Would Bridesmaids make Screen NSW’s cut?

My god..who writes this Bullshit?

“we believe that a strong core story is the key to a project’s success.” Really..if that’s the case where are the successive hits year after year with the “strong core story”.. I’d like to see these productions I seem to have missed them.
…it’s much easier to see what’s working or not working in a core story when it’s in short document form.” Is it? How so?

Why do they believe that..how have they arrived at that justification..”we believe”? What do you believe? That you can arrive at a point of deduction and say this film will work because the “core story is obvious”. I am fed up with people who don’t write screenplays telling those that do what will work and why..the fact remains that those that keep saying that the core story needs to be obvious wouldn’t know how to construct a core story effectively or make it play dramatically..if they did they wouldn’t be pushing a desk..they’d be out there in the filmmaking jungle collaborating.
We are never going to get out of the thick swamp of industry/audience apathy and give audiences what they want..which is fresh innovative interesting, entertaining provocative stories to base the collaboration which is filmmaking upon if we go hunting for easy targets with obvious core stories. Can we just put an end to this jingoistic nonsense? its not funny anymore, we need to get serious about a vital element of our creative culture. What we need is a national writing life support system based around identifying writing talent and developing those skills to construct ideas that help contribute $6.5 Billion Dollars to this economy and help employ some 40,000 people. I’m not talking about one off grants and handing out bird seed in the hope we’ll trap an elephant..I’m talking about new funding programs and ambitious perspectives that recognize and address old systemic problems in our industry. The fact remains if you had a WOW document..you’d just get on a plane to the USA ASAP. Why would you bother trying to peddle it here..take it to the bidders market and see how it rolls.The fact remains that this puerile approach to narrative appraisal might make people with backgrounds in accounting and marketing sleep soundly at night, no writer worth their salt is on some moronic safari looking for his/her “core story”. The cold hard reality of writing quality is that’s its hard and often arrives from the subconscious. Don’t believe me..check out old Cormac having an Oprah moment http://www.oprah.com/oprahsboo.....ious-Video

” This becomes painfully clear to any writer who attempts to orally tell his story (screenwriting is closer to the oral tradition than it is to literature). You start to tell a story, try to catch the listener’s attention, then watch as Ollie Overwhelmed packages your story and places it in a box. He has seen so much storyline that he has the boxes already prepared. Just drop quote marks around the premise and file it: oh, that’s the “two couples on a road trip” movie or the “six men in a lifeboat” film. I know that film. Ollie’s mind operates like that of story editor. “And then he goes to her place,” you the screenwriter say – “and he finds her hanging naked from a hook in the bathroom,” Ollie the listener thinks: I know that film.”

“Storytelling began as ceremony and evolved into ritual. It was commercialized in the middle ages, became big business in the 19th century and an international industry in the 20th. Today it is the ubiquitous wallpaper of the postmodern era. As screenwriters, we struggle with our own success. We have wallpapered our world and now we can’t get anyone to notice the picture we just hung. This is not a big deal. Not a crisis. The “exhaustion of narrative” is not a standalone development. It is one of a set of crises that afflict current cinema.”

-Paul Schrader
( you might know that minor film he wrote called: Taxi Driver)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film.....ig-brother

@: 1.08 John Cleese Talking about the hardships of writing:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cult.....lty-towers

I believe..we need some real creative ambition and an end to the quest for certainty and predictability in our creative industries and start embracing the fact that nobody knows much..and that writers if given a little might give back a lot.

Doug is my hero. I’m committed to telling stories in this country. I’m a screenwriter first, a director second. I realized success in this country, even the world, means cobbling a band of like-minds together. Whether they’re from the filmmaking jungle or just enthusiasts of expression/art/creativity because, we’re the taste makers of the world.

Baby step by baby step we’re going to build and foster people who think like us, like Doug. And have the balls/talent to back it up. Start a conversation with us. We come from all different mediums and walks. We’re just starting the movement and under no misconception it’ll happen overnight or in the volume that a government institution can deliver. But apathy is acceptance.

