Category Archives: Film

Film news with a particular orientation towards Australia.

International flavour for Scroz development funding

Film, Latest News

Screen Australia today announced nearly $535,000 in development funding for 18 features including projects set in Canada, inner-city Berlin, Mexico City, Vietnam, the Middle East and medieval England.

The genres range from family and musical to comedy, drama, thriller, sci-fi and action. The funding will support eight new projects as well as further assistance for 10 titles.

Through its Talent Escalator programs, the agency is placing three producers in professional posts to improve their direct industry experience and supporting short film director Nicholas Verso in the next stage of his professional development.

Screen Australia’s Head of Production Sally Caplan said, “In this round it is encouraging to see such a great range of Australian stories receive support from filmmakers at different levels, some with international creative partners and several with international focus.

“We are also pleased to be able to support emerging local talent with international placements that will increase our industry’s experience in the marketplace and further reinforce the great reputation of Australian talent on a global stage.”

By Don Groves. IF Magazine. Tue 22/07/2014

SINGLE PROJECT DEVELOPMENT: FEATURE DEVELOPMENT

B MODEL
Genre Comedy, Drama
Producers Louise Smith, Kevin Loader, Rachel Griffiths
Writer/Director Rachel Griffiths
BERLIN SYNDROME
Genre Thriller
Producer Polly Staniford
Executive Producer Angie Fielder
Director Cate Shortland
Writer Shaun Grant
Synopsis A passionate holiday romance leads to an obsessive relationship when an Australian photojournalist wakes one morning in a Berlin apartment and is unable to leave.
THE BUNYIP OF BERKELEY’S CREEK
Genre Family
Producers Melanie Coombs, Mish Armstrong, Alicia Brown
Executive Producer Jonathan Page
Writer Sofya Gollan
Synopsis The Bunyip emerges from a waterhole not knowing who he is, what he is or how he came to be. “Who am I?” he asks the Platypus, Kangaroo and Emu. Only little Spinifex Hopping Mouse Poppy is brave enough to journey with him to find out. Based on the classic children’s book.
EMO (THE MUSICAL)
Genre Comedy, Musical
Producer Lee Matthews
Executive Producer Shaun Miller
Writer Neil Triffett
Synopsis Ethan, an Emo kid who hates almost everything, falls in love with Trinity, a good Christian girl with a passion for life and her Lord Jesus Christ.
THE ENAMORADOS
Genre Comedy, Drama
Producers Julie Ryan, Lisa Hoppe
Director Martha Goddard
Writer Lisa Hoppe
Synopsis Married for 40 years, conservative Mary and Ray Podger find themselves in Mexico on the biggest adventure of their lives, struggling to renegotiate the terms of their love in a distant land.
THE END OF EVERYTHING
Genre Thriller
Producer Kristian Moliere
Writer Andy Cox
Synopsis When Lizzie’s best friend, Evie, disappears, Lizzie takes up her own pursuit of the truth pushing herself into the dark centre of Evie’s teenage world, uncovering secret after secret until she begins to wonder whether she really knew her friend at all.
GOLDEN PEOPLE
Genre Comedy, Drama
Producer Linda Micsko
Director Hannah Hilliard
Writer Glen Dolman
Synopsis Sixteen-year-old competitive swimmer, Paris, attempts to break away from the all-consuming control of his winning-obsessed mother, Laura, in the lead up to the national championships.
JASPER JONES
Genre Coming of Age
Producers Vincent Sheehan, David Jowsey
Executive Producers Liz Watts, Rebecca O’Brien
Director Rachel Perkins
Writer Shaun Grant
Synopsis Based on the best-selling novel by Craig Silvey.
LUCID
Genre Comedy, Science Fiction
Producer Raquelle David
Executive Producer Su Armstrong
Writer Philip Tarl Denson
Synopsis When an introverted dream programmer discovers he is trapped in a client’s dream, he must find a way out and save the woman he secretly loves.
MY COUNTRY
Genre Drama
Producers Tim Maddocks, Liz Burton, Serhat Caradee
Executive Producer David Jowsey
Writer/Director Serhat Caradee
Synopsis A group of young Middle Eastern men kidnap the daughter of a wealthy Sydney family, intent on using her as a bargaining tool in a global political game.
ONE CROWDED HOUR
Genre Biopic
Producers Todd Fellman, Lance Kelleher
Director Kim Mordaunt
Writer Andy Cox
PALM BEACH
Genre Dramatic Comedy
Producers Bryan Brown, Deb Balderstone
Writer Joanna Murray-Smith
PUTNEY GRAIL
Genre Action Adventure
Producers David Taft, Michael Harvey
Writer Michael Harvey
Synopsis Four C14th knights are resurrected in C21st UK, on a quest to protect the Holy Grail from international criminals led by a medieval enchantress.
SALVATION CREEK
Genre Drama
Producer Heather Ogilvie
Director Megan Simpson-Huberman
Writer Ross Grayson Bell
Synopsis A high-flying magazine editor thinks she’s coping brilliantly with grief until the day she can’t get out of bed. Sometimes salvation turns out to be a place of unexpected beauty.
SEASON’S PASS
Genre Comedy
Producer Matthew Dabner
Writer Heath Davis
Synopsis The carefree lifestyle of a party-loving Aussie ski instructor is challenged when he arrives in Canada ready for the new snow season only to be confronted by the son he never knew he had.
THE SEED
Genre Biopic
Producer Nicole O’Donohue
Writer Kate Mulvany
Synopsis Based on a real-life story, a young Australian woman accompanies her Vietnam veteran father on an overseas trip to meet her grandfather, only to discover a garden of long-buried familial secrets. Based on the stage play by Kate Mulvany.
SNOT AND BOB’S HOLIDAY
Genre Crime
Producer Jodi Matterson
Writer John Doyle
Synopsis Through a series of comic adventures, two orphaned criminal brothers rescue their dream girl’s kidnapped child.
THIS DARK WOOD
Genre Horror, Thriller
Producer Kristina Ceyton
Director Jonathan auf der Heide
Writer Tom Holloway
Synopsis Recovering from the loss of their child, a young couple move to remote Tasmania to discover that the Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease has jumped species and threatens the survival of the human race.

