Just Do It?

I was listening to an interview with British director and editor Ben Wheatley on a podcast the other day.

Wheatley in case you don’t know him is considered the new enfant terrible of British film.

He started out making videos for YouTube and got noticed, went on to create online content and then moved into TV comedy.

He wanted to know how he could get into feature film and was told he needed to make a short. Being impatient, Wheatley pooh poohed that idea and went straight to a feature. He shot his first one in eight days, drawing on his experience doing fast-turnaround TV and approaching it like shooting a documentary, going hand held. The result was Down Terrace, which was released in 2009. It was well received by critics and has an 85% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes. His second feature Kill List, which was shot in 12 days, marked Wheatley as a filmmaker to really watch. Wheatley has with the recent arrival of his latest feature Free Fire now made six feature films, nearly one a year—and the budgets have been getting bigger as has the star power—amongst others Tom Hiddleston in High Rise and Brie Larson in Free Fire.

Wheatley’s from the ‘Just Do It’ variety of filmmakers. He and his mates from outside the film industry (but in the production industry) got together to make Down Terrace, and they’ve been working with each other ever since. He’s trained himself as an editor as well as a director, and this editing experience and his TV training he says has helped him get the coverage he needs on his films and not more, as well as always making his day.

There’s a theory that says TV directors lack a voice and therefore can’t make a decent film. Wheatley’s disproven that as he has a highly distinctive filmmaking voice. And in expressing that voice he’s come up with a process and philosophy that he prescribes to. From amongst many of his thoughts on filmmaking, here are six Wheatley tips for aspiring filmmakers (with my paraphrasing):

  1. Create the Industry Around You—i.e. kick the doors down and don’t wait around for bureaucrats/permission.
  2. Acquire a Particular Set of Skills—if you want to be a good low-budget filmmaker, you need to understand the process and all the roles of production well to be efficient.
  3. . Keep It Small—the bigger the beast, the harder it is to wrangle.
  4. Your Actors Are Your Biggest Asset—great performances work anywhere, poor performances just don’t cut it.
  5. Chop It—get rid of what’s not good… brutally. And don’t be afraid to go against convention when you do.
  6. Don’t Be Precious—just make stuff, and learn from it.

Of course, there are a lot of people out there already with the ‘Just Do It’ approach. And many of them are making bad films because it takes more than an attitude to make a good film—it also requires talent. Which doesn’t mean to say that you can’t learn from your mistakes and get better as you go. Filmmaking however is an unforgiving beast, particularly when it comes to funders. You have a good chance of surviving self-funded flops, critically and box office wise, particularly if not many people have seen it and you’re not using one to promote your next project. Make a flop with a funding body however and you are going to find it hard to get another project up as a director.

Just do it? Yes, that philosophy has its merits. But if you can, make the first one good, and the next one better than the last. That way, you might be the next Ben Wheatley (or Taika Waititi).

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Newsflash

I try to stay up to date with what’s happening in the film and TV industry both at home and abroad by reading as many items and articles as I have time for. A few things have caught my attention in recent times that I would like to share with you. Some bode well for our industry while others take an in-depth look at the difficulties we face going forward, and how some are addressing them.

Firstly, news out of the Statistics Department has Gross screen revenue for the year increased 3 per cent to just over $3 billion with film production revenue doubling to more than $1 billion in 2016. Wellington revenue doubling to $644 million for the year, thanks no doubt to Peter Jackson and the myriad businesses that make up his empire. You can read more on this here.

Auckland can now look forward to an increased level of international production with the securing of the Kumeu studio site used to house Warner’s recent feature film production Meg, which was filmed there. A joint venture between Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development, The New Zealand Film Commission, Warners Bros and China’s Gravity Pictures, the Kumeu Film Studios will operate under a lease arrangement for the next 12 years. Warners made a considerable investment into buildings and two specialized water tanks for water filming—a major selling point for the studio. These legacy assets are already attracting considerable interest internationally and we can expect the studio to be well utilized, particularly if the two mooted new sound stages go ahead. You can learn more about the studio here.

