Here We Go Again

You Can't Judge Film by Its Audiences

But you can sure judge a flop by its dismal figures.

It proved to be a disastrous weekend at the box office as three Australian films - Griff the Invisible, The Reef and A Heartbeat Away - failed dismally to connect with local audiences.

Of the three, Griff the Invisible did best, taking a modest $66,344 on 20 screens, its so-so per-screen score of $3317 suggesting it will drop out of the top 20 by next week. That is, of course, unless a miracle occurs and the film becomes an unexpected word-of-mouth hit.

The Reef did poorly with its $58,196 take on 36 screens, its per-screen figure of $1617 indicating very little interest.

Worst of all, though, was A Heartbeat Away. The $7 million film directed by first-time film director Gale Edwards took a dire $44,204 on 77 screens, its abysmal screen average of $574 being among the worst of any Australian film in recent memory. The film's unqualified failure conjured the spectre of The Tender Hook, the 2008 Australian film that also cost $7 million and which took less than $60,000.

The combined take of all three films - $168,744 - was less than what the Liam Neeson actioner Unknown took across its fifth weekend. ($187,255 on 102 screens).

The figures speak for themselves, but just to be sure, none of them are on track to make any money back. The bottom of the article reads like this:

So the last thing the enterprise needs is catastrophic, clueless weekends like the one we've just had.

Sad enough that the films themselves reflected common shortcomings in so many local films. Just as sad was the lack of marketplace nous that has often seen good Australian films die at the box office. Three local films coming out the same weekend as two tent-pole Hollywood studio films? It's almost as if the films didn't want audiences.

If the weekend has any upside it's of being symbolic of the type of event we thought was behind us. Certainly the spectacle of an all-but-unwatchable $7 million Australian film playing to virtually no audience is something that should have been consigned to the past - and something Australian cinema can ill afford to indulge or repeat.

So just some general points:

* The issue of marketing remains key. Many people say they've never even heard of these films.

* How a debut film director 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.

* The hope is that this dreadful weekend might be the tail end of an era where these long-standing problems ruled. With a new audience-orientated mindset apparently governing production now, this weekend might be the final death throe of an old way of doing things. That's the prayer, anyway.

* Critics going "soft" on local films has again come up. CineTopia states again, for the record, that we NEVER go soft on a film, for whatever reason. The notion of giving Australian films a two-star tariff to encourage "support" for it is worse than useless, it's counter-productive. For what is to be gained by encouraging people to see films you think stink?

Goodness. Aren't they words of wisdom? But it keeps repeating. I'm sick of blogging about how AWFUL the whole venture of 'Australian Film Industry' has become. Yesterday I spent some time talking to my contact out at a funding body and they're just looking for good story ideas as much as the next studio. But screenwriting in this country is so weak, and the scripts out there are actually really mundane or terrible or worse, nonsensical. There's been 2 decades of neglect and the whole population of writers are in deprivation shock.But here are some problem areas that come from the neglect:

• Nobody knows what to write about because of budget reasons.


• Nobody knows who to write for, because most have never thought about the demographic of film viewers.


• Nobody knows how to deliver the craft. I'm sorry but that's the assessment.


• Nobody wants to see Australian films just because they're Australian.


• Nobody in the private sector wants to *invest* in such a losing venture. Nobody in their right mind anyway.

The bottom lines is that it's still early to see if anything can come back; but these kinds of weekends are not encouraging. I could say more but I don't have the energy any more. It's too frustrating.

Piracy Isn't Killing The Industry

On the same day in the SMH, we get this article. The interesting bit is here:

In February last year, the anti-piracy arm of the music industry, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), put out a thunderous press release claiming it had helped police "shut down one of Australia's largest illegal music burning operations" in Melbourne.

Acting on information from MIPI, police seized "close to 100 CD burners and approximately 25,000 discs containing pirate music housed in a suburban CD store".

MIPI's general manager, Sabiene Heindl, said at the time: "This is one of the largest and most blatant illegal music burning labs that we have seen for some time."

It was only this year that the case finally ground its way through the courts and further details were released.

Of the 25,000 "pirate" CDs that MIPI claimed it seized, 14,600 were blanks, while the remaining discs were mostly of Asian artists which the store, Lucky Bubble, had a licence to reproduce.

Less than 100 of the discs were proven to be pirated copies and the charges were dropped to the lowest possible level. The manager of the store, who claims the handful of pirated discs were placed in his shop by staff, in the end was let go with a $1500 fine.

It's a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties and years in jail that MIPI warned about in its press release.

So, no, there is no big piracy operation going on out there. Just the old internet bit torrent thing that MIPI can't do anything about. So it's really a laugh when you see that REALLY LOUD announcement that goes "you wouldn't steal, so you shouldn't pirate" that kicks off half the DVDs out there, wherein they mount that argument that piracy is destroying the future of the Australian Film Industry.

Ah, no.

It's crappy films and crappy development and crappy government development agencies and government funding as corporate welfare that keeps Australian film genuinely uncompetitive, that is killing the future of this industry. If you want my opinion, 20 years of this stuff has already made it comatose.

Hey Look, Russell's Still Doing OK

He's just bought a $10m house in Rose Bay. He's doing great. He could have bought a almost one and a half Australian movie flops with that money.