This week’s piece is written by Samantha Caughey, DEGNZ’s Marketing & Events Coordinator, while Tui is overseas.
Have you ever watched a film that’s changed your life? Altered your perception of an issue, or spurred you to do something you’d never considered before?
Most people can pinpoint at least one film that’s had some kind of lasting impact on them.
And yet with a never-ending stream of glittery blockbuster flicks and Hollywood remakes, this can be easy to forget. We become convinced that film’s all about the bang and the buck, the spectacle, the beautiful faces and action that gets bums on seats – and sells popcorn to boot.
But what about film’s heart, its power to do incredible good and create change?
There’s no shortage of moving films out there – often you just have to look past summer’s latest hits to find them.
India’s Daughter is one such film. In August, DEGNZ had the pleasure of teaming up with Script to Screen and welcoming Leslee Udwin, director and producer of documentary feature India’s Daughter, to New Zealand.
The way Leslee speaks about her life and career is captivating and she is a true inspiration. In Auckland, I heard her explain how she, from a young age, has had a strong sense of injustice – something which her film and television projects have come to reflect.
Before India’s Daughter, Leslee began acting and then progressed to producing some poignant films including East Is East and West Is West. India’s Daughter, a film that explores the brutal gang-rape of medical student Jyoti Singh and the subsequent protests, was the first film she ever directed and it has since resounded across the world. The film certainly does shock, featuring interviews with some of the unremorseful rapists in prison, their lawyers and families as well as Jyoti’s family.
The reaction to the film has been intense. Celebrities including Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep and Alan Rickman lauded the film, while India took the polarising step of banning it.
Since making the film, Leslee has gone on to campaign not just for the women of India, but women around the world. She explained at one of our events how making the film gave her such an insight into the issue of gender inequality, and indeed inequality overall, that she was able to come up with some solutions. Now, she is working with the United Nations Human Rights Council and other international organisations to implement Equality Studies in the curriculum for primary school children around the world. A number of countries have already come on board with the programme, which is to be rolled out in the next few years.
And what did all this start with? An issue, a story – a film. It all began when Leslee saw this case on the news and decided it was a story that needed to be told through this medium. Since then, the documentary has taken on a life of its own, spreading across the world shocking people, and more importantly, inspiring them to take up the mantle and contribute to making a change.
Never forget about the power of film to change lives. It’s such an engaging medium, and you, the film-maker, have it at your fingertips. What is it that you want to say, what kind of impact do you want to have? As India’s Daughter has demonstrated, your voice can echo around the world and create change.
Samantha Caughey
Marketing & Events Coordinator
I was talking to a talented director last night and he related to me his latest experience of that thing we all often go through—being told, “No.”
Whether you are pitching for a film, propping a TV show, a documentary idea, a web series, or trying to win that TVC or other job, in all likelihood you will be told “No” over “Yes.”
It can be dispiriting.
You have put so much time into the pitch. You’ve got the talent (or think you do), the idea/concept is a clear winner (your producer says so), the research has been done, the numbers stack up, and only an idiot would turn it down. And the idiot does.
For some, the “No” is a “Yes,” but just not from the right person. The Eternal Optimist.
For others, the “No” gives the merest twinge of pain before it’s up and on to the next person or the next pitch. The Cup Half Full Girl/Guy.
For a few, the “No” is really gut wrenching and the pain stays with you for days because you cannot fathom how that came to be the answer after your absolute belief that what you had done was a total winner. With distance you drag yourself up and get back into it. The Striver.
And then occasionally, the “No” prompts a major change of direction, or a change of career. The Realist.
Unless you are moving from regular contract to regular contract or fully employed, that “No” can mean the difference between paying your next bills or putting them on your already maxed out credit card.
This is not a nice place to be.
When you are a creative that is dependent on selling your idea to pay your bills, often on a project by project basis, and you are hearing nothing but “No,” then perhaps it’s time to ask yourself, “What time is it?”
In our high stress world, maybe it’s just time for you to take a break. Recharge those creative batteries. Rebuild that self-esteem.
Or perhaps you rework what was a fantastic premise into the prop it should have always been.
Maybe you pull that old idea out of the bottom drawer, dust it off, and shape it into the winning script/prop. that will deliver the magic answer.
Then again, maybe the idiot was right, the idea does suck, and you chuck it in the rubbish bin and start something new.
