BOOKS AT MIFF turned 5 in 2011, and I honoured the birthday with this coverage for Screen Hub:
MIFF turns 60 this year, and is theoretically eligible for a pensioner discount on Melbourne transport. Books at MIFF is 5. So does that mean it has learnt to walk and talk and begin to take bigger steps into the world?
I’ve been to all five Books at MIFF, and I’d say 2011 marked a smoothness of delivery, and an ever increasing signs that the world of publishing and the world of screen production are beginning to understand each other’s opportunities and limitations.
The event continues to gain critical mass, with support from Film Victoria and the Victorian Government as well as Screen Australia, and a growing influx of producers from interstate as well as locally.
Each year there is a session where ten pitches are made to the audience, and these have grown in confidence and ability too. As somebody called out, Seph McKenna from Roadshow would probably have won the prize if it had been a reality TV show for his pitch of What Makes Us Tick by Hugh MacKay, but the others were at least competent, and some intriguing enough to entice producers to check out the works later.
As was mentioned in the notes, where scores of potentially available works of fiction and non-fiction are laid out for producers to peruse, the shortlist of ten pitches was drawn up by a talented panel of producers and experts from more than 76 submissions from 24 Australian publishers. Phew!
As mentioned elsewhere, Jane Palfreyman from Allen and Unwin Publishers made the point that publishers don’t usually sell the film rights to novels, as the writer often wishes to retain them. She said that this made sense as publishers have enough to do to sell the books around the globe, but if this is the case, then perhaps more discussion with and from agents and managers of authors may be worth pursuing in the future.
On the other hand, Robert Connolly spoke about his experience adapting works and he stressed that a producer must be very clear and upfront about their expectations to a novelist. He said that often the writer is nursing a secret desire to become a screenwriter themselves, not being fully aware, perhaps, of the difficulty in writing for the screen. He said that ideally a novelist is willing to let the work go on a journey in another medium, and basically let it go, because for Connolly, the only point in translating it to another medium is to take it somewhere else.
And all this tied in with Greg Haddrick speaking at the Screen Futures Conference in Melbourne only last week about the mini-series Cloudstreet, adapted by the Tim Winton novel of the same name – and by Tim Winton. Greg stressed that Tim had written Cloudstreet long ago that he wasn’t at all precious about the original material, and he was willing to learn the craft of screenwriting as he went along.
Greg also mentioned that a major challenge for a production company in acquiring the rights to a literary property was that if the work was well known, it was liable to be acquired by a US company, which was what happened with Cloudstreet. Apparently the original idea was to turn it into a feature film, but in the end they found there was just too much material to accomplish this. That ties in with the Books at MIFF session on adapting The Slap, not for film but television, enabling an 8 part series to be produced.
The other point that Haddrick made at the Screen Futures conference was that for a film or television series to be financed, it was desirable to have some profile before the project is made. That’s why true crime works so well, he explained, such as Snowtown, because everyone has heard of it and knows what it’s about, so there’s no need for a costly marketing exercise. But for Greg, many Australian works of fiction could translate handsomely to the screen, but they lack that recognition factor of a Cloudstreet or a Snowtown. And that makes them more difficult to market, and therefore to finance.
Clearly Books at MIFF is enabling producers to meet publishers and vice versa, and to pitch and receive pitches over a day. And clearly that dialogue is enhancing the understanding of both parties in developing doable deals. But it’s still tough!
Mark Poole