TALENT ESCALATOR PROGRAMS

Director Nicholas Verso (The Last Time I Saw Richard – 2014 AACTA Award winner for Best Short Film) will be supported for professional development through the Director’s Acclaim fund.

Producer Alexandra Blue will spend six months in London working with the development and acquisitions team at Element Pictures (The Guard, Shadow Dancer, Omagh).

Producer Leah James will spend six months in London at Working Title Films (Les Misérables, About a Boy, Senna) working across their development and production slate.
Producer Jennifer Jones will spend four months at Melbourne-based Matchbox Pictures (The Slap, Cut Snake, Underground: The Julian Assange Story) across their development and production slate.

Hollywood director: piracy is necessary, and doesn’t hurt revenues

Film, Latest News, Television

Lexi Alexander has called out the industry for ‘bullshit’ claims about the cost of piracy, and says Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde should be released from prison

Hollywood director Lexi Alexander slams MPAA anti-piracy war and demands Hollywood director Lexi Alexander has criticised the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its war on piracy claiming that kids hacking film security is more entertaining than most Hollywood movies.

Alexander said she thinks piracy is necessary because of country content restrictions, and that while the wealth piracy begets for the pirates isn’t right, the freedom of access to content is.

Sweden free Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde “For every IP block, DRM and who-knows-what security feature Hollywood spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on, some piracy kid will undo it for free and within a couple of minutes,” says Alexander on her blog.