Or maybe it’s just time to realize that what you are doing is really not working and an honest self appraisal and major change is required—like get a job.
All of us have likely been through the lot.
We are in the business of taking regular knocks unless you are one of those truly talented people who everybody recognizes as a creative genius and who doesn’t hear “No” very often.
Our chances aren’t helped by the current environment because the screen industry is in turmoil. The changes are constant and it is definitely becoming harder to make a buck for individuals and companies alike in the traditional manner.
At the same time there are new opportunities, new ways to make money, new ways to express ideas that get picked up and go.
I attended a business-strategy session for screen practitioners this week with a couple of other non-profits, local government outfits, and a number of independent producers and staff from production companies.
It was a good reminder about the discipline of taking a strong self-look every 90 days to see if you are on track with your vision and objectives—if you’ve set them.
We all have our up days and our down days. When you are really down, try asking yourself, “What time is it?”
And maybe like Roy Schneider in All That Jazz you’ll say, “It’s show time, folks.” And you’ll get out there, make that effort and hear that one word we all love, long to hear, and sometimes wait an eternity for.
“Yes.”
It’s the answer both the deluded and the talented pursue. May you all have many “Yesses” in your futures.
Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director
Professional development is an important part of the guild’s activities. A number of the opportunities have limits on participants, so we are constantly having to screen applications and respond to questions about what’s required, and “Why wasn’t I successful?”
While there are many factors that come into play when decisions are made by us, and those who help us select or who do the choosing for us, the two key questions that are first asked are: “What has the person done?” and “How good was it?”
The screen industry is all about turning out product, whether it be a video, documentary, commercial, TV episode, film, web series or other. At the bottom end it can be an audio-visual sausage, at the top end a piece of art. Intellectualism can have a big part to play, or not as Michael Bay has proved, but success comes firstly from creating the product, and then is hopefully followed by critical acclaim, box office success, increased sales, high ratings or whatever else is the measure that defines that particular product’s success or failure.
What strikes me with the screen industry is that it’s in the doing rather than in the knowing that success comes.
Recently, we had a Collaborators Series event at which director Lee Tamahori spoke. And last night I attend the NZ Cinematographers Society’s event with cinematographer Michael Seresin. Both are highly acclaimed internationally for their work. I was struck by the similarities between the two. But even more so by how they got into the industry—at the bottom. Lee was given a job by Don Reynolds as a boom operator even though he admitted he didn’t know what a boom operator did. Michael’s father got him a job with John O’Shea at Pacific Films as a gopher to save him from a wayward lifestyle. Both worked their way up with no film school education or knowledge of the industry to being at the top of their careers internationally by being on-set, being smart and doing it. Their learning came on the job.
Before film schools came along, TVNZ and the National Film Unit were the training grounds for people aspiring to careers in the screen industry. People learned there by doing.
Today, with education a massive business, we have courses, diplomas and degrees for people wanting a career in the industry.
I was asked a week or so ago to attend an industry focus group organised by an educational institution that is looking to respond to the industry by shaping their screen degree for the future, and melding it in a way that responds best to industry needs. Admirable.
But as often happens when seasoned industry people sit around and discuss work opportunities for new people entering, it wasn’t long before moans about the attitudes of film and media school graduates surfaced. Most criticisms centre on the sense of entitlement graduates have with their piece of paper in hand, which to most of those there means little or nothing. Getting in and doing it with smarts and a proactive, can-do approach on even the lowliest of tasks still counts over a formal screen education it seems. Just like Lee and Michael and many others in the screen industry have done as they worked their way to lofty heights and good pay packets from the bottom of the ladder.
Old school attitude. Sure. But one that still matters when it comes to those hiring and firing in the industry today. Which brings me back to the guild’s professional development programme.
Thanks to the New Zealand Film Commission, we offer a comprehensive professional development programme with a wide variety of opportunities. We have added to this with our latest Drama Director Attachment initiative, supported by NZ On Air and local drama production companies. We hope in the future to offer others.
These are presented by people in the industry doing it. Passing on skills and knowledge—much of it practical— that many of them use on a daily basis.
We always get a good response to our professional development opportunities. But we’d like to see more. It shows to our funders that what we are doing offers real value. And we believe they bring real value to the participants who can leverage off the learning experiences to help them go further with their career and next project.
Formal education does have its place these days. Our professional development programme goes a few steps further we feel. But it’s hard to go past the Nike maxim in the screen industry. Doing it really does count. Making it good, even better.
Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director
24 July 2015
This week I attended three film-related events that highlighted the polar differences between art and commerce in film.
On Wednesday morning I went to the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) briefing on the review of the New Zealand Screen Production Grant (NZSPG), driven by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and the Ministry of Culture and Heritage (MCH).
The outcomes of the review are positive, particularly in the international production arena, with the NZSPG seen as delivering on its promise. Tweaks have been made, some with the intention of improving opportunities for small post-production and visual effects companies and in the area of children’s drama production to stimulate growth.
From a DEGNZ perspective, the NZSPG increases work opportunities for editors on higher-budget productions intended for international markets. For directors, over time we are hopeful that more international TV productions will look to New Zealand directors to work on their shows, and that more internationally focused New Zealand productions are made with Kiwi directors employed. One of the intentions of the DEGNZ director attachments on the Ash vs. Evil Dead series (hopefully franchise) of Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi is to expose NZ directors to their view with hopefully one or more getting picked up in future. We have the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) in part to thank for this. Shortly, we will be announcing another initiative intended to further improve DEGNZ director member opportunities in drama.
The more significant news out of the briefing in some respects, however, was the demise of Film New Zealand (FNZ), the international marketing entity promoting New Zealand and its screen industry to international producers, with NZFC taking on its responsibilities and staff. This could be seen as the clearest indicator yet of the ‘business-fication’ of NZFC, which up until recent times has really been seen as a cultural institution with a cultural mandate in film. It’s not hard to imagine that there will be commercially focused Key Results Areas (KRAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) driving this new area of operation for NZFC, which is increasingly taking on responsibility for both film and television, reinstituting the chatter of an eventual merging of New Zealand on Air and NZFC.
In outlining the changes to the NZSPG, it was interesting to note NZFC CEO Dave Gibson’s emphasis on the cultural aspect of the incentive, perhaps indicative of some disquiet or at least sensitivity around the overtly commercial nature of everything that’s occurring.
The other events I wish to make mention of were two indigenous films I attended at the New Zealand International Film Festival: Embrace of the Serpent and Balikbayan#1. These two films would sit smack bang in the centre of the Culturally Significant planet of NZFC’s five planet strategic model if they were Māori, but it’s difficult to imagine that they would get funding from NZFC in the current environment even if they were. They eschew the Hollywood model for filmmaking, instead expressing the singularly artistic vision of the auteur directors behind them—something that’s almost entirely out of vogue in filmmaking with NZFC now. It’s more likely such projects would have to find favour with Creative New Zealand or other Arts funding streams in the same manner as do the projects of multi-disciplinary artist Lisa Reihana.
As part of the hosting DEGNZ volunteers are engaging in with the international directors who have come in for the festival, giving them a friendly local face to connect and communicate with, I went out last night with Balikbayan#1 director Kidlat Tahimik after his film and performance at the Academy.
Kidlat is the father of independent Philippine cinema, has multiple awards from the Berlin Film Festival, a Masters from the business school at Wharton, and he took up film under the tutelage of Warner Hertzog after becoming uninspired by his work with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.
Listening to Kidlat talk about his filmmaking, it was refreshing and invigorating to hear what lay behind this film 35 years in its journey from start to finish. No script, obviously long interruptions in forward progress, and absolutely no mention of the imperatives of box office, eyeballs on screen, and return on investment. He had something to say through film and said it.
As we transition from the arthouse focus of the past for which we established an enviable international reputation to the emulation of the Hollywood model, which our cousins across the ditch have according to some failed spectacularly at, is “Art or Commerce?” a moot question? Or is there a middle ground where the culturally significant planet shines as brightly as the others, not overshadowed by commercial imperatives, and on which artistic auteurs can still find a home alongside the planet of the next Peter Jackson?
We shall see. And let’s hope so. As much as we all need increased box office and other revenue to make sustainable careers in film and television, there is still a place for the artistic freedom of expression through film that inspired many of our accomplished filmmakers to go on to commercial and critical success.
Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director
10 July 2015
We are being assaulted by digital technology and the digital realm and its effects on our chosen careers and our livelihoods are irrevocable.
I have written about this previously, but recent events bring it once again to the fore.
