What Does Jacinda Mean For Us?

Like most everyone else, I’ve been walking around with a smile on my face since Winston Peters decided which side of the seesaw to get on.

I’m not as rabidly dogmatic as many left of centre seem to be in the screen industry, but I do know that the social fabric of New Zealand society has been torn under National, the Arts have suffered, and it deeply disturbs me that we can’t swim in many of our waterways anymore.

I’ve read numerous articles online about what the change of government means for education, transport, trade, the economy, the environment and other sectors, but I haven’t seen anything yet on what it means for the Arts, and more particularly for the screen industry. So like everybody else, I’m going to postulate about some things.

Firstly, the minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage will be Grant Robertson, moving it far up the ladder from where it sat with Maggie Barry. Jacinda is passionate about the Arts and has been Labour’s Arts spokesperson, but won’t have the time this term to deal with it. I believe she’ll give the portfolio to Robertson, another strong Arts supporter, who himself will be busy with Finance. I’ll happily eat my words if Jacinda keeps it, though.

Second: the Hobbit Law. It’s goneburger. Labour outlined in its Fair Pay Agreements (FPAs) the ability for employers or employees/unions to be able to begin negotiations on FPAs once a sufficient percentage within an industry call for one. Under The Hobbit Law, all workers in the screen industry are classified as contractors, cannot collectively bargain and are not subject to the minimum working wage requirement—all the antithesis of what Labour stands for. The Hobbit Law will go and it’s up to the guilds to make sure that happens and that we unify to seek sustainable careers in the screen industry.

Next, copyright for directors. The Copyright Act Review is underway. I put considerable effort into lobbying Jacinda directly about director copyright when she was the Opposition spokesperson for Arts, Culture and Heritage. Director copyright is about sustainable careers, a touchpoint for Labour. Our chances on changing the copyright law are now slightly improved but will still need significant effort on our part. It’s not a big ticket item for government, but hopefully with Robertson we’ll have a more sympathetic ear and will be able to get to the other ministers who will count.

The other aspect of copyright is Google’s desire to see relaxed US Fair Use and Safe Harbours legislation enacted here, replacing our Fair Dealing regime that is more stringent and protects the intellectual property of creators better. They must have choked when Winston Peters said he was going with the Labour Party. Years of upfront and behind-the-scenes lobbying to swing National to their view just hit a major speed bump. But they had moved many beaureaucrats toward their line of thinking as well so we’re not off the hook yet. We still need to fight hard to keep Fair Dealing in the face of Google’s enormous financial muscle.

Then there’s public service TV. Radio New Zealand will be transformed into Radio NZ + as promised, giving us a digital platform that will deliver more quality reporting and investigative journalism, Maori, Pasifika and other diverse community content, as well as education and entertainment for children. How the additional $38 million will be spread between the proposed independent Public Media Funding Commissioner and NZ On Air funding is unclear, but it would seem that anything that falls under the remit of the new commissioner that currently is being funded by NZ On Air will move to the new fund, thereby not increasing NZ On Air’s funding but giving it more money to play with in the commercially contestable realm, which will continue to be its responsibility.

Labour understands that the Arts can also generate revenue, and that the screen industry is a significant employer as well as a hotbed for commercial innovation, particularly at the higher end. Steven Joyce never liked the screen incentives although he was smart enough to know we needed them. They will stay, and everyone will await the outcome of the full Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment assessment of the screen incentives currently underway. We might see more production funding for the NZFC for NZ films, which didn’t increase under National although they did top up the Screen Production Grant for both NZ and international films. This funding increase would come out of the Ministry of Economic Development portolio, who is supported by MBIE, who essentially controls the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, at least for the moment. David Parker will be the new Minister for Economic Development.

What about a Minister of Broadcasting? I’m sure Amy Adams helped do away with this as the last minister because she viewed broadcasting as a sunset industry. Labour won’t reintroduce one because Broadcasting, which essentially means Free-to-air these days, no longer holds the sway it once did.

We have to give thought to our public broadcaster TVNZ. This is a vexing question. It’s not the public broadcaster it’s meant to be. Labour would probably flog it off if there were a buyer for it, but who would want it? Perhaps a US network like CBS who has just won its battle to acquire Australia’s Network 10 for US$167 million? Or Fox, who lost out to CBS? Or a private equity fund like Ironbridge who stepped in to save Mediaworks? I don’t think there will be a knight in shining armour for TVNZ, though, with Mediaworks sitting there as an abject lesson, essentially held up by its radio business.