Stephen Follows, a researcher and producer who digs up interesting facts and figures on a regular basis, took a look at the impending Writers Guild of America strike, of which I wrote on in my last column. Follows in his article looks at the numbers behind the possible strike here.

Screen Australia has an excellent blog that covers a wide range of topics. Recently they have done a four-part commercial analysis of the 94 films that Screen Australia has released. While it’s geared towards producers, everyone can learn from the facts that Screen Austalia uncovered here.

The impact of TV drama on the global screen industry has even caught the attention of the French, with Cannes introducing another market, this time for high-end TV drama. There is still politicking to be done around this with the French Government wading in, but Cannes Mayor David Lisnard and MipTV and Mipvom organiser Reed Midem have joined forces to try and ensure that Cannes remains the centre of screen festivals and markets. Info. on this here. It would seem we are going to be having a golden age of TV for some time to come in the drama space.

And finally, one piece of news that seems to have slipped quietly by without a lot of people noticing is that of Canada joining the European film funding body Eurimages. Canada is the first non-European country to do so, and becomes the 37th country to be able to access the approximately $32 million Eurimages contributes annually to around 60 coproductions. You can read about it here. In this time of shrinking funding for film, this would seem an astute move on Canada’s part.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Down Tools?

I was considering what to write about this week when an email came in announcing a possible strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA).

It was 2007 when the WGA last went out on strike. It lasted for 100 days. They were finally able to win one concession from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that saw them achieve for the first time a percentage of digital revenues—they had been completely denied any financial benefit on video and later DVD and bluray revenues and consequently missed out on what had been a far greater revenue stream for the studios and producers than box office. (We can by the way thank this strike for the rise and rise of reality TV.)

The WGA is a union, and in the US they are able to collectively bargain with producers regarding contractual terms and conditions.

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) and the Motion Picture Editors Guild (MPEG) are like the WGA, a union that collectively bargains on behalf of its members. Through the efforts of the American guilds including the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), their members have been able to get healthcare plans, pensions, and for some residuals—a share of revenues generated whenever producers sell programmes or films that have been made with their creative efforts.

In New Zealand, it is illegal for workers in the screen industry to collectively bargain. This came about because of what is commonly referred to as the ‘Hobbit Law’, which was rushed through parliament by the government in 2010 as part of a deal between Warner Bros and Government ministers to keep The Hobbit film production in New Zealand.

In essence, the law means that screen industry workers cannot be considered employees and therefore are unable to collectively bargain. Screen industry workers are classified as contractors. And when contractors come together in a collective manner to determine pay rates they are deemed to be price fixing in a cartel-like manner, which is illegal.

Here from the Employment Relations Act 2000 is the relevant information:

6 Meaning of employee

(1) In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, employee—

(a) means any person of any age employed by an employer to do any work for hire or reward under a contract of service; and

(b) includes—

(i) a homeworker; or

(ii) a person intending to work; but

(c) excludes a volunteer who—

(i) does not expect to be rewarded for work to be performed as a volunteer; and

(ii) receives no reward for work performed as a volunteer; and

(d) excludes, in relation to a film production, any of the following persons:

(i) a person engaged in film production work as an actor, voice-over actor, stand-in, body double, stunt performer, extra, singer, musician, dancer, or entertainer:

(ii) a person engaged in film production work in any other capacity.

Author and playwright David Macaray writing in 2013 on the 2007 – 2008 WGA strike in the Huffington Post characterised the stoush as the “ …classic case of Labor vs. Management. The writers vs. the producers. Those with talent vs. those with money. Proletariat vs. bourgeoisie. Oppressed vs. oppressor. Surfer vs. ho-dad.”

Later in the same article he suggested readers: “ …take a moment and ask ourselves why so many of us root for the Establishment. For a country that, historically, has taken great pride in embracing the underdog, we seem to have lost our footing. We root for the wrong side in these labor vs. management disputes. Working people are the underdogs. All of them. Including those lucky enough to be represented by a labor union. Can’t we see that?”