Doug and anyone else for whom this rings true. Reach out…

hello@reposocial.org

Yeah, it seems to me that what most non creative people think is the secret of success is a very, very blatant, almost embarrassingly blatant, appeal to cheesey values like cool, crazy, irreverent smartarse characters with loads of ATTITUDE who eventually discover that the most important thing in life is FAMILY, as represented by Mum/Dad/cuddles and enough sentiment to drown a greeting card factory in the dialog. I mean, dear God, characters in most movies these days could just whip out a card each and take turns reading them to each other. If I hear one more voice over on a trailer telling me “these three zany characters will do ANYTHING for their family” I will seriously puke. God rest writers and directors like Kubrick, Hitchcock and Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling who liked nothing better than to chill us to the core with cold, unsentimental,perfectly pitched nightmare tales about the dark sides of human nature. Can’t have that these days. If it aint calculated shmaltz and post-modern posturing, it seems the money men just aren’t interested. But I agree with the suggestion that if it is to be, it is up to me. So yeah, we need to just get busy and make our own films…somehow!

Look at least Screen NSW are actively trying to do something I suppose. Although I do feel this obsession with core story and wheeling out the platitudes of screenplay guru’s who collectively have never really produced much in the way of produced screenplays but “know what you need to make a great script” (does anybody else see the disconnect here? if you know so much, go and write something) This seems to be a little similar to the old and now defunct New Feature writers program that just vanished and then reappeared as a going away party for the outgoing CEO at Film Victoria, replaced with… you betcha..nothing. The mind boggling vision..take it away and replace it with zero. Its a pretty arid environment down at Film Victoria and as a result of this $45,000 legs up apparently you need written permission in triplicate from the Premier to use the Film Victoria printer, such is the hang over of regime change down there. Maybe with a new Board and a new CEO something will change, although nobodies holding their breath and Ted seems committed to doing utterly nothing..anywhere on anything..period. Great leadership skills “I stand for nothing and as a result of this I am committed to doing nothing..anybody for golf?”. Hopefully Tony Abbott will get elected and we can have a PM who is against everything and stands for nothing and we can be the only country in the world killing it economically (environment included) who decided to do NOTHING!!! Great anecdotes for the grand kiddies “what did you do in the great economic boom Grandpa?” “Oh well..come to think of it nothing” “Really?” “Okay I watched Master Chef..but not The Renovators..that sucked”…”Did anybody do anything?” “No..we pretty much had successive leadership that carried on like they were in a methadone clinic..so nobody did nothing..we just scratched our ass in front of the Plasma”
The thing is the landscape for making a living out of writing in this country has always been impossible..talent seems to be a wish washy attribute the ability to network your ass off seems to be the real driving force. So what we get is safe ideas…or ground breaking ideas like “Wild Boys”..now that’s TV Gold isn’t it? I can see the core story one page pitch on that one ” Wild Boys follows four rad dudes, who have little respect for the law as they battle the rich and the greedy and battle the emotional turmoil of their own black hearts”. “Is it set in Western Sydney?” “No Silly its set on the Goldfields” “What Crown Casino?” “No like back in the old days” What the 80″s? “No like way back when we road around on horses and shit” “OHHHH I see”.. core story genius and the subsequent production is mind boggling in its execution making David Milch the creator of Deadwood look like a sad cliche riddled shadow of his former self.
Gotta love a core story..its the key that unlocks the door that more often than not remains closed to the silly confused writer trying to tap into his subconscious. (Where did I put that funnel?) As we all know writers are not to be trusted, they’re probably drunk most of the time, or annoying some busy Producer working on Wild Boys II/Gold Fever (soundtrack by Spandau Ballet “Because you are Gold!!!!) ..I mean what do they do in their rooms those writers..write?
I doubt it..wankers

Sorry..bit of a typo in there..that should read “Everybody did nothing..we just scratched our ass in front of the Plasma”..And while I’m on the subject..who here is in favour of getting rid that silly southern cross and union jack and replacing it all with some kind of tapestry crafted 3D Plasma screen as our national coat of arms? In years to come we will be able to celebrate our national cultural apathy and inept leadership during the boom times as one of the hardest fought campaigns of the 21st century!