I’m guessing that Labour will leave TVNZ to its own commercial devices after stripping it of its public service mandate, and using whatever dividend it generates to help fund public broadcasting. A more interesting question is what will happen to the public broadcasting and current affairs shows funded by NZ On Air currently on the commercial channels, including the Māori programming? I think they’ll be looking for a new partner to + with.

Will Māori get more money to play with in the screen sector? Yes, because of the work that’s been done by NZFC around their Māori strategy, but that was coming anyway. No for Te Māngai Pāho who already received a boost last year, although not for content. I’d personally prefer that Labour made te reo mandatory in schools through their education policy rather than funding TMP to revitalise the language via Māori Television, although Whakaata Māori would need to keep producing Māori language content until we all caught up.

I don’t believe NZFC and NZ On Air will be merged. We have a new NZFC CEO who will be on a three-year contract. And with other changes to come and those that have recently occurred in and around the funding bodies, it doesn’t make sense to pursue such an idea now.

Creative New Zealand is going to get some attention. Grant Robertson as Associate Spokesperson for Arts Culture & Heritage in a Radio NZ interview prior to the election outlined thoughts that will require some restructuring at CNZ to achieve Labour’s ideas around regional Arts development, more practioners at the top table, and how to ensure young and emerging artists get a fair crack at the funding pie.

In the same interview Robertson gave Labour’s perspective on the Arts:

“Arts are the window to the soul of our people and our country.”

Labour is supportive of the Arts. It wants to see more funding go to the Arts. But it will take time for this to happen and their main focus will be elsewhere for awhile. I don’t think any of us will complain too much if they give first attention to homelessness, mental health, the minimum wage and the housing crisis.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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The Times, They Are A Changin’

I’ve had an incredibly busy time these last few weeks attending industry gatherings, and if there’s one thing certain, it’s that change is coming.

New Zealand On Air held a drama day recently with more than 130 industry people who intersect with drama. As most of you will know, there has been a large amount of criticism levelled at current NZ scripted content, primarily by The Spinoff’s Duncan Grieve. He has a low opinion of the high-end drama that is currently being made, and he is supportive of the idea that those operating in the self-funded and low-budget digital realm—including himself—should be given more money and opportunity. His complaints have resonated with a lot of people.

Also, we at DEGNZ and the NZ Writers Guild have been particularly vocal about the appalling exploitation of creators by online platforms, some of whom are doing it with NZ On Air funding attached. (Look out for our upcoming Young Creators events.) After a day-long talk fest that was productive, NZ On Air has published a summary that identified four areas of focus for them:

  1. Development
  2. Diversity
  3. Innovation
  4. Newer platforms

They are currently working on developing a drama strategy that will take these into account. In the meantime, they have suspended funding for any new drama development funding. It’s likely that it won’t be until the first quarter of 2018 that their new strategy will come through in their operations, but there’s definitely some change on the way. Read the summary from the Drama Day here.

A week later, I attended a presentation by streamer Lightbox, who announced their first commissions. After showing us the multi-million dollar per episode US dramas and multi-hundred thousand dollar per episode NZ On Air funded reruns they stream, Lightbox announced the funding of new digital content from, you guessed it, Duncan Grieve and the web series makers behind High Road. While Lightbox were breathless about their low-budget commissions, there was a collective silent sigh in the room from those who didn’t already know that Lightbox wasn’t coming with Netflix-style commissioning budgets.

Still, it’s better than nothing, which is what had been happening in the paywall streaming space with commissions (that is public knowledge) until this point in New Zealand. Lightbox assured us that they had money to spend. If so, it’s a pity that didn’t make the bold move that everyone is craving for, rather than low-risk ones.

With Netflix committed to spending $500 million in original programming in Canada next year, we can only hope that they will spread some of their largess around here sooner rather than later or we’re all going to die from anticipation.

On the Friday before the Big Screen Symposium (BSS), DEGNZ brought the other guilds and associations together to discuss the concept of a Code of Ethics for the screen industry. As I have written about repeatedly, we are extremely concerned about the terms and conditions being offered in commercial transactions by platforms/producers for scripted web series.

The worst offender is NZME, although there are others who aren’t too far behind. With one of a number of projects I am aware of, the content creator ended up getting approximately $10.00 per hour to create and produce a web series, has no right to revenue share and retains no IP whatsoever in the project. These are just some of the issues with the contracting for this particular show.

Opportunity for eyeballs, future work, blah, blah, blah are the big carrots that entice creators to take on these projects. But in the Guild’s view the platforms are exploiting creators for their own commercial ends—this we believe is unethical behaviour.

