London, New York, Boston and Chicago).
Then... well, our highly trained and experienced crew became more and more expensive as the cost of living went up during the boom times. Accommodation (and this is relevant to Australia, I believe, hotel rooms are very pricey here, and very ordinary at times too) became expensive, and the government, seeing an opportunity to profit from the "booming" film industry, reduced the tax breaks. So Hollywood productions went elsewhere. The Czech Republic did very well for a while, offering cheap costs and educated technicians, and the Irish industry found itself supported by HBO's The Tudors and the odd Hollywood rom-com. Is there a parallel here with Sydney post-Matrix? You'll have to tell me.
Back to my main point. Irish films, made by Irish film-makers, of interest to the Irish, very rarely do any business anywhere else, and because the Irish market is so small, that means budgets have to stay very low indeed. Irish film-makers, if they want to make a bigger film, have to look at wider market appeal. And that's hard - American audiences are going to find it difficult to identify with a contemporary Irish story. Even the huge Irish-American population in North America don't have the same feeling of Irishness as the Irish at home, and want either films about the put-upon heroic IRA man (Prayer for the Dying, Richard Gere's horrendous "Irishman" in the Day of the Jackal remake), or Finian's Rainbow, neither of which engage with an Irish audience nor, more importantly given the remit given the funding bodies, offer any kind of enhancement or even relevance to Irish culture.
In fact, Irish film funding, especially when it came to Hollywood productions, became more a function of the tourism industry. It was felt that films were more useful in attracting American tourist dollars than anything else, and this of course led to... well, poor films. We even ended up coining a term for this kind of product: "Oirish".
So I'm wondering: Can we even hope to create an Australian film industry making commercially viable films telling relevant and engaging Australian stories?
God, I hope so. I love Sydney, I'd hate to think I'll have to move to LA.
Would love your thoughts.