New Zealand is of course very different to the Hollywood world that the American screen industry revolves around. And because the unions in New Zealand were broken so long ago, the generations that follow the baby boomers have very little if any knowledge it seems to me of what unions fought for and still seek to achieve here. Three terms of right-leaning government with a former ForEx dealer at the helm hasn’t helped. Which isn’t to say that rabid socialist ideology is the answer either. But as I look out the window in Grey Lynn at what was the residential neighbourhood of many a screen industry worker,  numbers of whom it seems are being supplanted by the Range Rover Sport, yoga pants and quinoa crowd, I have to question whether or not we’ve got it right. Are we so mislead by the now defunct American dream here, too, that we can’t see that most of us are our own worst enemies? Escalating house prices a case in point.

A New Zealand producer very recently lamented to me the difficulty of working with the Australian screen industry because they have unions, there are minimum standards and awards, and fringes to deal with superannuation, workers compensation, etc. But the Australian screen industry is on fire. Large international productions are still going there. Local production from drama to reality to information programming is booming.

The spectre of lost screen production that was used so effectively by an American corporate to change New Zealand employment law just doesn’t stack up when we look across the Tasman.

In Australia and New Zealand, production companies have been gobbled up by offshore entities because the creative talent brought to bear in our countries has proven itself both at home and offshore through the sale of the product that embodies our creativity, yet the lot of the above-the-line creative talent of writers, actors and directors is generally worse than it’s ever been.

The director’s position particularly in the New Zealand screen industry has so eroded that most director’s incomes are going down not up. Like a lot of people in a lot of other jobs. It’s fast becoming time that we need a paradigm shift in our industry and our country. Recent studies that show workers in the creative sector are least likely to be replaced by robots and software in the near term is no reason for complacency, or for accepting lower wages and poorer working terms and conditions.

Down tools like the WGA threatens? Obviously not here. But workers’ rights are meaningful. For all of us. Whether or not you own your own house.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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The Slap… Not Just An Aussie Drama Series

While the Australian screen industry is different from ours, there are sufficient similarities to warrant us keeping a close eye on what happens across the Tasman. The uproar that occurred when Freemantle Media hired a Canadian female director to direct an iconic Australian TV series, and later saying that there wasn’t a good enough Australian female director to do it brought into the open what many members of the Australian Directors Guild felt was the disdain that Australian production companies had for Australian TV drama directors. In Australia, this is directly reflected in the terms and conditions of employment of Australian directors and  forebodes for directors  here in New Zealand what Australian producers’  attitudes could be on Australian only or Aus – NZ copros shot here. We are all aware already how the NZ director’s position and the terms and conditions particularly have been eroded in the New Zealand screen industry over the last 15 years. I therefore felt it was important to put out Australian Directors Guild CEO Kingston Anderson’s entire op ed in their latest newsletter for your reading.

Op Ed from Australian Directors’ Guild
CEO, Kingston Anderson:

At the end of 2016 the ADG discovered the Fremantle Media was importing a Canadian director to direct the new television version of the iconic Australia story Picnic at Hanging Rock. The ADG was inundated with calls from members shocked at this move. There had not been an overseas director imported to direct a major Australian mini-series before and the fact that it was an iconic Australian story puzzled everyone. When challenged by the ADG about why this occurred the producers said they could not find a suitable candidate to direct the series. This slap in the face to such directors as Daina Reid, Rowan Woods and many other highly experienced and internationally produced directors was the final straw for many ADG members as it highlighted the disdain and disrespect many production companies had for Australian television drama directors.

But this is not a recent trend and it is highlighted by the ongoing battles the ADG has been having with producers and broadcasters over the retransmission rights that were  granted to directors in 2006. This was supposed to provide a director with a small royalty that would recognise their copyright in a film. However, the resulting opposition by producers to allow directors to claim this right has left a bad taste in many directors’ mouths, especially on productions that have gone on to be great hits and returned the producers both awards and money.