Right. So funding bodies should give away money for people to simply develop their work without any real solid ideas or story? So then only people with a track record would get funded thus cutting out the nurturing of the next generation.

Again we have ANOTHER piece from James which seems to want to blame the system rather than address the lack of skill in submissions. Is he paid by Encore just to stir the pot?

The bottom line is: if your script is brilliant someone will want to make it people are desperate to see a good script and the reality is they are rare; if you want to be a writer you will spend hours of unpaid work writing – no one owes you a living; and if you think you should be just given money without anything concrete to show for it then you’re delusional.

Screen NSW has been sacrificed in order to fund public infrastructures – it’s sad but means people really need to come up with other ways to be paid for development and also, hopefully, be more critical of their own skills in the process. We might then find James quoting successful Australian writers rather than foreign ones.

Doug…let me tell you a wee story about me. I dunno if this will resonate, inspire or just make people think I’m obviously a bit stupid like Ed Wood’s Aussie reincarnation. But here goes: I have never believed in giving in to apathy when you have a passion of some kind. Back in the late 80s (yes, that long ago!) I had an idea for a show that was a lot like The X Files. After this idea was rejected by Film Victoria, HSV 7 and the ABC, I made an abortive attempt to shoot an independent feature based on my idea. When this didn’t work out so well, I made my own pilot (not great, sadly, but got it made) and finally I made a 5 part series for Channel 31 which went to air in 1999. In 2000 another pilot was produced, again the “industry” seemed utterly uninterested. Then in 2006, I joined YouTube. With YouTube, I reformatted my show into a web series. Now this was really a sandbox, very trial and error, real home-made stuff…but it caught on enough to attract YouTube collaborators from England, Italy, the United States, Canada and led to four spinoff webseries from my concept, two of which ran to dozens of episodes over several seasons. And in that time, I saw the film making techniques of all involved growing and improving. This year I became a YouTube Partner which means I am supposed to eventually recieve money from Google ads on my videos. Oh and I got 250,000 views for my films on YouTube, which is not much compared to videos of women in bikinis or comedy skits, but a lot considering it’s no budget film making. Most significantly, I learned a lot about film making on a nothing of a budget and have recently submitted a film to Sundance. So, I guess what I’m saying is, I see no need for apathy. But it would certainly be good to have support and resources to do bigger and better and more professional films. Finally…I shot a short film yesterday and added it to my YouTube channel…it was more rewarding than sitting on my ass watching tele.

Sarah…I think you missed the whole point of this article. Its not about giving away money without solid ideas, its about being able to isolate those solid ideas and nurture them over the long haul. I mean who is doing the appraisal? How qualified are they? The real problem is writers are given very little respect in this industry or funding, development programs arrive (often with good intentions) and then they simply disappear due to government cutbacks etc, more often than not never to be replaced. I think the real problem is we run the risk of getting ourselves into some very tricky territory if we start to think that a one size fits all policy will somehow kickstart an industry screaming out for great scripts. What we are reaping now is the harvest of decades of educational neglect with regard to screenwriting and developed scripts are thin on the ground as a result. This combined with script gurus fudging the waters as everybody runs for that gold rush of 120 pages. If you search around the web you will see a tonne of advice from producers in the USA saying they run a mile from those McKee driven sermons where the inciting incident happens on page 20 etc and everything is wrapped in a petite narrative bow. I know lots a very talented writers working coffee machines, teaching, builders labourer’s etc…nobody expects a free ride. What is hard after 8 hours of doing one its hard to do the other. We still have serious problems identifying talent and nurturing it through the generations. Mediocrity more often than not is rewarded, while real talent is passed by. The real problem is we don’t know as a society how to really appraise the hard work our creative minds do in this country. Unless we are digging it out of the ground, creative perspectives doesn’t seem to have worth (unless it goes onto some crappy TV show, of which we seem to excel at producing. I’m so sick of people asking why our TV is so crap)..we need to start looking at this problem as the root cause of a faltering $6 Billion dollar industry employing 40,000 people. Lets just be honest and say that it is impossible to make a respectable living in this industry as writer and see how we can address this..offering writers funding programs that have longevity and are sustainable and are quick to identify existing and emerging talent. I’ve seen a lot of very talented people walk away from a career as a writer. Some might say they didn’t have the passion, I’d say they got fed up seeing mediocrity force fed as quality and found the endless grovelling and networking too draining. Personally I applaud Screen NSW for implementing this program but at the same time the cynic in me wonders how sustainable it will be and what will it produce. As an industry we seem hesitant with the ability to be brutally honest with ourselves, we produce crap TV (sometimes a gem comes along) and say its cutting edge or genius and then also turn around and say that our local TV is a great training ground for professionals in the film industry. Not for writing it isn’t, more often than not you pick up bad habits and then try and transplant them into a feature, with woeful results. We seem to have inherited that horrible trend of treating writers like crap and thinking we have an endless supply of them, well we don’t and writing is a craft that takes a long time to nurture.
We tell stories to entertain and understand our place in the world, in tandem with our sense of the human condition, writers are a major part of that storytelling process, the funny thing is they only need a small amount of belief from others to keep writing.

