Zombie metrics: why Australian cinema just won’t stay dead
In this cross-posting fromThe Conversation Deb Verhoeven of Deakin University argues rumours of the death of Australian cinema based on box office are premature, and we should be using another method to measure success.
By all reports the Australian cinema is dead. Left for dust by the noisy distractions of big budget movie franchises and the smaller diversions of teeny shiny devices.
All you can see in any direction are carefully written epitaphs. The Sydney Morning Herald wants to know why we won’t watch Australian films. Over at News.com.au, they’re worrying that local audiences are snubbing local films. Pedestrian is asking whether there’s any hope at all. And then there’s a doco just released online devoted entirely and without irony to the topic of what’s wrong with Australian films.
And these are just the commentaries that have been published in the past couple of months or so.
Yes you can look at figures and see whether the Australian film won the Golden Goat at the Macedonian Film Festival. But the huge subsidy OZ films get was historically based as a means for Australians to see their own stories on the big screen. This cultural justification has to be the only one for subsidy. It shouldn’t be a manufacturing subsidy like our doomed car industry.
Given this primary rationale for subsidy Australians not paying to see our movies on the bid screen does undermine its future. Creating other criteria to justify our movies may be useful but not a solution.
A long term re-education marketing strategy is really what’s required! Audiences refuse to see Aussie films even before release purely because of the stigma that it is inherently Australian and thus ”simply can’t compare with international product”. Aussie films are mostly bloody good, we need to remind people of that well before the trailers are released! I have a plan…contact me if you can help!
There seems to be a disconnect among newspaper circulation declines and the new EMMA data, which records readership increases. Similarly, when measuring ‘Film Impact Ratings’, there seems to be a disconnect with box office takings. Perhaps I am a little cynical for my age, but this seems like a method to maintain public funding for Australian cinema without acknowledging the fact that nobody (correction, 2.47% of people) will actually bother to watch an Australian film in the cinema.
Instead of supporting Screen Australia the government should support Australian filmmakers.
To hell with Australian audiences!! What would they know? And who needs their stinking $22 for a ticket?
The accents are a problem – US accents are more distant and escapist. We’re about to make a horror film and there’s no way we’re going to use Aussie accents.
But I believe the real problem in this country are the scripts. Producers don’t seem to realise that a great script is 80% of the task done. If they did they wouldn’t be offering a pissy 2.5% of total budget to scriptwriters. That tells me they think a script is 2.5% of the film. When producers start getting serious about the actual story – the stuff already imagined,on the page – and start more paying for it, writers will put the effort in that’s required. It can take 2 years to write a script you’d be lucky to get 20 grand for in this country.
Ticket sales gauge a film’s success. Why use gobbledygook to say otherwise?