Jump to content

UK industry to create films people actually want to watch


Phil Rhodes

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 130
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Premium Member
The UK has made some great movies (The King's Speech comes to mind)

Not a British film; it was largely funded by Bob and Harvey, and the money goes back to the US. The manager at my local Electric Picture Palace looked shocked when I approached her during a "Support British Film!" promotion and suggested that the first thing they should do is to actually start carrying some British films.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[/size][/color]

Not a British film; it was largely funded by Bob and Harvey, and the money goes back to the US. The manager at my local Electric Picture Palace looked shocked when I approached her during a "Support British Film!" promotion and suggested that the first thing they should do is to actually start carrying some British films.

 

At least it passes as a British film Phil, the subject matter is British. That's a lot more than can be said for the crap TeleFilm Canada puts their money into. What was Canadian about "Eastern Promises?" It had a "famous" Canadian director so they pour money into it. The list of these types of movies TeleFilm funds is very long indeed. Same for "A Dangerous Method," where did the word "Canada" ever appear?

 

Would you believe TeleFilm puts millions of CDN tax payer money into movies not even directed by Canadians!! Canada is clearly the only country in the world that would do this because foreign directors see the big, "Canadians Are Patsies" sticker on our foreheads.

 

Also, the UK Lottery logo appears at the head of that film, so regardless of how much the Weinsteins put in, there is still some British money in that movie.

 

R,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[/size][/color]

One of the eight million, as I understand it. 12.5% is a pretty flimsy basis on which to claim something's from somewhere.

 

Yes, it would be interesting to see where the copyright on that movie is.

 

R,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Yes, it would be interesting to see where the copyright on that movie is.

 

R,

So have you got something in the works to redress the balance?

Have you considered a Canadian-Austrian-Czech-Lithuanian-Romanian-Moroccan-Zimbabwean-Iraqi-Afghan-Cayman-Brazilian-Bolivian-Macau-New Guinea-Antofagastan Co-Production?

 

Canada's real problem is, you peaked too soon with "Anne of Green Gables". You left no "ceiling" for greater excellence...

 

Seriously, a real but greatly overlooked potential growth market is China co-productions. Much to everybody's surprise, the two Iron Man movies were massively popular in Mainland China, and according to the local press, Marvel are talking about setting part of the third Iron Man Movie there, in conjunction with a local production company. They can't get enough Western movies it seems, since "cultural" standards were relaxed.

 

I never actually made it to Mainland China on my recent trip to Hong Kong, but there was saturation advertising for The Avengers in Hong Kong. It would have been interesting to see what there was on the mainland.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So have you got something in the works to redress the balance?

Have you considered a Canadian-Austrian-Czech-Lithuanian-Romanian-Moroccan-Zimbabwean-Iraqi-Afghan-Cayman-Brazilian-Bolivian-Macau-New Guinea-Antofagastan Co-Production?

 

I just submitted this plan to TeleFilm, they were all set to green-light until they realized Romania is not a real country according to their staff.

 

R,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

I just submitted this plan to TeleFilm, they were all set to green-light until they realized Romania is not a real country according to their staff.

 

R,

Well OK, what about a Canadian-Austrian-Czech-Lithuanian-Spanish-Moroccan-Zimbabwean-Iraqi-Afghan-Cayman-Brazilian-Bolivian-Macau-New Guinea-Antofagastan Co-Production?

 

Why isn't Romania a real country? It's a member of NATO and the EU, and is also a member of the Latin Union, of the Francophonie, the OSCE, the WTO, the BSEC and the United Nations. What does it lack that makes it unacceptable to Telefilm? Moose? Sugar Maples?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Would you believe TeleFilm puts millions of CDN tax payer money into movies not even directed by Canadians!! Canada is clearly the only country in the world that would do this because foreign directors see the big, "Canadians Are Patsies" sticker on our foreheads.

 

 

er, yes because that is very much the norm in the UK really. A local screen agency up North put substantial sums of money into Garfield 2 apparently. I remember a struggling director at the time telling me this and how they wouldn't offer him any help at all. A few years later he won some major film award and local screen agency website was full of pictures of people from same agency posing with the guy and playing up his local credentials as if to say, yes things are healthy in the area, look at this guy, when they didn't help him at all. That was an especially bad agency that did very little for the area tho and just embezzled money.

