Screen Australia: briefing the industry, finding a new way to get out and about
by: Mark Poole
Published on Screen Hub
Monday 27 April, 2009
Screen Australia's new look briefing sessions are out on the road, and landed in Melbourne on Friday for a fast and furious couple of hours to brief the Victorian industry about production financing for documentary and drama.
The session was hosted by Chris Oliver, Senior Manager, State and Industry Partnerships (including the Enterprise Program) and Ross Matthews, Head of Production Investment. Claire Jager, Investment/Development Manager, Documentary also spoke and Tim Phillips, Investment Manager, Production Investment, Drama, was present at the front but didn’t address the meeting.
If impressions are important, this one was notable by its professionalism and briskness, though there was an air of candour, no-nonsense and let’s get down to business as well.
When the session began, the room was only half full, but within five more minutes the venue was overflowing, causing people to wrestle with movable walls and seats in an effort to cram more in. Is this a metaphor for the industry?
Ten minutes prior to the meeting there were only a couple of dozen punters and I thought the Screen Australia message must have been so well understood that the key Melbourne people must have decided they didn’t need to attend. But by fifteen past the hour all the mainstream Melbourne companies were represented, with only a couple of exceptions.
“You’re late,” Chris Oliver chided the stragglers. Perhaps this is a sign that this is now a business and business people are expected to arrive on time, unlike previous occasions when filmmakers were able to arrive fashionably en retard and not miss anything.
Chris Oliver drove the meeting and the slides, which at times bordered on the inscrutable at least for this scribe, when things like pro rata percentages of equity investment were outlined. Even Ross Matthews seemed to feel one slide in particular was a touch complex. There was a feeling that a huge amount of ground was covered in an hour, and it is clear that now is not the appointed hour for input from the film community, but rather there is a sense of wanting to drive this complex beast into action and get things rolling as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Clearly there is a lot happening and quite a bit of money going into productions across the board, but that is to be expected when you realize that this session covered the entire gamut, including the offset as well as everything that was previously administered by Film Australia, the FFC and the AFC.
Some notes of caution were struck along the way: Ross told us that the producer offset was being funded for films above one million dollars, but it was far tougher to fund amounts less than that, which takes in the vast bulk of documentaries.
A passing reference was made about one well-established documentary filmmaker having to cashflow a documentary by mortgaging her home.
A producer said that too often producers are being required to risk more than they should have to, in order to get the deal in place.
Ross reminded us that Screen Australia’s funding was scheduled to decline over the next few years as the offset mechanism becomes fully operational.
A final concern was that there were now only three people dealing with funding documentaries, rather than the entire Film Australia entourage plus others before. This seems a gigantic downsize that it is hoped won’t produce huge bottlenecks.
Ross said that television drama was doing well, with high profile shows such as Underbelly, Sea Patrol and others getting funding via the offset. “Networks are willing to stump up the required $400,000 per hour for TV drama,” he explained, “which is rating very well and garnering the required advertising spend.”
This is a pleasing development in comparison to past years.
There seems to be an issue about Screen Australia requiring a deal memo with a signed off deal from a distributor and sales agent before they will agree to come in, as this is when the producer is at the mercy of such distributors and sales agents. Having done the deal, they are stuck with it.
Ross provided an updated overview of staffing at Screen Australia, explaining that broadly there is a split between fact and fiction, with both types of investment manager reporting to Ross.
As they shifted over to production financing, Ross pointed out that in order for a documentary to trigger Screen Australia funding your broadcaster must advance $110,000 per hour for the domestic licence fee, and you must have an international sales agent in place as well.
During the meeting the way Screen Australia works without deadlines for many programs was explained. “We’re on a rolling six week batching process,” said Ross Mathews. That means that your application will be assessed between three and six weeks after you put it in, depending on how many others are around you.
Claire Jager addressed documentary development, beginning by stressing that for documentary the development and production investments were treated as one, since as Ross had described, when developing a documentary these days you nearly always pick up a camera and start shooting, making it impractical to separate development from production funding.
Saying she only needed to be brief as the available guidelines were clear, Claire said that bringing development and production together was a big change, and she believes that it will work really well. There is up to $40,000 available for development, and if a broadcaster puts in money they will match it up to $40,000.
“We still do time critical funding, strategic editing etc,” Claire explained. “Essentially we are funding fewer project with more funds. The idea of development is to get a project into the strongest possible position so that they can get production funding.”
Claire noted that the eligibility requirements have been increased to 3 half hours of produced and broadcast documentary credits, but if you’ve made a film that has screened at one of their approved film festivals this is also taken into account.
She said that the assessment criteria were distinctive and strong projects with a strong finance plan on board.
Claire and Ross explained that the documentary strands are intended for television and don’t specifically cater for feature length docs. However, if you have a television documentary with potential for a feature length version, then it could be dealt with under this program. Otherwise, feature documentaries would have to go through the feature film door.
They outlined the strands by which you can access documentary funding:
1. National Documentary Program (inc History Initiative.)
2. Domestic & International programs
3. Special Documentary programs
4. Special Documentary initiatives.
The precise amount of funding that is destined to go to documentary is currently being negotiated, reported Matthews.
The special documentary program was described as being ‘for insanely wonderful ideas’ that can be achieved on lower budgets than this. There is one tranche of these per year, with this year’s deadline being October 2. Ross expects to have 60 or 70 applications vying for the moolah.