DEGNZ feels we need a Code of Ethics for all in the screen industry—funders, platforms, broadcasters, screen industry practitioners—to protect the rights of writers, directors, producers, cast and crew, particularly in the brave new world of no-budget and low-budget screen content creation. After considerable discussion, all of the guilds and associations have agreed to raise the idea with their memberships, and in the first instance, get feedback as to what people are experiencing at the coal face.

DEGNZ is determined to bring about change to help ensure sustainable careers not just for directors and editors, but also for all screen industry practitioners. Our President, Howard Taylor, is the instigator and main driving force behind this initiative. We will update you on this as we go.

At the BSS, current CEO of the NZ Film Commission Dave Gibson gave his valedictory speech entitled ‘Change and Challenge’. The biggest change coming with NZFC is who will replace Dave after he finishes up in December. We wait with bated breath and should find out soon.

In his speech, however, Dave spoke to the changes that have and are occurring in the small screen, and many of those he wrought in relation to our big screen. Some key points he made were around the introduction of a further three planks of NZFC affirmative action to address gender inequity, and some significant time spent on explaining the structure of the New Zealand film library Te Ahi Kaa, and the establishment of the New Zealand film rights management entity Te Pun Ataata. Both are intended to help preserve and provide access to New Zealand’s film history. He also hinted at the Māori Strategy, which has been in development at NZFC for two years. You can read Dave’s full speech here.

Then on the Monday after the BSS, I attended a day-long Industry Summit that brought together all of the funders, guilds and associations to discuss industry issues. Each participant was asked to speak briefly to three topics that most concerned them. I spoke about:

  1. Copyright
  2. Code of Ethics
  3. Quality versus Quantity, i.e. less productions, more money per production

With 21 attendees there were a range of issues. What was most encouraging from our perspective was that Jane Wrightson of NZ On Air identified with our thoughts on a Code of Ethics. What was clear was that the screen industry till now has not had an effective, unified voice to talk particularly to government with.

It may well be that Auckland Chamber of Commerce CEO Michael Barnett who facilitated the discussion and who is developing a ‘Next Step’ plan for us, will identify this as one area of focus. There will be more to come on this, which we will keep you appraised of. Thanks have to go to Brian Kassler of Showtools who organized this event.

And finally, the weekend after BSS I attended the Ngā Aho Whakaari Hui-ā-Tau two-day conference. I was asked to speak to our work around the Code of Ethics and was also invited to sit on the panel for the short film pitches. But staying with the theme of change, we heard in oblique detail from NZFC CEO Dave Gibson more on the Māori Strategy, which they hope to have confirmed at the board meeting this week. There is a considerable shakeup coming with how NZFC deals with and funds Māori.

A lot of the initiatives Dave will leave behind will be fait accompli for the new CEO Anabelle Sheehan, but she will undoubtedly  have some of her own changes in mind she’ll want to bring about. Let’s hope that they are good ones.

Preceding all of the above was a three-day NZFC workshop I attended as part of my ongoing professional development. I think I need a cup of tea and a lie-down.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Prof. Dev. – The Next Best Thing To Doing It

With the Big Screen Symposium almost upon us again with a host of excellent speakers to hear from, I thought I might reflect on professional development.

Eight or so years ago I decided to focus on narrative feature film and TV drama. I had come from a background of documentary, news, travel, and marketing storytelling for the screen, but I knew very little about dramatic narrative storytelling.

I threw myself into learning and haven’t stopped. For the first five years I applied for and attended a large number of professional development opportunities the New Zealand Film Commission and other bodies offered. If a talk was on with Script to Screen, SPADA or with anyone else, I was there. At the same time I was making or helping to make short films and developing features and TV drama series.

Three years ago I was contracted in to DEGNZ as the Executive Director. A good part of my responsibility has been to run the guild’s professional development programme for directors and editors. I’ve managed mentorships, film talks, attachments, workshops, panel discussions and seminars. And until this year I made a point of attending every single one of them.

Last year I took part in a year-long professional development programme in Europe. And this year I’m doing one here.

I think I can fairly say that when it comes to professional development, I’ve had a lot of experience with it. And I see the benefits. Not just for me, but for others, too.

Now of course professional development is not actually ‘doing it’, which is the best school of all. Most of the good speakers I’ve encountered have a long history as industry practitioners, which is how they accumulated the knowledge they impart—from on-the-job successes and failures. This is why workshops where you get hands-on experience are particularly valuable—it replicates to a greater or lesser extent the actual work involved without the pressure.