“And this is my favourite part: I am 100% certain that the hacking of entertainment industry’s security features provides better entertainment for these kids than the entertainment we’re trying to prevent them from stealing. Let that sink in for a second, then try not to bust up laughing,” she said.

Region-locking content forces piracy

Alexander explains that as a German living in the US it’s difficult to get German news, and while in Germany it’s difficult to get US shows – so she resorts to piracy, and says many people in the film and TV industries rely on it to get content.

“Like many people in the film and TV industry, sometimes I find myself in pirate waters,” said Alexander. “As an expat household, with three paid Amazon Prime memberships for three different countries, a paid Netflix membership, a paid ACORN membership, a ridiculously high DISH [pay TV] bill and an Apple TV box, we still can’t watch most programs from back home, even though we’re willing to pay good money for it.”

“I’ll go on the website of a German public TV channel in hopes of catching up on some (objective) news and up pops the message: ‘Sorry, the copyright for this program does not extend to the country of your current location’,” Alexander explains. “Of course when I’m over there, trying to catch up with a US show sets off even more alarms.”

Hollywood piracy loss statistics ‘are bullshit’

Alexander also hits out at Hollywood’s insistence that piracy is causing massive losses within the industry.

“You know what statistics are bullshit? The ones stated by the MPAA about losses due to piracy,” she said emphatically. “Piracy has NOT been proven to hurt box-office numbers – on the contrary, several studies say it may have boosted the bottom line.”

Large sums are spent combating piracy, according to Alexander: “Money spent by Hollywood to fight piracy: Hundreds of Millions of dollars. (It’s almost impossible to find out the exact numbers, but given they spent $91m lobbying for Sopa [Stop Online Piracy Act] in one year alone, we can all assume what the total comes out to.)”

Alexander concludes that she isn’t endorsing piracy, because she sees people like Kimdotcom lining his own pockets rather than being Robin Hoods. But she says that she is willing to “at least reach out to the other side” and demands that Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde is freed from prison in Sweden.

Sunde was confined for his role in “assisting in making copyright content available” through the Pirate Bayby a Stockholm district court in 2009 after two years on the run.

Samuel Gibbs – theguardian.com, Friday 11 July 2014

Movie piracy: threat to the future of films intensifies

Film, Latest News, Online Media, Television

Almost 30% of Britons are now watching movies illegally online or buying counterfeit DVDs, costing the industry £500m a year

‘There’s a perception it’s a victimless crime, but it’s not,’ says Mark Batey of the FDA. The movie industry excels in selling dreams. But since the dawn of the digital revolution, there is one narrative they’ve consistently and conspicuously failed to sell: that piracy is theft and consumers who indulge ought to feel guilty about it. Recent research by Ipsos suggests that almost 30% of the UK population is active in some form of piracy, either through streaming content online or buying counterfeit DVDs.

Such theft costs the UK audiovisual industries about £500m a year.

Given such scale, why has that the message failed to sink in? “There’s a perception that it’s a victimless crime,” says Mark Batey, chief executive of trade body the Film Distributors’ Association. “But it’s not. There are just a handful of super successes every year among hundreds of movies that are brought to market. And when a film is copied or made available online, it reduces the value of that film around the world.”

This, says Batey, can be particularly detrimental to the independent film-maker who may have spent years raising money for the film and may have had to remortgage their house.

Former lobbyist and US senior government official Jean Prewitt agrees. “The impact of piracy tends to play out differently and arguably more immediately on the independent sector than it does on the studios,” she says. “The indies are totally dependent on local distributors in all countries to take risk and invest in the making of a film before it is made. This is how these films get financed.”

Prewitt, who now heads the Independent Film and Television Alliance, points to its members who go to markets at festivals such as Cannes, Berlin and the American Film Market in Los Angeles (which is produced by IFTA) to present their project to buyers, who pre-commit to the film and then take it when it is finished, guaranteeing a minimum level of royalties to the film-maker.

