A Personal Perspective
Recently I ran into a filmmaker friend of mine whilst in London 's National Film Theatre. Spurred on by the photographs of great British filmmakers all around, I asked how his first feature film was shaping up - was the screenplay finished? Yes, he replied. He had also secured a location and the financial backing of two independent production companies. Wonderful, I responded - so it's going ahead? Apparently not - a large injection of cash was still needed. Had he approached the Film Council for funding?
The UK Film Council's website proudly proclaims that it aims 'to stimulate a competitive, successful and vibrant UK film industry and culture'. In 2004, they boasted £807 million spent on production with UK involvement in 132 features. Although this is down from the record £1.15 billion spent in 2003, it does continue a general increase in investment in British cinema. It would seem that our industry is healthier than ever. Steve Norris, Head of the Film Council's International Department, claimed that these figures show that 'the wealth of talent in the UK film industry, together with our outstanding studios and facilities and our fiscal incentives, continued to attract a huge amount of international production in 2004'. However, stop to examine the numbers more closely and we find that investment from international sources, such as the major Hollywood Studios, brought in £476.92 million by locating their productions in the UK . Meanwhile, spending on indigenous (or truly 'British' films) has in fact dropped over the last few years.
Back to the NFT. A look of anguish crossed my friend's face. Quickly he set out the situation. Like scores of filmmakers throughout Britain , he has experienced at first hand why British films are in such a creative quagmire. A few weeks after applying for funding a rejection letter arrived (not unexpectedly given the fierce competition). A brief phone-call to the Film Council ensued. Did they like the treatment? Yes, very much. Did they see that he already had partial funding? Indeed . Did they notice he already had the location, a stately home in Herefordshire, secured free of charge? Brilliant! So.what's the problem? Well, the problem might be seen as the Film Council's reluctance to invest in new (or what they would call 'unproven') filmmakers. This is good business-sense perhaps - and I do mean perhaps - but we now have a situation where you cannot secure funding for a film until you have already completed another feature - which you cannot do without funding. Catch 22. As Mike Leigh's Vera Drake demonstrated, even having well-known names attached to a project does not necessarily secure sufficient funding (Leigh's Producer had to leave half-way through filming in order to drum up new financial support).
On the other side of the scale, The Calcium Kid has been widely received by critics as a terrible film, yet it received FT2 funding. Why? The selling power of the leading man, of course: Orlando Bloom. But is the fact that a rising star has been forced into a film justification enough for funding it? Again, it's good business sense (enough teenage girls will dash to cinemas to see him to put the film in the black) but why don't funding bodies actually start reading the scripts and judging what deserves to be made with their heads rather than their wallets? They have to trust that the financial success will follow making good films. I believe it comes down to fear. Funding bodies are afraid to recognise that they are in the business of creativity. There are (or should be) no guaranteed returns, beyond the fact that well told stories should make money. Cash-ins, sequels and a popular lead might bring returns in the short-term, but in the long term they will sterilise our industry. A film must be judged on its script and the vision behind it. Am I being unrealistic? Perhaps, but what really worries me is that the heads of these funding bodies would probably scoff at the idea of funding a film on the basis of 'vision' - no doubt they believe it comes down to hard numbers. Ian Christie (Director of the AHRB Centre for British Film and Television Studies) has called for 'fewer consultancies at the Film Council and more up-front vision'. Yet, the Film Council also has to stretch very limited government funding a long way. They have to make hard choices and perhaps we should remember that they are on the side of the film-makers. Obviously they cannot be expected to fund every film that comes through their door and so clearly there will always be a crowd of disgruntled critical voices following their work. We must also consider that many of the films rejected for Film Council funding are simply not up to a high enough standard. The funding bodies do what they can for filmmakers - can we blame them if they latch onto a financially secure project when they see one?
So why does this attitude exist when our industry is supposedly thriving? There are several reasons. Firstly, British films are forced to compete with the glamour and larger budgets of Hollywood films. In France , cinemas have exhibit a certain number of French films per quarter - could a similar system be introduced here? In fact, it used to exist under the Cinematograph Films Act which became law in 1927. The Act created a protected space for a British cinema to establish itself and it was designed to ensure that, by the mid-1930s, at least 20% of the films screened in British cinemas were British in origin. It resulted in a massive rise in British film production, although also leading to many poor-quality "quota quickies". Unfortunately, the US has always been rather good at negotiating with other countries about such quotas - currently they are pressuring Korea to abolish its quota system (which requires Korean films to be shown for 146 days of the year) in return for US investment.
Another problem is audiences. Our nation has become inured to Hollywood films and - although art-house productions are growing in popularity - probably find truly 'British' cinema slow and unappealing. Some way of linking schools and colleges with the screenings of British films must be found if we are going to fight for our audience. Yet British films are also very low-profile and there simply are not very many places in the country where they can be seen. There are no regular festivals of British films and cinemas rarely screen shorts before the main feature as they used to. Once again funding bodies seem to have hindered rather than helped the situation. The Film Council has (for reasons unknown) massively invested in production and rather ignored advertising, distribution and exhibition over the last few years. At the end of the day. it's no good creating the best films in the world if no one knows about them!