Sarah

How I wish I was paid by Encore to stir the pot! Paid by anyone to stir the pot! Paid, period! Like many of my fellow screenwriters I am in this profession, practicing my art, my craft, because I love it. I don’t do it for money, that’s fore sure. Haven’t earnt a cent in three years as a screenwriter, though that’s about to change. Have supported myself doing menial $20 an hour jobs. Such is life. No complaints. However, I would like, when I have spent months in unpaid work on a screenplay, for it to be read by someone who actually knows what they are doing. There are some terrific Reader/assessors – not because they like your project but because they know their cinema history, they understand craft, they have done their homework, they have paid their dues, they have thought long and hard about what it means to be a screenwriter and how to write screenplays. They have track records. But there are others (too many) who really haven’t got a clue. They have little or no experience as filmmakers and for the life of me I don’t understand how they got their jobs! Maybe they forked out $1000 and did a three day Writer’s Guild course in how to be a script assessor!
As for stirring the pot I do wish that there were more people doing so – throwing out their ideas and being prepared to have these challenged and changed by others who see things differently.

I have a funny suspicion Sarah is a film buracrat which explains her attitude to writers – a bunch of free loaders who think they deserve public handouts. My problem is not the writers but the buracrats. They are paid ‘handouts’ (salaries) on a massive scale year after year for greenlighting bad movies [comment edited for legal reasons]. They have no or little industry success to their name yet expect these ‘handouts’ plus superanuation and holiday pay. There is no accountablity to their surreal/incompetent decisions yet they remain, constantly justifying themselves and blaming filmmakers and writers for the failures they finance. And wrong Sarah, a good script doesn’t necessarily get made, it shows you have little knowledge of how the industry works. FYI the main reason good scripts are not made is because buracrats don’t know one when they read it, as proven by their track record. .

Replace them all and start again, I say. Give someone else a go at the trough and make it 2 years max, then they can go back and join the real film industry.

[Comment edited for legal reasons] There is an opportunity for real change. Not just in Screen NSW but in Screen Australia as well, where the real problem is. SA needs major reform and senior management/ board must go. New people and new approaches, then perhaps the toxic environment of us and them, closed door decisons, secretive deals can be washed away with new people and new programs.. But I somehow don’t think that will happen. They will fight tooth and nail to stay on, I mean they deserve those handouts, don’t they? Who’s the freeloader now, Sarah?