These pre-sales are then taken to a bank and used as collateral to finance the film. If the pre-sales aren’t secured, the bank won’t loan the money and the film doesn’t get off the ground.

“Distributors are not able to take the risks they used to. What this means to the consumer is not that some producers don’t get rich, it means the product doesn’t get made.”

Each year, a huge number of these independent films are lauded at the Oscars: Dallas Buyers Club, 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street all went to market to seek independent financing.

This reduction of revenue caused in part by piracy has also resulted in studios and production houses making less adventurous choices when it comes to films – just think of the prequels, sequels and remakes hitting screens this summer. Similarly, streaming television content illegally has a huge effect on the business, says Gareth Neame, executive producer of Downton Abbey.

“Broadcasters will pay us money upfront, but it’s not sufficient to cover the cost of the whole production, so we look at the long-term value of our product and, based on all the ways we can exploit this, we cashflow against anticipated revenues,” he says.

“If it comes to pass that the show doesn’t make those revenues because of illegal downloads, we don’t recoup the money, and we have to be more cautious.

“Long term, movies and TV and other content simply won’t be created in the first place. One may think an individual act of piracy doesn’t matter, but if that becomes a way of life then the value of intellectual property becomes eroded, shows like Downton Abbey won’t get made.”

Phil Clapp, chief executive of trade organisation the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association, says that cinemas are losing about £220m a year at the UK box office due to piracy, representing about two months’ income in an average year.

“We recognise that the vast majority of illegal content starts its life in the cinema, and because we remain the key source we have put a huge amount of effort into making our sites more secure and training staff and giving them the ability to take action,” he says.

Clapp adds that the financial impact is felt most acutely by the long list of people you see on the credits of a film. “Makeup artists, costume designers,, studios and facilities, even box office staff – they are the ones who are greatly affected by this loss of revenue.”

According to a 2010 TERA report, up to a quarter of a million jobs will be at risk if nothing is done about copyright infringement in the UK by 2015.

Alex Hamilton, managing director of eOne Films UK, which has brought films such as the Twilight saga and 12 Years a Slave to British theatres, agrees with that assessment.

“The audiovisual industry supports hundreds of thousands of people’s livelihoods and if the industry has trouble supporting itself, it’s going to put people out of work,” he says. “People aren’t pirating to make themselves better or put food on the table; they are doing it for recreational purposes. An individual has to acknowledge that their actions don’t exist in isolation.”

There are a number of ways to consume content legally, says Hamilton, from cinema to video on demand subscriptions such as Amazon Primeand Netflix, and the cost is relatively low. Another crucial point pirates should understand is that nothing is free.

When a consumer streams illegal content, these sites are making money, either through advertising or subscription costs.

“It’s straightforward plagiarism for profit,” says Prewitt. “Every consumer click is driving legitimate dollars out of the legal industry and into the pockets of these criminals.”

The Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) works with law enforcement agencies to prosecute piracy but also works to educate the public on the consequences of copyright infringement.

“One message that is key is that, whether you’re pirating physical copy or streaming, you are putting money into the hands of a criminal,” says Kieron Sharp, director general of Fact.

Many pirates who produce counterfeit DVDs on a large scale can be traced to organised crime rings in the far east, he says, who then reinvest that money in other strands of criminal activity, such as prostitution, drugs and dog-fighting. “Our view is that most of these people [who stream illegally] are film and TV fans and we want them on our side, not on the side of criminals, who will profit from their consumption.”

Fact general counsel Byron Jacobson says the organisation has also been working hard to prevent companies from advertising on infringing websites. There seems to be evidence, he says, of a significant decrease in the number of high-street brands doing so.

And while Fact has proved to be a strong backbone for the entertainment industry when it comes to copyright infringement, support from outside the business has waned.

