Chasing the Runaways:
Foreign Film Production and
Film Studio Development
in Australia 1988-2002
by Nick Herd
review by Ben Goldsmith
Ben Goldsmith
is Acting Head of the Centre for Screen Studies and Research at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. He is the co-author, with Tom O’Regan, of The Film Studio: Film Production in
the Global Economy and Cinema Cities, Media Cities: The Contemporary International Studio Complex.
Is domestic production being
“swamped” by international production? Where does creative control lie? Which
sectors of the industry and the economy more broadly benefit from this production,
and which are missing out? What are the ramifications for traditional cultural
policy support structures designed to facilitate local voice, vision and expression?
Why is so much public money being used to subsidise major international film,
television and game production? And most provocatively, perhaps, to quote
the back cover, “Are we surrendering control of our industry?” Nick Herd’s
concise book was prompted by a series of questions about the phenomenon and
effects of international production. In this useful but very drily written
history of the transformation of screen production in Australia since the
opening of the Warner Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast in 1988, Herd provides
some answers to these questions, although his predisposition to view international
production as a bad object with no inherent cultural value and a threat to
“Australian” production clouds his objectivity and prevents him fully exploring
this kaleidoscopic issue.
International screen production
is a slippery object with many names – foreign, footloose, fee-for-service,
runaway (1). This last term in particular is favoured by those anxious about
its effects on employment, on cultural policy and on government thinking about
the meaning, value and resonance of film, television and game production.
It is a powerful, evocative term, but also sometimes misleading in the context
of screen production; it implies that all such production has a natural home
(usually considered to be the US), but that it has “run away” to other countries
to take advantage of cheaper labour, currency differentials, tax incentives
and other forms of economic assistance which are often funded from the public
purse. It is clearly true that a substantial proportion of international production
is itinerant; this fact and the economic benefits which are perceived to flow
from such production have convinced governments at national and local levels
around the world to compete vigorously in what Herd calls an “incentives game”
to attract and retain international production. But much of this production
has no natural home – if producers are not drawn to particular places because
of the availability of specific personnel, locations or facilities, they will
travel all over the world to wherever they can get the best deal. This is
the reason why several US states including California have developed production
incentives of their own. In this light, Los Angeles is just another (albeit
very privileged) possible production location and not its “natural” home.
As a number of recent reports
have shown (2), the volume of international production work flowing around
the world has increased substantially in recent years. According to AFC
figures, this international
production is fast approaching 50% of total production spend in Australia.
Where has it come from? Herd cuts a swathe through the complex historical,
cultural trends and industrial, technological and political forces that have
driven this boom to locate its recent origins in the growth in platforms and
demand for audiovisual content in the United States, and the inexorable rise
in budgets for American film and television production. In taking such a “global
Hollywood” view, Herd stands alongside Miller et al. (3) and the influential
but flawed Monitor Group report
for the Directors’ Guild of America in focusing on what has driven production
from America to the rest of the world. But this view ignores
the facts that demand and budgets are growing around the world and that international
partnerships which bypass America are not only common in film, television
and game production, but increasing. It also diminishes the attraction of
particular places as production locations due to the availability of infrastructure,
personnel or a certain type of natural environment.
Rather than a “broadcast” model
of the spread of this production, I believe that it is more useful to understand
the international production system in network terms in which connections
between locations, producers and audiences are multiple, complex, ever-changing
and multi-directional. This view acknowledges that while America is still
the home of much production and more importantly of much intellectual property,
the impetus for production is not restricted to the United States. The ideas
and talent behind globally successful audiovisual content can now be found
in such diverse locations as New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa and the
Czech Republic. Herd’s focus on America is justified by his assertion that
the majority of international production activity in Australia comes from
the US. But while this is clearly still the case and likely to be for some
time to come, links between the Australian screen production industry and
countries other than the US, and particularly in Asia, have grown substantially
in recent years. To take two examples, Australians were integrally involved
in the production of the first film made in Bhutan, Travellers and Magicians
(Khyentse Norbu, 2003), while Animal Logic, perhaps the most successful of all Australian
audiovisual companies in terms of its international work in recent years,
has completed extensive visual effects work on the Chinese features Hero
(Zhang Yimou, 2002) and House of Flying Daggers (Zhang, 2004).
