Given that Graeme Mason is consulting with
filmmakers and seems open to new ways of doing things, here's one suggestion as
to how, in this digital age, a new approach to script development could work.
One of the arguments presented over the past few years as to why Screen Australia keeps communication with Screenwriters to a minimum is that:
“It’s just too expensive to
talk with screenwriters face to face!”
The argument against talking with screenwriters,
even on the telephone, is that the sheer bulk of applications makes this form
of dialogue too expensive for Screen Australia. This argument
sounds persuasive unless, that is, we fail to take into account the
millions of Screen Australia dollars invested in the production of films based
on screenplays that are not nearly ready to go into production. And very often
(all too often) quite clearly not ready to go into production.
“Might the quality of our
screenplays be improved if Screen Australia communicated more effectively with
screenwriters?”
How much would a five or ten minute telephone
conversation cost Screen Australia if Project Managers were to call each and
every applicant and have a brief (say ten minute) conversation with them?
I don’t know how many script development
applications Screen Australia receives each year and can’t find out from Screen
Australia, (I have asked but this information is, it appears, classified!) but
let’s work on the presumption that it is 1000 and that each applicant is given
the opportunity to have a ten minute conversation with the Project Manager
whose job it is to tell them that their application has been unsuccessful and,
briefly, why. That’s 10,000 minutes.
Such an exercise would involve 165 hours or 23
days of ‘extra’ work for Screen Australia Project Managers. Divide that by 3
(presuming three Project Managers) and you arrive at 55 hours per annum each or
roughly 7 working days per Project Manager. Working on $350 a day for Project
Managers (an uneducated guess), this works out at roughly $58, 000 a year to
engage in brief conversations with all screenwriters.
These are ballpark figures, obviously. The sums
may add up to more than $58,000. But even if the figure added up to $100,000,
this sum needs to be viewed in the context of the amount of money Screen
Australia invests each year in productions based on screenplays it has played a
significant role in developing that do not find any substantial audience on any
platform.
There are a whole range of reasons why
individual films do not find the audience for which they were intended but a
significant reason, usually, is that the screenplay was predictable,
derivative, lacklustre or just plain bad. How and why it is that second rate
screenplays receive Screen Australia production funding remains a mystery to
many of us! Is it because those whose job it is to ‘green light’ projects
cannot tell the difference between high quality and low quality (or
underdeveloped) screenplays? Or is it because the screenplays that are ‘green
lit’ are the best available for funding? If the latter be the case, why not spend
another $50,000 solving yet-to-be-solved script problems? Or $100,000. Whether
a screenplay is destined for wide screen cinemascope or a mobile phone, it is
not going to find an audience if the screenplay is bad.
From a Screen Australia numbers crunching point
of view the question is:
“Might this $100,000 (or
whatever the sum is) that could be invested in communicating with screenwriters
result in an improvement in the quality of our screenplays? Or would this
$100,000 be better spent fully funding one ‘dangerous’ low budget feature
film?”
No doubt my fellow filmmakers would bring many
different perspectives to this question. And these should, I believe, be
discussed and debated. Perhaps filmmakers are quite happy (or resigned) to
receive form letters only and brief notes from anonymous Reader/Assessor/Project
Managers? Perhaps they do not want to engage in dialogue with Screen Australia
about their projects. I don’t know because there have been no for a this past
five years in which such questions have been discussed. At least no fora in
which Screen Australia gathered all interested filmmakers in one place (in the
major film centres) and listened to their suggestions as to how Screen
Australia might improve on the delivery of its services in a way that improves
the quality of our screenplays and hence our films. (This is changing, this month,
with the consultations being organized by Screen Australia – a great step
forward.)
I am sure that the various guilds and
associations make their submissions and their leaders lobby Screen Australia
but all such bodies have their own agendas and their own agenda is, quite
obviously and appropriately, to get a better deal for their members. What I am
suggesting is that there be fora in which all filmmakers are invited to
discuss, debate and to toss around ideas that relate to Australian film and
television in general and to how a particular policy (or lack thereof) impacts
on their particular sector. (We all, after all, want to make films that
connect with audiences. We are not doing so. The reasons for this may be many
but first and foremost, I think, it is because we fall down badly in the script
department.)
Screen Australia could take the lead here and,
at least twice a year, organize an open forum in each of Australia’s filmic
centres – along the lines of the consultations occurring this month. Whilst the
discussion could be free-ranging it could start with a debate about a
particular topic. The one I have mentioned here, for instance, could be one topic.
“Would filmmakers prefer to
have the opportunity to talk with Project Managers about their projects or to
see the money this would require (in terms of wages for Screen Australia staff)
spent on production?”
Have a debate. Two teams of three. Five minutes
each to speak. That’s 30 minutes. Open the debate to the floor. Another 30
minutes. Let any and everyone speak for up to two minutes – either in the form
of statements of their own or in response to what a member of either team has
posited in response to the debate topic. Have a good and strong moderator that
keeps comments and questions to the two minute limit.
This hour of debate may well take an hour and a
half. Fair enough. Time well spent, I would suggest. Then, at the end of the
formal debate, an hour of mingling with glasses of wine etc.
My suspicion is that two and a half hours spent
in this fashion twice a year would yield enormous benefits to all of us. We
would all acquire a much better idea of what our fellow filmmakers are
thinking; of what ideas are floating around. Screen Australia staff would be
able to glean how well (or badly) SA policies were are impacting on and
perceived by the people who have to live with, work with, them. The ‘us’ and
‘them’ barriers between filmmakers and film bureaucrats would be lessened –
with both sides more appreciative of the problems the other side faces.
From the informal discussions that break out on
Facebook it is clear that there is no shortage of filmmakers with great ideas
that could be discussed in such fora. None of us has a monopoly on good ideas
but as we all know, in the collaborative field in which we work, it is the
meeting of minds, the sharing of ideas, the clash of different aesthetic and
artistic sensibilities that great ideas emerge. The ideas which, when
translated onto the screen (big or small) render in the viewer a “Wow!”
response.
This is what we all want and need – for
audience’s jaws to drop when they engage with the stories we tell. For them to
be able to say, to themselves and their friends, “Wow!”
I have no idea if my fellow filmmaker
screenwriters would prefer to be able to communicate with Project Managers or
if they would see this as an exercize in futility? I would sure like to find
out. This applies to many another topic that goes to the heart of what we do as
story-tellers, why we bother, whether what we do is important and whether it
matters, in this new digital era we live in, that we tell Australian stories
for Australian audiences.
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