The UK coalition government has moved slowly in implementing the Digital Economy Act, which addresses policy issues related to digital media, including copyright infringement, and it has been an uphill struggle to get internet service providers to help combat the issue.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. In the UK, BT, Sky, Virgin Media and TalkTalk have reached a deal with the Motion Picture Association and the BPI, which represents the British music industry to send “educational” letters to customers who have downloaded illegal content. The process is expected to come into effect in 2015.

“The difficulty is there is no end point,” says one industry insider. “It’s not really going to divert or stop even medium-level or hardcore pirates. Maybe it will quash the nervous teenager, but that’s about it.”

And it’s not just the entertainment industry that will suffer if the value of copyright is not respected, says Neame. “IP businesses and learning-based business industries are hugely increasing in the west,” he says. “The erosion of IP will have an increasingly large impact on the global economies and economies in Europe. It’s important that we try to educate people to behave like responsible citizens and to be honest and understand why copyright matters.”

Diana Lodderhose – theguardian.com, Thursday 17 July 2014

Why ‘Apes’ Won’t Be Enough to Turn Around the Summer Box Office

Film, Latest News, Online Media

Where have all the blockbusters gone?

That’s the question on Hollywood’s lips as the summer box office pants its way past midpoint. With less than two months to go, this season’s crop of tentpole films look shaky, despite a gorilla-sized $73 million opening weekend for “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.”

Overall, there have been more raunchy comedies and fewer family films — and, in fact, fewer tentpoles packed the season vs. last year. China’s box office is surging, while the domestic market shrinks. And the endless stream of sequels and reboots has failed to lure away crowds from the World Cup, barbecues and the beach.

Box office revenue from the first week of May through the most recent weekend is down nearly 20%, as “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” and “How to Train Your Dragon 2” failed to match the massive grosses of such 2013 popcorn films as “Iron Man 3,” “Despicable Me 2” and “Monsters University.”

This summer almost certainly will fall short of last year’s record-breaking $4.76 billion haul.

“Product is a big part of the equation,” said Jeffrey Logsdon, an analyst with Hudson Square Research. “When the product’s not there, you don’t see the big audiences.”

Films have been opening big, but flaming out quickly, with pictures such as the “Spider-Man” sequel and “Godzilla” debuting to nearly $100 million, then dropping more than 60% in their second weekends. Both have struggled to clear $200 million domestically. The lack of stickiness is evident across the digital watercooler.

“As the box office has fallen, social media has had a strong correlation,” said Ben Carlson, prexy of social-media tracking service Fizziology. “There’s been less social engagement for a lot of these films.”

Leaving a huge void in the calendar, two major movies vacated the summer season: Pixar’s “The Good Dinosaur,” due to production delays, and “Fast & Furious 7,” owing to the death of star Paul Walker.

The loss of “Good Dinosaur” deprived the season of a major family film in a year packed with R-rated comedies. Some of these laffers, such as “Neighbors” and “22 Jump Street,” were successes, but a dearth of films that appealed to children, save for “Maleficent,” “How to Train Your Dragon 2” and “Planes: Fire & Rescue,” has robbed the B.O. of some of its demographic dimensionality.

“It’s the vagaries of production schedules,” said Patrick Corcoran, spokesman for the National Assn. of Theatre Owners. “Last year, we had too many family films; this year there are too few.”

When summer 2014 ends, there will be a few happy chapters, perhaps none more encouraging than the breakout success of “The Fault in Our Stars.” Produced for $12 million, the film, based on John Green’s bestselling novel, has taken in north of $225 million worldwide. In place of giant robots and costumed heroes, its selling point is the story of two teenagers who meet in a cancer support group. Yet, Fox made the bold decision to release the movie in the heart of popcorn season.

“We knew who the audience was, and we felt strongly that we knew how to get to them,” said Chris Aronson, president of domestic distribution at 20th Century Fox. “We knew if we timed it just right, it would hit as the kids were getting out of school — post-prom and post-finals. This wasn’t a comicbook movie. It wasn’t about action and explosions. It was just a movie about people and life.”