 

love

 

Freya

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few years later he won some major film award and local screen agency website was full of pictures of people from same agency posing with the guy and playing up his local credentials as if to say, yes things are healthy in the area, look at this guy, when they didn't help him at all. That was an especially bad agency that did very little for the area tho and just embezzled money.

 

love

 

Freya

 

This is Tele Film Canada's famous MO as well. Wait until a CDN director has some success, and then include him in literature as an example of how Tele Film helps the CDN film industry. Even though they never gave the guy a dime!

 

R,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
local screen agency website was full of pictures of people from same agency posing with the guy and playing up his local credentials as if to say, yes things are healthy in the area, look at this guy, when they didn't help him at all

Oh yes, that's entirely typical of the opportunistic, self-obsessed mother*ers.

All these people are actually good at is the politics. Film is a highly politicised field but let's not kid ourselves: so are a huge number of other disciplines, and we do ourselves no favours by pretending we're special. So, clearly it's useful to be good at networking, good at making nice to people, good at drinkies round the pool with the top hats.

But there's a certain breed of person - and I get the impression this is largely a UK malady - who are actually good at nothing else. I'm not talking about producers, for whom schmoozing money out of people is a big part of the job, because there is a degree of competence in selecting scripts and principal crew which has a material outcome on the quality of the finished product. This is not what the UK arts people do; witness the quality of their output. All they're good for, all they're capable of doing, literally their one single competence in life, is using fashionable language to describe the utterly trivial.

I have been involved in examples of this. Naming no names, one local arts organisation here - a municipality of 100,000 people - managed somehow to score a capital bid for £250,000 worth of equipment to support a single project. Let's overlook the relative insanity of everyone in a town paying £2.50 a head toward a microscopically niche interest. My involvement started once they'd got this outrageously expensive piece of equipment and realised that while they'd expertly played the funding bodies and used all the fashionable phrases, they actually had no idea how to use it. I'm not joking; no finished work was ever produced, and the money was completely wasted.

This is how UK arts funding works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

This is how UK arts funding works.

 

Three cheers for Cameron for having the guts to scrap UKFC. Now if only our PM had that kind of guts and took out TeleFilm.

 

R,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

[

This is how UK arts funding works.

And Australia's

 

I've mentioned this one before, but it's a standout example.

Gabriel

OK, it's not that great a film, but considering the budget, it did remarkably well, particularly in Russia of all places.

 

But if you want any hope of getting Government assistance for a film which doesn't have a synopsis something like:

"The outrageous adventures of Missie, a Deaf-Mute Nigerian epileptic and her Fa'falla her Lebanese Lesbian partner as they go looking for their lost incontinent three-legged dog Shampooch, through the streets of Kings Cross, Redfern and Surry Hills, with hilarious cameos of all the has-been never-were never-gonna-be hack actors who seem to appear in every formula Australian mini-series"

 

you can just forget it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Official announcement by DCMS and BFI just today:

 

Link to BBC News Online

 

BFI launches five-year UK film plan

 

> Call for UK film week celebration

> UK films urged to go 'mainstream'

> UK Film Council hands over to BFI

 

Some £285 million of National Lottery money is to be put into the British film industry over the next five years.

 

The sum, which will be used to boost film production, was revealed in a new five-year plan issued by the British Film Institute (BFI).

 

Money will also be spent on increasing audience choice and education.

 

The plan, dubbed "New Horizons", sets out measures to increase the variety of films shown in cinemas, particularly outside central London.

 

[...]

 

At a press briefing on Monday, held at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in central London, Nevill said the major multiplex cinema chains had been "very involved" in formulating the BFI proposals.

 

But she said the BFI accepted their need to generate profits for their shareholders, saying the BFI's efforts would focus on "the grass roots of film".

 

"Surveys show British audiences like to feel they're going to see British films," said Culture Minister Ed Vaizey.