There is every reason to believe that these kinds of partnership will continue
to strengthen.
Government assistance to international
production is rarely justified in cultural terms, or framed by cultural policy
rhetorics. As Herd notes, there are five main arguments for this kind of assistance:
- It has economic effects within
and beyond the screen production industry (the “multiplier effect”)
- It brings continuity of employment
and activity to a sector prone to cycles of expansion and contraction
- It offers the opportunity
for Australians to develop or display their skills and experience new production
methods
- It fuels investment in physical
and technological infrastructure (e.g. studios and equipment) which may stimulate
further production
- It strengthens connections
between the Australian industry and the global audiovisual system (x).
But Herd makes the critical
point that the benefits of international production are not spread evenly
within the industry, with key Australian creatives – writers, producers, directors
and editors in particular – missing out for the most part on the work generated
by large, incoming projects. The depressed mood of these sections of the industry
has deepened in the last few months with the spectacular implosion of the
multi-million dollar feature film Eucalyptus, the failure of industry
lobbying on the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, and the announcement in
May that the ABC expects to produce just 20 hours of drama programming in
2005 (down from 102 hours in 2001). These are also the people who have suffered
most at the hands of the Australian press, which has not missed an opportunity
in the last 18 months to vilify local filmmakers over the standard and performance
of their work at the box office. There are some hopeful signs for local producers
– Australian animation and short films continue to win awards and acclaim
at major international festivals – and ambitious and far-sighted producers
are beginning to recognise the potential of interactive television, broadband
internet, mobile telephony and the new generation of personal media devices,
such as the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), for storytellers and content
creators. But while the recent federal budget contained a number of measures
that will increase the amount of funding and assistance available to local
feature film, television and documentary producers, many view the expansion
of packages of assistance to international producers and the international
promotion of Australia as a production location as alarming indications that
the federal government and state agencies view production in Australia as
more worthwhile than Australian production per se because economic
outcomes seem easier to predict and measure than cultural ones.
The reality is that international
production is here to stay, and content creators and service providers of
the future will need to understand its dynamics and risks in order to achieve
success both in Australia and overseas. Nick Herd’s study makes an important
contribution to the growing stock of knowledge about international production.
It should quickly become a standard reference source on the evolution of the
three major studio complexes in Australia, although it is weakened by the
age of some of the statistics used (a seemingly unavoidable problem), and
the fact that the industry it describes has changed substantially in the few
short years since 2002.
© Ben Goldsmith, June 2005
Chasing the Runaways: Foreign
Film Production and Film Studio Development in Australia 1988-2002,
by Nick Herd, Currency Press, Strawberry Hills, 2004.
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Endnotes
- The Australian Film Commission
prefers “Foreign”, see the annual National
Production Survey and the 2002 research report Foreign Film and Television Drama Production in Australia.
The New South Wales Film and Television Office uses “footloose”.
“Runaway” is the term favoured in the United States; see United States International
Trade Administration The Migration of US
Film and Television Production: Impact of 'Runaways' on Workers and Small Business in the US Film Industry,
Commerce Department, Washington DC, 2001.
- In addition to those cited above, see for example the annual reports prepared by the Canadian Film and
Television Production Association, the latest being Profile 2005; Malcolm Long Associates, A Bigger Slice of the Pie: Policy Options for
a more Competitive International Film and Television Production Industry in
Australia, Report for Ausfilm International Inc., November 2000.
- Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria and Richard Maxwell, Global Hollywood, BFI, London, 2001.
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