It also goes to the heart of the way director’s fees have stagnated over the past ten years leading to many leaving the industry or leaving the country. At the 2015 SPA Conference in Melbourne, the eminent TV producer John Edwards lamented the demise of long-form TV drama to increasing costs, except in one area – directing. The fact that he specifically mentioned that directors were the only ones who had not seen increasing fees speaks for itself.

It is these three things – Respect, Rights and Remuneration that are the heart of a campaign the ADG is running to highlight the situation TV drama directors find themselves in 2017. While Australian directors who work around the world are both respected and rewarded, many are disappointed at the attitude of Australian producers and production companies to their work. The lack of respect shown to Australian directors when choosing the set-up director for Picnic at Hanging Rock highlights a sea change in the attitude of producers. This attitude, to treat Australian directors as “just crew” has also seen occasions where the DOP on a television series has been paid more than the director.

As Paris Barclay, President of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) said on his recent visit to Australia to support local directors, “The director will shape a TV production in their own creative way. If you give the script to another director it will be a different production from another director.” This seems obvious to many but for producers their attitude to “cookie cutter” television belies this fact.

The advance of quality television around the world driven by the likes of HBO  has seen the movement of feature film directors to the small screen. This has occurred most notably in the United States but recent examples such as Rowan Woods and Tony Kravitz directing “The Kettering Incident” for Foxtel reflect a changing environment where the directors are asked to deliver more higher quality productions to attract that elusive audience. This importance of the TV director is recognised around the world and as such many of our most talented directors have left these shores – Kate Dennis, Michael Rymer, Jessica Hobbs, Daniel Nettheim to name a few. Most are directing in the UK or US where they are respected and paid well and where they receive royalties if their shows are successful.

The ADG is not calling for rates of pay that match their US or UK cousins, we want rates of pay that reflect the large increase in budgets. Those per episode budgets keep going up but the directors fee stays the same. We also see overseas productions being shot here using Australian directors alongside overseas directors, their rates of pay for doing the same job wildly different. A recent television production shot in Melbourne saw the overseas director getting paid more than three times the level of the Australian directors for doing the same work. If the show is successful, the overseas director will get rewarded in residuals but the Australians will not.

So what to do about this inequity?

The ADG is in negotiation with Screen Producers Australia (SPA) to address these issues in an historic agreement for directors. It will address these issues and hopefully with the co-operation of Australian producers we will be able to properly reward our talented TV directors and promote the respect they deserve for their high level creative work. Otherwise we will continue to lose the best and brightest which will inevitably lead to a reduction in quality on our TV screens. And in a world where competition for eyeballs is truly global, this will put the Australian television production industry at a disadvantage.

To illustrate this a producer at a recent SPA conference asked why he couldn’t get one of our directors back from the US to direct his new show.
My question was “Are you going to pay him the same as you always have?”
His answer was “Yes”.
My response was “Then why would he come back?”

Kingston Anderson
CEO
Australian Directors’ Guild
 & Australian Screen Directors Authorship Collection Society

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Doing the Berlinale

I was extremely fortunate to be invited to the Berlin International Film Festival by the German Federal Government last month. I participated in an information tour of the Berlinale together with 25 other guests from around the world, made up of film festival programmers, journalists, and filmmakers from counties as diverse as Cuba, Israel, Tunisia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Australia, Pakistan and Kenya. It was a behind-the-scenes look at aspects of the festival, while at the same time getting the opportunity to experience it firsthand.

This was my first time at the Berlinale and it was a wonderfully soft entry to what is one of the four big festivals and markets for the film industry: Sundance (no market) in January, Berlin in February, Cannes in May, and Toronto in September, with the standalone American Film Market (AFM) bringing up the rear (and the dregs some would say) in November.

Berlin sells over 335,000 tickets to the approximately 400 films it shows. Around 20,000 professional visitors attend the European Film Market, Coproduction Market and Talents programme that make up the industry side of the festival.