Sam..look that idea of sacking people and dumping everything on funding bodies is a tired old argument that really isn’t constructive or stacks up at all, its a boring argument that actually does more harm than good. What do you gain from sacking people..not much? You downgrade a lot of networks built over time and none of that approach is a positive. Nobody goes off to work to make dam sure they do the worst job they can, if they do they are pretty quickly found out. I read a lot of local scripts, I don’t read many that are good, take chances or dare to be innovative. We have a narrative problem in this country (littered with friggin hobbyists.. fuck I can’t stand these people they clog the arteries of everything, after years of hating their careers and getting a golden egg they want to “get creative”..fine..get a number and stand in line your ten year apprenticeship starts now.. ” But but..I’ve got this great idea for a film”..no you don’t that’s what we call an anecdote..now get writing!) and we have a problem with people being able to honestly look at what they are creating..honestly, taking criticism right between the eyes. Those writers that are highly self critical, keep going back to the coal face again and again, sometimes abandoning the whole thing after months of work are thin on the ground..most writers have one idea and they suckle the fuck out of it until its so obese and cliche riddled that its just a confused mess. Trust me I’ve been there, you need to be brutal with your writing like a pirate on crack. Most writers don’t want to learn craft they want to “express themselves” ( fine..get naked eat some magic mushrooms and go and run around a field or something to that effect, play an instrument, take up painting anything) and every half baked idea that floats through their consciousness. Most writers feel that a orgiastic sermon with Mckee, reading a few successful films or just watching the DVD and writing to the heroes journey template should translate into success. Most writers don’t research and most writers I meet write such wooden dialogue it makes you wonder if all they watch is mainstream OZ TV. Creating engaging three dimensional characters? No way..cardboard cut outs thanks very much. I understand why people blame funding bodies..I get it..throwing a $45,000 piss up was a shocking waste of limited funds, arrogant in the extreme. But I still don’t see that sacking people is the answer. Having a transparent and accountable funding system that listens to the industry is the key and I do feel that is happening but very slowly. We haven’t got it as bad as we think and people need to move beyond this childish focus of theatrical release…there are huge opportunities opening up for filmmakers around the world. Financing is tight in this post GFC world. Personally I think more writers should get off their arses and make lots of smaller films..current camera tech is just staggering in terms of what you can do. Make films learn how hard it is to make them..doesn’t seem to complex does it?
You need to look at the root cause the real problem and that is a lack of a broader and sustainable funding program centered around identifying talent and nurturing that talent for the long haul based around consistent performance. A funding program for writers with real creative vision and a real sense of craft, not writers writing to what they think will pander to an audience with template core story nonsense but writers who can write across genre’s and are prepared to collaborate. The screenplay is just one part of the filmmaking process, its where the idea starts and a good screenplay sets the scene for a good creative foundation, its not art its an invitation to create what might be a piece of art depending on genre etc..
I’ve never been a fan of sacking people and never will be, you lose more than you gain..I’m a fan of learning from mistakes and improving a system whereby all players are honest about their talents and willingness to collaborate across the full filmmaking spectrum (we’re all in it together)..we need to weed out those who are here for power and prestige (they keep flooding into the industry like its D-Day and they usually always hate writers, I always wonder where these people come from?Toorak, Brighton, Malvern the Northern beaches? Who cares? Fuck em) and replace these wankers with people who are passionate about cinema..they are out there and a lot of them do work for funding bodies..you’d be surprised.

This probably sounds like a sweeping general comment, but it seems to me that these kinds of discussions are always focused on looking at the problem when maybe the real answer is to look at the place we want to be, the place where this is not an issue and work back from there, work out how we get to that place. And maybe these bodies will then follow or fold from irrelevence.

Doug, I disagree.

These people have been there for years and years and we’ve seen the results. The system needs reform and needs it now. It is not about individuals, it is about a culture. These so called experts haven’t improved the film industry one bit, infact they have damaged it and in the process created one, if not, THE most boring film industry in the world. I’m not talking tv or docos, I’m talking – movies.

Having an entrenched power elite, untouchable and arrogant has silenced people and fostered a degrading and self defeating cycle of self censorship. No ones going to waste another 3 years on a script that will never get funded. Writers put in stuff they think the buracrats will like.

The result is cinema run by government departments and their guidelines, pretty frightening but true. Conversely, only the government can change this, appealing to the buracracies is like asking the police to investigate themselves. These structures are built to weed out dissent and defend their continued existence.

