I’ve been collecting evidence to

help prove the case, or establish

the problem.

I need to know I’m not just making

baseless assumptions.

This is what I’ve found.

Australian playwright Louis

Nowra had heard about

Aussie film’s dire situation.

To get a first hand look, he

watched every Australian film

that came out over a year.

Film Victoria were aware of the

disconnection between audience

and filmmakers.

At a seminar featuring this topic,

a man named Tait Brady who

worked at both AFC and Screen

Australia looked at Australian box

office over 36 years.

Australians are making films Australian

audiences do not want to see. What

audiences do want to watch is being

made elsewhere.

I read that as the very opposite of supply

meeting demand.

I think it’s because filmmakers are making

movies for filmmakers. That’s how we

were taught in tertiary education.

Our teachers preferred auteurs to

blockbusters. I found someone else who

has a problem with that…

David Williamson, another Australian

playwright,on Auteurs

From ABC Radio National Books and Arts Daily 7/8/12.

“I think the best drama in the world is the quality

drama being created for cable. I think, um, film leaves

a lot to be desired now because a lot of films are not

well structured in a story sense. I think film world has

swung to auteur type films in which the director

writes them and it’s highly unlikely that someone of

the skill set of the director will also have the full skill

set of a writer. I think they… doesn’t happen often.

But in television the writer is really really important

and that’s why the best drama by far is on television.”

Jim Schembri, film critic for The Age, wrote a scathing article when three Australian

films premiered in one week and all failed at the box office. He collected a wide

range of comments from the public, two of which stand out as relevant:

“How a debut film director (Gale Edwards with A Heartbeat Away)

can be allowed to helm a $7 million production has angered many,

and with good cause. You could have made four Wolf Creeks for

that. What happened to the idea of earning that kind of budget

with a proven track record of successful smaller films?”

“Quality script development continues to draw focus. People are

clearly tired of industry rhetoric about how "the story is all",

especially when those stories simply don't play.”

From http://bit.ly/gpX5iE Australian Film Disaster at the Box Office.

From http://goo.gl/oOWrxNThe Aussie who shook up world’s film industry.

Black Magic

The global business has its headquarters in Port Melbourne and ships almost

100 products to more than 100 countries, with other offices in the UK, Japan,

Singapore and the United States. Australia accounts for only one per cent of

the company's sales, and this is a deliberate business strategy.

“I realised the market for products [in Australia] is

tiny. To make a good product it's not worth the

return on investment unless you sell globally.”

-Chief Exec Grant Petty

Top Box Office Australian Films of all Time

12 or 41% are comedies

Broaden comedy to include

Red Dog, Happy Feet

and The Sapphires

and 15 or 51% are comedies.

11 or 37% are genre films

Top Box Office Australian Films of all Time

Further down the list you’ll find:

35. Knowing

40. Wolf Creek

41. Chopper

42. Two Hands

44. Mad Max

50. Animal Kingdom

6 or 20% are straight adult dramas

Top Box Office Australian Films of all Time

Another way to look at it:

Combining comedy and genre

(throw in Moulin Rouge &The

Sapphires as a musical, Red Dog as

family, Gallipoli as war, The Piano as

period and Ned Kelly as a crime film

about bushrangers)

and 80% of the films that took the

highest box office in Australia are

NOT straight, glum dramas.

GC + GA + Marketing = Commercial Success (CS)

Domestic audience is too small

∴

Audiences prefer Genre and Comedy (GC)

Global audiences (GA) offer more opportunities

The X Hypothesis

CS = $ = Investment back into the industry