Digital editing has been around for a long time and for editors it has been a relatively slow and measured transition to the new paradigm. With the decline in the quality of footage shot in the field for a lot of TV shows, it really does often boil down to “We’ll fix it in post.” A good producer and editor is what save many a TV show these days. And this has helped maintain their value.
For directors, a couple of now institutional advents heralded real change and devaluing of their skill. The first was one person camera (OPC), which really had its place in TV news. Doing away with the soundperson and putting the responsibility for everything on the camera operator, who in many cases was already directing for the reporter, laid the groundwork for what is now an everyday occurrence in reality TV.
The arrival of the PD150 and other such cameras made opc a reality mainstay in non-news programming, and cemented the position of opc as director on many shows, which continues to this day. This helped give jobs to the increasing number of graduates being pumped out of film and television schools.
Digital production and post equipment and film school graduates also wrought havoc on the corporate video market, where unsophisticated clients chose low cost over quality approach and hastened the growth of low-priced content marketing. In this arena, one-person film graduate outfits compete with TV commercials production companies who lament the loss of the big budget commercials of yesteryear.
Much information, marketing, and educational video content and a good proportion of reality, light entertainment and documentary programming today is made without a dedicated director at the helm, and it’s common for the same person to shoot, direct and edit projects, particularly in the content marketing arena.
A look at the lay of some of the land will help to show what is going on:
- In the 2013/14 year, the Department of Statistics identified 12,500 people working in producing, contracting and broadcasting in the screen industry in 23,700 jobs—2.9 jobs/person.
- 2,130 students with diplomas or bachelors degree graduated in Communications and Media Studies in New Zealand in 2013.
- YouTube statistics state 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute—from video selfies to web series and everything in between.
- In a Brightcove sponsored survey of Business 2 Business Content Marketers in Nth America by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 76% are using video in content marketing, with YouTube the platform of choice for 72% of them.
- The shift with the funding bodies, who have been stuck on the same level of funding for years with no real increases in sight, is a further clear indicator of digital ramifications.
Last night saw the launch of the second round of Loading Docs, an online initiative for 10 x 3 minute documentaries. This project receives both New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) and New Zealand On Air (NZOA) support. Each of the successful applicants was required to generate $2k in crowdfunding and received 2k in matched funding and other non-financial support.
NZOA has a Request For Proposal (RFP) out for web series of around 6 episodes of approximately 5 – 7 minutes for a $100k budget, down from the heady times of Auckland Daze ($357k for 6) and The Factory ($600k for 20). The web series strand is just one of five separate digital funding streams for content at NZOA now.
Te Māngai Pāho is on the digital bandwagon, too, following a joint initiative with NZOA last year. Hahana ($40k for 10) was the first webseries to receive funding.
On the up side, the democratization of video production has brought down the barriers to entry and allowed new talent to come to the fore. Creators can now take risks, experiment and develop their skills free from the interference of funders, investors and others seeking control, often in the hope of being recognised and given mainstream opportunities. This of course also means there are yottabytes of crappy content out there that you have to wade through to find something good.
On the downside, because so much content is being produced for free or next to nothing, professional cast and crew are regularly being asked to work for nix or close to for content for digital and increasingly broadcast.
In short—more content, more content creators, and less or no money for budgets.
The latest bastion to be assailed in New Zealand by digital is drama—short films and low or no budget feature films have been round long enough already.
I have mentioned before the ridiculous, maximum $45k per half hour of broadcast drama that Māori Television has issued an RFP for. Producers are falling into line for this, self- and cast and crew- flagellating whip in hand. At DEGNZ we have taken a strong stance against this development because directors, editors and others will not be fairly compensated for their work. This particular issue has become so contentious that the other guilds and associations are making noises, too.
It’s not hard to imagine that the generally fair and equitable pay rates for traditional NZ TV drama is going to come under digital threat at some point, particularly as NZ web series become more prolific.
With NZOA’s latest web series RFP, producers are running around town seeking cast and crew to make pilot samples for free on the promise that if they get commissioned they will be paid for their services retrospectively.
Our role at DEGNZ as we often reiterate is to enhance the cultural, creative and financial wellbeing of New Zealand directors and editors.
Our fight for fair pay rates is made the more difficult by individuals agreeing to working conditions that are not only patently unfair, but sometimes raise serious occupational health and safety concerns.
We ask that you give careful consideration to the overall ramifications of your agreeing to work on drama projects where you are not adequately compensated. Otherwise, you could end up knocking yourselves out.
Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director