With the U.S. theatrical business in a rut, China continues to be a dominant force internationally. For the first half of 2014, the Chinese box office grew 22%, to $2.2 billion. The power of the country and its population of 1.3 billion was on display as it pushed movies such as “Edge of Tomorrow” toward solvency, goosed the international grosses of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” to new highs for the mutant franchise, and outpaced domestic ticket sales on “Transformers: Age of Extinction.”

One kernel of good news for Stateside exhibitors was that after experiencing historic lows in 2013, 3D rebounded, contributing a more than 40% share of ticket sales for films such as “Godzilla” and “Edge of Tomorrow.”

“It’s obvious 3D is here to stay,” said Rolando Rodriguez, president and chief executive officer of Marcus Theatres. “It bodes well for the industry, because it is an amenity that separates the theatrical experience from the home experience.”

An even more promising reason theater owners aren’t entering into mass suicide pacts is that salvation appears to be just around the corner. The next two years bring new installments of such Tiffany franchises as James Bond, “The Avengers,” “Star Wars” and “Batman.”

“Like everyone else, we’re looking at 2015 and 2016, and the incredible lineup of films,” said Bud Mayo, chairman and CEO of Digiplex Destinations.

Tomorrow is a brighter day.

Brent Lang – Variety – July 16, 2014

‘Transformers’ Earning More in China Than U.S.

Film, Latest News

“Transformers: Age of Extinction” is a bigger hit in China than it is in the United States, according to numbers released Tuesday by China Movie Media Group, a partner in the production. So far the film has made $134.5 million in the People’s Republic in its first five days of release compared with $121 million domestically after five days in theaters. The previous “Transformers” film grossed roughly $165 million in China.

The film brought in $10.5 million Stateside on Monday and $10.4 million on Tuesday, so it’s doubtful it will match those figures after Wednesday’s grosses are tallied.

Moreover, the film has now shattered the record set by a China-Hong Kong production, “The Monkey King,” which grossed $133 million over 11 days, and it has done it in half the time. China Movie Media Group said “Transformers: Age of Extinction” is on track to surpass “Avatar’s” record $217.7 million haul from the country.

It’s almost unheard of for a Hollywood film of this size and scale to surpass its Stateside gross in a foreign country, particularly a fiercely protectionist market such as China, which often takes steps to safeguard its local productions by giving foreign films unpalatable release slots. However, Paramount Pictures, the studio behind the franchise, took great pains to incorporate Chinese elements into the film — shooting parts of the picture there, casting Chinese star Li Bingbing in a key role and partnering with local companies to help promote the film.

China Movie Media Group, the country’s largest distributor and film promoter, collaborated for the first time with a U.S. studio, providing ad, online ticketing and other forms of support.

Brent Lang – Variety – JULY 2, 2014

States ponder responses to Film Vic initiative

Film, Latest News, Television

Film Victoria’s switch from equity investment to non-recoupable funding of film and TV productions has prompted other state screen agencies to review their funding policies to remain competitive with the Vics.

Screen Queensland, which is in the midst of renewing its terms of trade, and ScreenWest both confirmed they are closely examining the Film Victoria initiative, which assigns the agency’s equity interest to producers.

The South Australian Film Corp., which introduced a producer equity scheme soon after Richard Harris’ arrival as CEO in 2007, is reviewing aspects of its scheme.

At Screen NSW, any adjustment of its funding policies would need to be signed off by a new film and TV industry advisory committee to be appointed by the Minister for the Arts, which replaced the board. Screen NSW recently increased the non-recoupable sum available per project from $70,000 to $100,000. CEO Maureen Barron is on leave and unavailable for comment.

Announcing the funding arrangements that began on July 1, Film Victoria CEO Jenni Tosi said an external review found there was no “real rationale” for the agency to make equity investments. Projects which are primarily but not entirely filmed and post-produced in Victoria will also be eligible for non-recoupable investment, a move which may attract more production from other States.