As part of the tour we received briefings from the heads of the Panorama and Forum sections of the festival and the World Cinema Fund, and from the artistic director of the German Film Archive – Museum for Film and Television. We heard from four emerging German directors about their highly awarded projects, and received a lecture on New German Cinema. We had the opportunity to visit Berlin’s oldest film school—University of Film Konrad Wolf. We had a formal lunch with the Deputy Director-General for Culture and Communication and Director of Cultural Relations Policy of the Federal Foreign Office, where we each had to speak for our meal. And we joined about 500 other international industry people at the Goethe-Institut film breakfast, where they handed out their own film awards. And of course we could cue each morning with hundreds of others to try and get tickets to the films we wanted to see.

For those who don’t know, film festivals with markets fall into layers: the glamour with the film stars, the film festival with the movies and the punters, and the film market where the business is done. We got to see some of the glamour by attending the opening night, but it was essentially the festival and business sides from then on.

Three New Zealand films premiered at Berlin: DEGNZ member and director Tusi Tamasese’s One Thousand Ropes had it’s world premiere in the Panorama section, and opens in NZ this month. DEGNZ member and director Jackie Van Beek’s film Inland Road world premiered in the Generation 14 Plus section. And director Tearepa Kahi had the European premiere of Poi E, also in 14 Plus. All films received strong reviews.

Another DEGNZ member and director Niki Si’ulepa was the only Kiwi selected to attend Berlinale Talents, which invites 250 emerging international filmmakers to a series of workshops, panel disussions and events in a separate part of the festival.

New Zealand is thankfully a participant in the Berlinale NATIVe section that focuses on Indigenous film, run by expat Kiwi Maryanne Redpath who also heads Generation. NATIVe brings together indigenous filmmakers and organisations that gather around Berlinale and the world’s biggest indigenous film festival immagineNATIVE of Toronto. Libby Hakaraia and Tainui Stephen of the Maoriland Film Festival in Otaki have been driving Aotearoa NZ’s presence at the NATIVe stand, which this year according to imagineNATIVE’s Industry Director Daniel Northway Frank had good traffic through it.

In The Film Collaborative’s online blog American Jeffrey Murphy writing on this year’s festival said he revels in the glorious diversity of culture and languages at the Berlinale but that the festival lived up to it’s reputation of hit and miss programming, which was in his opinion due to the favouring of films “ from Eastern Europe and the like” rather than English or French titles.

In 2016 I attended three small film markets in Melbourne, New York and Prague, but the size of the European Film Market at Berlinale was huge in comparison. The EFM operates out of two official venues, Martin-Gropius-Bau and the Marriott Hotel, and you have to shuttle or walk between the two. There were hundreds of sales agents and a small number of film commissions (more like the old Film New Zealand than our NZFC) and funding bodies flogging their wares to distributors, producers and others across five days, while the Coproduction Market was held in another building where up to 35 projects were presented for coproduction and financing.

As is happening elsewhere, high-end TV drama and Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) is having an impact at the Berlinale. This year was the third that the festival has run a small market for high-end TV drama projects to find coproduction partners and financing. Cannes plans to dedicate an entire market to TV, over and above the two MIPs that already happen there.

The film industry globally is still in flux due to digital disruption. While transactional VOD and Subsciption VOD are starting to show real signs of revenue life, the old business model for film is essentially gone. Real revenues from theatrical exhibition go almost solely to tentpole films. If you are an indie, and all New Zealand films are, you’re exceptionally lucky (and or talented) if your film will survive four weeks in theatres, and there’s little after that to bolster revenue streams with DVD and blu-ray sales and rentals in decline. For an insight into revenues for Australian films, read this commercial analysis from Screen Australia.

One ray of hope from Berlin was that sales agents may be pre-buying again because they are having to compete with Amazon and Netflix for the best films. Hopefully this is a trend and it will grow.

Financials aside the Berlin International Film Festival is a true celebration of film, both critical and commercial, and an experience I won’t forget as a Berlinale newbie.

I’d like to thank the German Federal Government, the Goethe-Institut and the New Zealand Film Commission for their support of my visit.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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