Under the Special Documentary Initiatives there is JTV, which closed on April 6 this year. Karin Altmann, former project manager for Screen Australia is the consultant for this round. This is where filmmakers under 35 come in with bizarre, interesting, youth orientated ideas, according to Matthews.
Of the workload in documentary, Ross added that it was mindblowing in that presently they have three hardworking managers juggling over 140 separate projects that have in part been inherited from the three previous agencies, including of course Film Australia.
Regarding TV drama Ross said that nothing much has changed, in fact the guidelines are more or less identical with the previous ones. “We can fund Underbelly and Sea Patrol, DVD revenues are mind-blowingly good. “
He said Screen Australia will fund mini-series or telemovies, and they don’t want to put in more than 40% of the budget, including what they put in for the producer offset.
“Broadcasters are putting up $400,000 per hour for drama as advertising revenues are good and audiences are good,” he said. “So at the moment television drama is holding up well.”
Chris Oliver spoke to the low budget television drama guidelines which were inherited to some extent from the old AFC, where shows like Wilfred and The Librarians were funded. Screen Australia will provide $100,000 per hour up to $400,000 max. The aim is to try out new forms of drama with the broadcasters. “But we don’t want this scheme to reduce broadcaster interest in full budget drama,” he added.
There is an assessment process for this low budget TV drama strand.
Children’s TV again has unchanged guidelines. Again Ross reported that this sector of the market is holding up well at present. Applicants require a broadcaster who is willing to contribute $95,000 per half hour for domestic free to air rights only, a foreign broadcaster and a sales agent needs to be on board. Recipients can get between 30 and 43 per cent of the budget from Screen Australia. “Again we’re not having too much trouble getting this money out the door, there’s a lot of interest in this quality children’s television internationally.”
FEATURE FILMS
Ross explained that this sector is doing relatively well. “Obviously there are two types of feature films now, the offset and the non-offset. Every movie is an offset movie unless it’s under the offset threshold, and if you want to come to Screen Australia you have to utilize the offset as they are looking to do as many productions as we can, and the only way we can do that is by utilizing the offset, cash-flowing the offset and Screen Australia comes along as a top-up.”
He talked about the looming deadline of June 12 for low budget films, which is those under $1.2 million resulting in a QAPE under $1 million, which means it can’t utlize the offset. He said that Screen Australia would hopefully fund two or three features under this program, which don’t need domestic marketplace attachments, although it would be good if you had them.
With the offset, the total amount that can go to any film under the offset is 75% of the budget. “By legislation we can’t top up the budget to any more than 75% of the budget and it will be very rare for Screen Australia to go that high,” he said. They are hoping to fund films to a level of 60 to 65 per cent. “At 75% you’d have to have a really strong cultural remit such as a film like Ten Canoes.”
The assessment process for features has changed, with the merging of the evaluation and marketplace doors, and now there is one door for which you need a domestic distributor, an international sales agent, an idea of where the finance is coming from but the finance plan doesn’t have to be fully formed, and then it can come into the assessment process. At the moment Scott Meek and Tristan Miall are the assessors along with external readers. Every eight or nine weeks a committee meets to decide whether Screen Australia will or will not support the project.
Within the nine-week turnaround the assessors meet with the filmmakers once or twice. “The assessment committee includes the assessors, Ross Matthews, Ruth Harley, any investment managers working on the film, Martha Coleman from development, someone from marketing will be there, and the meeting is extensive and the final decision not taken lightly.”
There was some discussion around the need for a deal memo to be in place. You don’t need a long memo apparently, a one pager is okay. However Bryce Menzies said that even with a one-pager, this means that the deal is then locked in at a time when the distributors and sales agents have the upper hand, and once it’s signed you can’t renegotiate. There was then discussion about therefore whether you needed such deal memos to be signed, or whether the project may be better off with unsigned memos.
Bryce said that at the moment if Scott doesn’t like your project you’re dead in the water, so in a way it would be better to wait to see what he thinks before proceeding into the marketplace.
Dee McLachlan said that it was difficult dealing with a distributor where the budget is changeable depending on what stars will end up being attached to the project.
Ross said he believed the assessment process is currently working well, but the difficulty is the level of the bar that they’re requiring producers to get over. He said that in the next couple of years they’ll have to assess how it has worked. “We have a team of people who take a careful look at the projects, talk to filmmakers, talk at length and meet at length. You can argue about their decision. If it’s a no we’re a bunch of fuckwits, if it’s a yes you’re very happy.”
THE OFFSET
Ross added some detail to the way the offset is working, and there was some discussion. As mentioned earlier there seems a particular difficulty in getting anyone to cash flow an offset that is less than a million dollars, which means documentaries. As well, there is the difficulty that at present you can only claim the offset via the tax mechanism once a year. “Two rounds would be fantastic,” said Julie Marlow from SPAA, who mentioned that this was an issue that SPAA is pursuing, and gaining some traction on the subject.
Ross said that Screen Australia is unable to cashflow the offset as this would be seen as double dipping. Bryce Menzies commented that in the past the AFC was able to cashflow up to around $300,000 when necessary to assist a production, and hoped that Screen Australia might find ways of doing this again in the future. Ross said it was possible to provide bridging loans under some circumstances.
Chris showed a slide demonstrating how a documentary budget could look, showing how the producer got returns in relation to other investors. The slide generated a burst of comment from the floor. Essentially it pointed to the producer’s equity in such a project. But without having the slide to refer to, any further description would be difficult to understand.
Mark Poole
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