The Australian Filmmaker

July is a big month here in Melbourne. Of course Cannes has been and gone - What a God awful market this year; hedge funds disappearing, sales agents disappearing, nobody buying much and 8 euros for a cup of coffee.Few great nights - getting chucked out of the Century Club (after arriving via the beach) was interesting “Oh didn’t know one had to be a member”.  And I’m not sure what 250 Australians were doing in Cannes with two short films in competition and that’s all. Guess we were all hoping for that chance meeting with some Scandanavian Prince wanting to make a movie in the outback…

Our horror movie, The Gates Of Hell, just got a knock-out review on aint it cool.com and it will be opening the notorious MUFF festival in Melbourne later in the year - check out the design, the photography and the directing - good ole horror freakin em out down under. North American rights still available!

But the big news here is the amalgamation of the three major film agencies - The Film Finance Corporation, The Film Commission and Film Australia. Good that they are pooling resources, but we sure don’t want to end up with some amorphous. impenetrable quazzie studio run by beaurocrats. Here is a great opportunity to start building a really strong industry here - most of their services can be outsourced, and should be - the rumour is that most of the folks who actually know something are either not being re-appointed or are leaving; sure, new blood is important, but mix it with experience and skill and give the producers some credit - it is they who have their bums on the line when the going gets tough, not the salaried government employees who somehow continue to be employed after years of non-performance. We are a young, supposedly smart country, with a lot of talent and a lot of stories to tell. Let us get on with it!

This week sees also the opening of the Melbourne International Film Festival - opening with Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood - a feature doco on the genre industry of the 70’s and 80’s - were all looking forward to that - particularly those of us who were around then! The festival runs a great side bar market where producers are given the opportunity to pitch to some pretty hefty players - it only started last year; it was a hit, and now its bigger and better.I think we’re bloody lucky in this country with the support our industry gets - our state agency (Film Victoria) is brilliant, we have a good rebate system, but we need to make better films. Its that simple. And that is up to the film makers…

One day I’ll figure out what I want to do. Last year I shot a MOW in Ottawa, Directed some plumbing commercials in Australia, shot a bunch of commercials which helped get rid of John Howard, produced a movie “The Gates of Hell”. I am producing a TV series for our Aus PBS network (SBS), co-producing a doco that is going to be insanely good and, oh yeah, I wrote a screenplay.

This year things are a little more serious. Despite the reasonably active 2007 - the greenbacks did not match the hours worked and the bank manager is not happy - or more correctly, he is less happy than usual. Now you may have heard that Australia has introduced some tax rebates for qualifying Australian films. 40%? Sounds good. But wait, there’s more. (or, in fact, less) There’s a few exclusions that tends to bring that down to 30%. Might as well go to Canada. Manitoba reckons they’ll give 55%. The rebate in Australia replaces the 10BA certification, which allowed investors a 100% tax deduction on their investment. Most first time directors managed to eak a few dollars out of the guy next door, Uncle Lazlo, his lawyer and his lawyers property developing brother. The Gates of Hell was financed that way - its unlikely we could have scraped the budget together under the new scheme. So we get 30% maybe 10% from a State Government body - perhaps another 10% in presales and we need to fund the other 50% - hedge funds, loans, equity, insurance - all a bit hard to come by down under. But hey, we’ll do it - we’ll find that benevolent high worth individual or that grey suited businessman who wants his bit of Hollywood. We’ll end up tipping some in ourselves; a bit from a sales agent and we’ll be off and running on our seventh movie. And it will be ours.

So that’s producing the Australian way - probably the way of the world. I produce because I want our films made. I prefer being the ratbag on the set, striving for the best, being one of the crew more than one of the producers, but at lunch, I can’t eat because we’re running behind - the lighting is taking too long, and that’s my fault. The crane shot will have to go and we’d better forget the hothead through the second floor window. I’m about to crack in two as at least two of my personalities wrestle with their particular areas of concern. “but I want it to look awesome” says the cinematographer me. “and I want to wrap on time” says producer me. “You won’t be able to sell it if it looks like shit” says cinematographer me. “I won’t be able to sell it without an ending” says producer me. And then 100 years of film making becomes painfully clear - there is a reason why there are separate people doing all these jobs - the gaffer, the grip, the focus puller and craft services. They are uncompromised by conflict - they are here to do a job and they are employed because they do it well.

Well, I’m convinced. That is, the producer me - I cant vouch for the writer me nor the cinematographer me, nor even the rainmaker me, because that was my other job on the last movie.