So, people should be replaced with others who are then put on limited contracts. Why should those with little or no talent who have been there FOREVER be the only ones earning a living in this industry and be lording over real practioners. Buracrats are generally those that can’t cut it ior never were in the industry, and have opted for the safety and comfort of a career telling others what works and what doesn’t . The buracracy is a resource that should benefit everyone, allowing practioners to have time out, to earn a living for once, to have a breather. And to bring a different and individual perspective to organisations that have fossilised with fear and incompetence.

It’s time for change not only in the assessing process but in the entire way things are done. We have buracracies giving out millions in a system riddled with conflict of interest issues, situations that wouldn’t be tolerated in the corporate world but rife in our little, insular and secretive industry.

So I disagree with the softly, softly approach. Senior management needs to be replaced, the culture changed and accountability and corporate transparency instilled. There should be an embracing of industry members, an encouragement of different views and debate. And a ban on all the LA script guru drivel from has- beens.

Most editors are failed writers – but so are most writers. – T.S. Eliot

Sam-Look some of what you are saying here is valid, but I simply don’t think sacking people is the key. That said internal reviews based around past performance need to be put in place, I’m sure they are, if not the government funding system is more screwed than I thought. I can’t think of anywhere on planet earth that your performance isn’t reviewed to some degree. Its the age of economic rationalization and middle micro management. I do think filmmakers need to shoulder an equal amount of the blame combined with a cynical approach to Producing carried about by a few. There has been a culture developing in Victoria that has seen a handful of fellow filmmakers getting rewarded for making uninteresting social realist tosh..”what a coincidence,you’re sitting on the development board? I mean its that kind of rub your nose in it arrogance that has really bred a healthy sense of cynicism amongst a younger generation of filmmakers, thankfully they’ve jumped ship..not before they helped organize $45,000 legs up, that was more reflective of the siege of Singapore in WW2 with the Liberal Party playing the part of Imperial Japan, than a going away party..they knew the curtains were drawing so why not trash a funding program and spend it on champers for one last hoorah..you couldn’t explain to these people how wrong that is, they’d look at you like your were speaking a foreign language, they simply feel entitled and its that sense of entitlement that has got to go, hopefully it has, I remain unconvinced. Still you have to look at what’s being put on the table, I think the All Media fund from SA is an encouraging sign, ambitious funding programs like this that are looking at the changing media landscape are encouraging. Seeing films like Hail and Burning Man developed make me think that maybe we might be getting some traction and challenging stories are being developed. We still have this lingering problem with writers and their ability to develop compelling narratives in this country, I was at a seminar a few years back and was just shocked at the level of ignorance of the average writer in the room with regard to some of the most basic principles of storytelling or current/past productions that were of relevance. They had little or utterly no interest in wanting to know anything about much except their personal sense of expression, I think maybe one of them had been on a film set, none had made a film or attempted to. They all thought they would write something, it would be great and some talented Director would come grovelling to them because he’d heard how riveting their screenplay was. It was hell, like being on Australia’s Got Talent (really have we?) of X Factor.. Juvenile in the extreme. I keep meeting this mindset or I meet the poor screenwriter who can’t get a network going and doesn’t want to change a word of his script. Personally I think if you love cinema and you want to make films, you’ll find a way to make them. You’ll be director/screenwiter/producer and editor if you have to, the technology is there. You’ve never had a better shot at getting noticed. Actors are always looking to be involved in a good script. The hard thing is to be honest with yourself and say “is this good enough?”. I know this from experience, if you can make a good short and keep making them, year in and year out, you will get noticed, just don’t be a one trick pony, write something that takes chances, you run out of chances when you stop taking them and in this business you make your own luck. I wrote a lot of screenplays for zero financial gain and still might if I thought the project was worthwhile. Did I learn a lot? Fuck yeah! Was it hard? Of course! What creative act in life isn’t? So going on a a hunt to weed out the infidels I think will be counter productive, that said, putting too much power in the hands of a few is never a good thing…but that will change, there is a quite revolution going on out there and technology is driving it. What won’t change is the fundamentals of story and spending years in the writing wilderness trying to learn craft…some are quicker than others, it all takes time, honesty and commitment and an ability to listen to that inner voice “is this good enough?”
Most never ask that question, most say “I’m good enough, listen to me world..notice me” Its the age we live in..the age of greed and omnipresent sense of self entitlement mixed with that unhealthy dose of the over inflated sense of self. Writing is a journey of self discovery, people often confuse this journey with the journey of shameless self promotion..if you’re on that journey…good luck..you’ll need it.