In my time focusing on narrative drama, I’ve met a lot of directors who say they want to direct a feature film. And I mean a lot. TV drama, web series, TVCs and short films offer directors the opportunity to practise what’s required to make a feature. But because drama and comedy are scripted, the amount of time devoted to the actual directing is usually much less than the time spent on developing the scripts to be made. Consequently, unless you are a TV drama director who is regularly employed, it’s likely that your ‘doing it’ is broken up by lots of ‘developing to do it’ or ‘applying to do it’, or just ‘waiting to do it’. And it’s in these troughs that you can ‘learn to do it’.

In New Zealand alone, there are lots of opportunities to learn from industry peers, the up-coming Big Screen Symposium a prime example. And overseas there are many, many more if you have the time and or money.

What astounds me is from that large “I want to direct a feature” group, there is actually a much smaller pool of people who actively seek through professional development the skills and knowledge required to learn to direct feature film well. Directing actors particularly is something crucial that you can learn about through attending acting classes or workshops, having read-throughs, rehearsing scenes, improvising material, or engaging in other director – actor focused activity.

Common comments I hear from experienced actors who either attend or facilitate our workshops is that many directors they’ve worked with either don’t know how to communicate with actors to get good performance or that the directors are actually afraid of actors.

It doesn’t surprise me that a good number of directors who make their way successfully in film or TV drama in New Zealand are also actors: Michael Hurst, Peter Burger, Aidee Walker, Danny Mulheron, Jackie Van Beek, Oliver Driver, Kathy McRae, Ian Hughes, Matthew Saville, Roseanne Liang, to name a few. I don’t think it’s a prerequisite. But it’s obviously an advantage.

Editors are fortunate in that if they are working they are practising their craft every day. But they too need to learn to adapt to narrative drama storytelling  if that’s their ambition.

I encourage everyone in the guild to grab as many opportunities to upskill as you can. Whether it’s applying to the Story Camp Aotearoa, attending a Rehearsal Room, going to a WIFT Coproduction Summit, or doing a Drama Editing workshop. I reckon Prof. Dev. is the next best thing to doing it.

See you at the Big Screen Symposium. I’ll be there. And if you want to talk, swing by the DEGNZ booth. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the guild’s professional development programme or anything else you’d like to share.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

P.S. While I may gush enthusiastically about Prof. Dev., others don’t. Case in point: Guardian writer Caspar Salmon on director Q & A’s after films here.

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Knockin’ Around Asia

I was fortunate to have been invited to the Asia-Pacific Producers Network annual meeting last week in Taiwan. There were 40 or so producers there from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, and Patrick Frater, Variety’s Asia Bureau Chief, who is based in Hong Kong.

I spoke to a good number of them and there was one topic on pretty much everyone’s lips — China. Everyone has been, is or wants to be doing productions with the Chinese. The Koreans however are excluded at the moment because the Chinese government doesn’t like the Thaad Missile Defense System the Americans moved onto a disused golf course there, as a counter to North Korean missile test firings towards Japan. Until that’s resolved the Koreans are getting the cold shoulder from the Chinese entertainment business.

As a counter to this, a Korean producer pitched me a NZ-China co-pro because he could no longer do it between China and Korea. His proposed Chinese producing partner was also attending. It transpired that in the month that we had been communicating about it prior to my arrival, the Chinese producer was no longer interested. The reason — Chinese demand had changed. It’s name directors and actors and big budgets now, not small comedies as he had planned or any other lower budget projects.

According to Variety’s Frater, the Chinese market can dramatically change from week to week and it’s almost impossible to keep up. It’s been obvious for some time however that the Chinese government was clamping down on capital outflow. Chinese company Dalian Wanda is the most obvious example of this. Wanda bought mini studio Legendary Pictures and the US’s AMC Entertainment Group, which is now the largest theatre owner in the world. It had to abandon its plans to acquire Dick Clark Productions for $1 billion. Other deals that suffered include Xinke’s US$345 million planned purchase of Hong Kong’s Voltage Pictures and last week Recon gave up on its US$100 million acquisition of LA-based Millennium Films.

Even though it can take up to two years to get money out of China if at all, it hasn’t deterred Asian production companies from wanting to do business there. All the highly active Hong Kong producers now either have offices in China or live there. Taiwanese producers I was given introductions to were away in China for meetings. The Japanese I met were making frequent trips to China to drum up business.

China now has 41,000 movie screens, over 700 million mobile internet users and three major streaming providers in iQIYI, Youku Tudou and Tencent with a combined total of 70,000,000 paying viewers in the first quarter of 2017. Revenue from paying users of internet video in China is expected to hit US$2.2 billion this year. No wonder Asian producers are making films, TV series, and web series for and with the Chinese.

