The average budget for a US film is actually around $60 million (US). The average budget for an Australian film is about $4 million (Australian)

Its the script silly!

Like Petrol To A Car

Good Scripts are fundamental to the development of a viable and profitable Australian Film Industry, because without them, the edifice will collapse. Scripts are not just a minor aspect of the business they ARE its most important part (as petrol is to a car).

The Writer – Director?

Part of the problem, as I see it, is how scripts are assessed. For example, something like 85% of the Australian movies that have flopped over the last five years, have all been young ‘writer-director’ driven i.e. the director has also written them. This is ok, if the director has a ‘gift’ for good screenwriting or has been trained. But in the majority of cases, they don’t and haven’t. In fact, most have little or no experience writing scripts at all, and yet this is where a lot of the past funding has gone. Has quality been the determining factor here?

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2008/08/27/2358430.htm (Hear Jan Sardi, one of Australia’s most successful screenwriters telling it like it is)

New Screenwriters and Old

At the other end of the scale, are the New Screenwriter’s Programs, where a novice who shows talent /potential can get between $5000 – $10000 for writing a screenplay under the mentorship of a qualified script editor. Sounds good, but for the great majority of these potentially good writers, this marks the beginning and the end of their careers. Because very few – if any – of these projects ever reach the next stage of development. Why? A scroll back through the old AFC files will show literally 100s of abandoned writers and scripts. Is quality the determining factor here?

Old or seasoned screenwriters should not be allowed to slip through without delivering the goods. There have been several recently released movies, written by ‘seasoned’ screenwriters that have been complete flops. Scripts should be assessed on their merits along and not because they were written by well known scriptwriters.

The Viability Factor

Quality and potential are two out of three factors that should guide script assessors and the industry in general. The third factor is: viability. Assessors should ask themselves how viable is this script in terms of it being successful in the marketplace?
This is a complex question. For example, a script may be good, and at the same time, have the capacity to attract both popular and art-house audiences; or it may have a strong appeal to one or the other. It might even be groundbreaking and innovative, but with little popular appeal, except for perhaps movie critics, special interest groups and intellectuals. Before a script is assessed, its category should be determined along with its marketplace potential. But how? Feasibility studies would be one way. In the past few months, a collection, of what their makers and others have called ‘promising’ films have all nose-dived at the box office e.g. Not Quite Hollywood. Lets face it, it’s a nice little documentary, but really, where’s its audience base? Apart from a few nostalgic baby-boomers and one or two special interest groups – there’s none! In the marketplace, business projects based on feasibility studies are usually the ones that prosper and last.

The Upsidedown Pyramid

A good place to start is for the assessors to ask themselves: what elements made the top 20 most successful films in Australia popular? Well written scripts that contain many of these most popular elements should be given priority and placed at the top of the pyramid. Presently, the pyramid has been made to stand on its head, with the art-house and the esoteric on top at the heavy end. But these films, no matter how ‘important,’ ‘groundbreaking’ or ‘smart’, do not have the audience drawing capacity to sustain a viable and prosperous film industry.

Accountability

Assessors have a very important job – it is they who are responsible for moving the business forward. They should not only be ‘experienced’ in the craft of script analysis, but have a ‘head’ for business as it affects their industry. They should also follow a set of ESTABLISHED guidelines, that would make the possibility of nepotism and personal preference less likely in the decision making process.

Another important aspect of all this is accountability. That assessors have not been made accountable is a pretty DUMB business move – when you consider that every successful business is based on accountability i.e. on the logic behind why particular decisions were made. Assessors in the Australian Film Industry need to be made accountable, to the writers and the industry, for the decisions they make.

Alex Bell