Doug, I’m with you re ‘sacking’. Too emotive a word for starters. Smacks of ‘us’ and ‘them’. There is no ‘us’ and them’. There is only ‘us’. We sink or swim together – bureaucrats and filmmakers alike. At the moment we’re sinking. You’re right also that no-one goes to work thinking “How can I fuck up the film industry,” but then no-one sets out to make a bad film either. Fact is there are good filmmakers, mediocre filmmakers and bad filmmakers and the same applies for film bureaucrats. The trick is (with both filmmakers and bureaucrats) to nurture the good ones and let the mediocre and bad ones fall by the wayside. In the case of filmmakers this tends to happen anyway when they have made a sufficient number of turkeys to no longer be able to hide their lack of talent – no matter who their friends in high places may be. The same does not apply for film bureaucrats. It should. The answer is simple. Don’t renew the contracts of those who have backed a string of turkeys. Give them 2 or 3 years to prove that they know what they are doing and if it is demonstrably obvious that they don’t, don’t renew their contracts. So, how do we know if a film bureaucrat is underperforming or hopeless? Assess assessors in a way similar to the way screenplays are assessed. Project Manager A writes glowing reports on three films that no-one wants to see? Please explain. If explanation doesn’t stand up, its back into the industry fro this Project Manager. Give someone else a go – preferably someone with experience. Assessing Project Managers. Readers etc requires someone within the funding body who is sufficiently detached and objective to be able to make such assessments without fear or favour. If their best friend doesn’t perform so well, sorry, no renewed contract. If Project Manager A or B has been with Screen Australia forever, this in no reason to keep them on if they are underperforming. Fresh blood and new ideas are what we need and this means a constant flow of experienced filmmakers moving into creative decision making positions (Project Managers, Readers etc.) for a short time and then back out into the real world to sink or swim with the rest of us. The same applies for Investment Managers but that’s a whole different story and I do wish that someone would write something that opens the subject up for debate.

Apply the same criteria to Investment Managers as Screen Australia applies to screenwriters – a percentile mark based on much the same criteria that SA uses. If an Investment Manager has a history of making recommendations to invest in films that prove to be neither bums-on-seats or critical acclaim successes don’t renew their contracts. It’s not as though there is any shortage of experienced producers who could step in and take their place on relatively short-term contracts. How long have some of these Investment Managers (or whatever they were called before SA) been in the powerful positions they are? Why is it that they are more or less rusted on and seem destined to be there forever – regardless of track record? Move them on and give a new set a chance to bring some fresh ideas to the organization.

There’s was no fallout from A Heartbeat Away, anybody who greenlit that..doesn’t know a thing about audiences or cinema.

In a perfect world writers wouldn’t have to deal with these people (bureaucrats) – conveying creative concepts to non creatives is a big ask (believe me I know ) – no these are not the people we should be talking too – approaching.
As for Investment Managers?
No IM worth their salt would ever consider becoming a bureaucrat – although given SA head currently earns considerably more that the PM – this could change.

BRV.

Landmark – definately worth a look at (recommend) for any aspiring writers in classical genre – note structure – pace & score.
Would it make NSW cut.
That a serious question?

Here’s another (much later) standout varation in this genre worth a look.
Check out US prod JAG – note quality visual presentation – lighting & sets. (currently showing free 2 air D TV).

Updated condenced version of BR – telemovie “Vanity Fair” – compare speed of story with BR? This thing moves…