American streamer Netflix, who is dominating in the rest of the world, is playing catch up in Asia. It’s done a deal with China’s iQIYI, is producing local content in Japan and India, has announced a licensing deal for Korean shows and will be premiering Korean original material in 2018. In Singapore and Indonesia it has partnerships with local telcos for distribution. Elsewhere in Asia, though, Netflix has far greater competition from domestic streamers who already have significant local offerings.

So what does all this action in Asia mean for us here?

Natural History New Zealand and Sir Richard Taylor’s Pukeko Pictures have well established relationships in China built over many years, and they are already producing TV content with the Chinese. Huhu Animation announced a multi-picture deal and the first official China-NZ co-production, animated feature Beast of Burden. These apart, there’s not a lot going on although two official feature co-productions with China and one with Korea are mooted.

We have seen in recent months a small number of Chinese TV series shooting in Queenstown, and we can expect more such inbound productions. I believe it’s unlikely though that we’ll see the volume of China-related production that Asian producers are engaged in, in the short to medium term.

One of the great difficulties we and the Australians face in dealing with China or any Asian country for that matter, is the language and or cultural divide. The Asians are much better at understanding each other culturally, and the similarities have made programmes and films cross borders there a lot more easily. A Japanese producer I spoke to told me that his drama series was selling all around Asia and that it had been remade in Korea.

Of the 78 film and TV co-productions the New Zealand Film Commission has on record since 1988, only five have been with Asian countries, three of those with China. The rest are with predominantly English speaking countries such as Canada , the UK, and Australia, although Germany does feature in the statistics, too, primarily because they have come in as minority co-production partners who have an affinity with NZ content, particularly, Maori. English-speaking Singapore, with whom we have a co-production treaty and one film (The Tattooist) under our belt, has an undeveloped film sector and a highly active domestic TV production base. The other English speaking country in Asia is the Philippines, with whom we have no formal co-production agreement. With both, though, there is the cultural divide.

I expect that when we have more Chinese-speaking directors, writers and producers in New Zealand we will see volume pick up. But until then, we’ll just have to look to Netflix, Lightbox and hopefully Amazon Prime for increases in New Zealand film and TV production volume. And perhaps one day soon, someone will crack the straight to international market TV drama nut and provide a pathway for others to follow.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Express Yourself

There are a number of opportunities fast approaching for you to voice your opinions on the state of the industry and how it affects you. I encourage all of you to engage as we are all faced with ongoing rapid transformation that will have a profound effect on your career prospects, opportunities, and incomes.

First up—The New Zealand Film Commission has finally gotten around to working on a tangata whenua strategy to support Māori in film.

With Māori stories and content being the key differentiator of New Zealand film on the international scene and Māori-driven projects having outstanding box office domestically, you have to wonder why it’s taken so long since the disaster that was the Te Paepae Ataata initiative for NZFC to get into action. Māori used to be at the forefront of indigenous filmmaking but that position is now well and truly occupied by Aboriginal Australians. Amazing what good levels of funding can achieve. NZFC is running a roadshow to gather input for the strategy. You can have your voice heard in Rotorua, Wellington, Auckland and the South Island. Details here.

Then there is our annual membership survey.

As a financial member you will have received a direct email with a link to it. It’s anonymous and will help us gauge what’s happening in your work sphere, what you think about what we as the guild are doing, and what you think we should be doing. As we continue to engage with funding bodies, government and other organisations over your creative, cultural and financial wellbeing, it’s also important we have facts to back up our arguments, so please take the seven minutes required to complete the survey. It will be a big help.

Next: I mentioned last week that on Thursday 24 August in Mt Eden the top five political parties will have representatives presenting their thoughts on the NZ screen sector.

Not only is this an opportunity for you to hear what they have to say, but it will also give you a chance to put your questions forward to the party individuals present. The election is up for grabs at this point and all of us need to lobby government to get our messages across. Seats are still available to attend this evening, which will be hosted by media commentator Russell Brown. RSVP here.

And then a little further out the Copyright Act review coming up in 2018. Directors are authors of audiovisual content and cinematographic film. For this reason directors should have copyright of such. They don’t. We can change this if we get the required changes to the Copyright Act. You can make a submission when the opportunity becomes available. Read what you need to know here, register to receive updates, and make a submission when invited to.

Finally, we are now just over five weeks to the general election. If you are not enrolled, please do so. And most of all, please vote to voice your opinion on the future of our country as it will be determined by the political party/parties in power.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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