Should funding bodies be held responsible when films fail at the box office?
Screen Australia head of development Martha Coleman, Omnilab Media’s Christopher Mapp, Sony Pictures Australia’s Stephen Basil-Jones and producer Al Clark discuss whether film funding bodies should share the responsibility when a project fails at the box office.
Taken from the first Encore Question Time in Sydney on November 30, 210.
Cheers to Encore for posting these insightful interviews and to the panel for getting up there and expressing their frustrations with an industry swamped with content. This kind of transparency needs to be encouraged more often. But it does seem that the process of accountability seems to be one of pass the parcel. In an industry where nobody knows anything it is all guess work…but how do we narrow down the percentage of guess work? I think we need to produce more approachable, diverse screenwriting programs that are concept and mentored driven. The current crop of programs just see aspiring screenwriters jumping through a series of hoops and obstacles and ultimately in the end doing what most writers do…give up or move O/S
So how are we going to increase the writing talent pool? How are we going to move on from the anger constantly thrown at the funding agencies and the damage done to the Oz Film/TV brand. I think this reversal will be driven by quality ideas backed with quality writing and a shift away from shelling out funds to creative teams that have a track record of delivery, but not the kind of delivery audiences want to see and engage with. It seems sometimes like a whole generation of talent is just going to pass on by with a limited voice… this generational passing driven simply by the greed of a connected few…wouldn’t that be a cultural shame?