Underlying all this, one more problem can be identified. Truth be told, Britain does very little to encourage and train young filmmakers. Recent years have seen the closure of British Screen, the BFI Production Board and the Arts Council Film Department. Nor do our broadcasters have any obligation to devote part of their programme funding to training. Yet, schemes to promote youngsters seem to be everywhere: freelance FT2 training, Skillset initiatives and BBC placements. Even individual companies, such as Working Title have launched training initiatives. The problem is that these are not initiatives so much as extraordinarily tough competitions. As a case in point, Working Title will train three out of 1300 applicants for its ACTION! 2005 competition (that's a whooping 0.2%). Similarly, the BBC's New Filmmakers Award offers the chance for young hopefuls to have one of their short films broadcast on BBC Three. Jeremy Howe (Head of Short Films for BBC Drama) admitted that any of the last twenty-five films in the competition could have been broadcast and that 'the quality was.very high'. Moreover, relatively few Film Schools offer a sufficient level of practical training to interest production companies in their graduates, with only the National Film and Television School being seriously regarded in the industry.
Investing bodies must be prepared to view film as an art form worth subsidising, as well as a money-making enterprise. They must realise that without new talent and innovation the industry will grow stagnant. When I was thinking of entering the film industry as a teenager, a friend remarked to me: I hope you don't expect to be paid . In my childhood naivety I had expected hard work, long hours and the minimum wage. Not so. In reality, I know many people who have been 'employed' in the industry for several years and are still not paid for their work. You would have thought that was illegal - but no, the armies of enthusiastic dreamers continue to hurl themselves at the industry like lemmings and this in turn pushes down pay rates. It's simple economics - the demand for work far outstrips the supply and so perhaps unpaid work-forces are inevitable. Also, of course, the only way to really learn filmmaking is to work on set and as a Programming Consultant recently remarked to me: when you start out you know nothing - so why should they pay you ? I did not think it was the moment to bring up words like fairness and equality. I distinctly remember a recruiter from the BBC visiting University College London when I was in my final year. Had we considered a career in the BBC? Woe betide the girl in front of me who brought up the issue of wages. The lady's demeanour changed immediately . No one will actually pay young people straight out of university. She anticipated the next question. Don't whine that you have to earn money to live; I know people who have held down two after-hours jobs whilst working for the BBC. That's the kind of commitment it takes to make it. If you don't have it, don't bother. And anyway the BBC are usually quite flexible with your hours if you need to work on one of your paying jobs. How considerate of them.
For a moment I agreed with the BBC's search for only the most committed workers - non-payment was simply a means to weed out the wastrels who did not have what it took. Then it hit me: should the industry be looking for the most committed or the most talented? You tell me; are they just after cheap labour? Is expecting to be paid for those long hours so much to ask? Some at least agree with me, with many filmmakers and industry professionals recently taking a petition to parliament (http://www.tvwrap.org.uk/) demanding fairer working conditions. Yet, we might well put the situation down to immutable market forces. Moreover, don't we all choose to work in film for the love of it? With love like that should we expect to be paid? Well, love of the craft can carry you a long way true enough, but this is the real world and even film-makers need to eat. I am not arguing for an idealist vision of all film-makers being paid no matter their experience. What I am arguing for is a government funded training network where young filmmakers can be taught the skills they need to begin earning a living. The training network would be competitive to the extent that it would only train the number of film-makers that the industry is projected to need in X years time.
Still, when you have finally broken into the industry there are always the Unions, who ensure fair rates. As I said earlier, the only way to gain enough experience to warrant being paid is to work on film sets. Recently, I had the opportunity to do just that. Through a family friend, I managed to secure work as a Runner on a feature film in Cornwall . The Director and Producer agreed to have me along, but the Union did not. Union members only on set - no work experience here kiddie . The problem is, you cannot join the Union until you have worked in the industry, you cannot work in the industry until you have worked for free and you cannot work for free because of the Unions. It's our old friend Catch 22 again.
So what should we do? Let's take advantage of Gordon's recent budget announcement and make a fresh start for British Cinema. Let's try actually encouraging young talent, ideas and audiences. Let's try phasing out a few accountants and replacing them with intelligent script readers. Let's go out on a limb and take a creative risk once in a while. Who knows - it might just pay off. Until then our film industry may be successful, but it will not be British.
And what of my friend? No doubt he will continue trying - he seems resolute to make it. My advice to him? Write a feature that needs no outside investment because, for now at least, the only person out there who will help you, IS you. If you want to break into this industry then bring your own sledge hammer.
Nicholas Vangelis
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