 

"We want our domestic exhibitors as it were to promote British films, but also it should work for them commercially."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
"Surveys show British audiences like to feel they're going to see British films,"

This is why King's Speech did so well - it allowed people to feel like they were seeing local product, without actually having to watch local product.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It looks like the UK's film industry is a f@cked as the Canadian one.

 

Now that UKFC is gone, the British have a chance at building a real sustainable industry. Canada will never flourish so long as TeleFilm exists.

 

When political appointees decide which movies to green-light, it is never a good situation. Only three people at the TeleFilm Toronto office have any sort of legitimate credits in the film industry. The rest seriously don't have even the slightest idea how a film is made.

 

And yet these political appointees have the unmitigated audacity to tell Canadian filmmakers with years of real world experience, "sorry, we don't think you're qualified to make this movie."

 

Meanwhile they just gave 1 million dollars to a woman who's previous IMDB credit was, "location assistant."

 

R,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And Australia's

 

But if you want any hope of getting Government assistance for a film which doesn't have a synopsis something like:

"The outrageous adventures of Missie, a Deaf-Mute Nigerian epileptic and her Fa'falla her Lebanese Lesbian partner as they go looking for their lost incontinent three-legged dog Shampooch, through the streets of Kings Cross, Redfern and Surry Hills, with hilarious cameos of all the has-been never-were never-gonna-be hack actors who seem to appear in every formula Australian mini-series"

 

you can just forget it.

 

LOL, reminds me of Canada. Her in Canada I think of actors like Gordon Pinsent, Paul Gross, Sarah Polley etc. Get these people involved in your project and you`ll have a chance with Telefilm. :D :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

LOL, reminds me of Canada. Her in Canada I think of actors like Gordon Pinsent, Paul Gross, Sarah Polley etc. Get these people involved in your project and you`ll have a chance with Telefilm. :D :rolleyes:

 

100% correct.

 

R,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Unfortunately, he's not right.

 

The only reason we can't make movies in the UK is because nobody's willing to fund them. The only reason nobody's willing to fund them is because they absolutely will not be distributed, and they will not be distributed because of the American stranglehold on distribution. None of these facts are really seriously contested by anyone.

 

So, much as I celebrate the end of the catastrophic waste of money that was the UKFC, I'm not sure it's going to make the slightest difference to the state of commercial filmmaking in this country. If there was a market for it, if it was profitably saleable, it would be possible to attract investment just like any other business. We are not unique and special snowflakes, etc, and we do not need and should not desire a specialist funding model. Showbusiness, as they say, is just that. It's a business, or at least, it would be if there was a realistic prospect of any sales.

 

As is so frequently the case, the solution is simple, but requires far more political courage than modern politicians can even imagine. They simply have to either restrict or tax film imports. It's very easy; it's not complicated, it's not controversial (well, doing it is controversial, but the fact that it's the only realistic solution is not really controversial). "Protectionism", I hear you cry. Well, yes. In a world where there is not one unified government, one unified standard of living, one unified currency and one unified labour market (thankyou, Brian), some degree of protectionism is the only way to ensure that people don't get completely screwed.

 

But none of this has anything to do with film council, or Dave's entreaties to us to make popular cinema. We're waiting, Dave, with baited breath. We'd love to. We're all set up and ready to go. But right now, the behaviour of large international corporations has completely destroyed the market.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They simply have to either restrict or tax film imports.

 

It has worked very well in some countries, South Korea is the best example. And France uses this system also.

 

However, none of the English speaking territories use this system. France and South Korea at least have a language barrier against the Hollywood machine, in Canada and the UK we have none.

 

American movies make up 98% of the screen time in English Canada. This is what the US government calls "fair trade." We own 98% of your market, you own 2%.

 

Here's the hilarious part.....Hollywood wants that last 2% and is fighting hard to get it!!

 

R,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

Forum Sponsors

Broadcast Solutions Inc

CINELEASE

CineLab

Metropolis Post

New Pro Video - New and Used Equipment

Gamma Ray Digital Inc

Film Gears

Visual Products

BOKEH RENTALS

Cinematography Books and Gear



×
×
  • Create New...