Film Victoria has the advantage of being the best-resourced of all the state agencies, meaning it can support financially more projects than Screen NSW and Screen Queensland.

By Don Groves INSIDEFILM [Wed 02/07/2014]

Film streaming and downloads to overtake box office in 2017

Film, Latest News, Online Media, Television

The growing popularity of downloads and streaming services like Netflix means that Blu-ray and DVD sales are declining

A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has declared that the market for DVDs and Blu-ray is quickly declining, with the slack taken up by increasingly popular on-demand streaming services like Netflix – which will also overtake cinema box office revenues in the coming years.

The study says that revenue from electronic home video (ie streaming and downloading films) will outstrip physical media in 2016, and that the market for physical media will drop from $12.2bn now to $8.7bn in 2018. They also predict that in 2017 electronic home video will overtake the traditional cinema as the biggest contributor to total film revenue in the US, reaching a total of $17bn the following year – double the $8.5bn the sector currently generates.

That’s not to say the multiplex is under threat – PwC predict a 16% increase in ticket sales over the next five years. “People still want to go to the movies, especially the big tentpole films,” said Cindy McKenzie, managing director of PwC’s entertainment, media and communications arm. She also pointed to the cheap and easy distribution allowed by digital media as being a major cost saving: “The amount of money that you’re making per transaction may not be the same, but it is cheaper to distribute things digitally.”

Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and the popular US streaming service Hulu are funnelling their growth into ambitious production projects: all have quickly made the jump from mere middlemen to creators of original content, with hits like House of Cards and Arrested Development. Netflix’s revenue rose an astonishing 24% in the first quarter of 2014.

In the music market, streaming is eating into downloads to the point where Spotify’s streaming revenue is beginning to outpace iTunes’ download revenue in certain parts of Europe – perhaps a catalyst for Apple’s recent purchase of streaming service Beats Music. But downloads of films are still growing (albeit at a much lower pace than streaming) and topped $1bn in revenue for the first time last year, driven in part by high-quality downloads becoming available before physical and streamed versions.

PwC also announced that ebooks would overtake printed books as the UK’s most popular reading format by 2018, with revenue to triple to nearly £1bn over the next four years.

Ben Beaumont-Thomas – theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 June 2014

John Truby’s Breakdown of “Godzilla”

Film, Latest News, Screenwriting

Spoiler alert: this breakdown divulges information about the plot of the film.

John Truby is Hollywood’s premiere screenwriting instructor and story consultant. Called “the best script doctor in the movie industry,” Truby serves as a story consultant for major studios and production companies worldwide, and has been a script doctor on more than 1,800 movies, sitcoms and television dramas for the likes of Disney, Universal, Sony Pictures, FOX, HBO, Alliance Atlantis, Paramount, BBC, MTV and more – http://truby.com – June 1 2014

It’s easy to make fun of Godzilla. Laughable franchise. Dinosaur that looks like a chicken. Really big scales that make it impossible for him to sleep on his back. But making fun doesn’t get us anywhere. This film has been huge at the box office and is a lot better than I thought it would be (which is a pretty low bar, I admit). But for mastering the craft of screenwriting, especially for summer blockbuster movies, the question to ask ourselves is: what would I do if I were given this assignment? More specifically, what were the story challenges in this film and what would I do to solve them?

Let’s begin with the basic opposition on which any story is based. The normal approach to a horror-disaster film is monster against humans. But that’s a grossly unfair fight. Millions of humans are just foot fodder for the big guy. Even the strongest military on earth is helpless in the face of such power. Which means that, like virtually all disaster movies, the normal Godzilla movie has no plot. Talk about hitting the same beat. Nameless humans are trampled ad infinitum. That brings up the challenge of character. Obviously, you won’t be getting into the psychological and moral needs of Godzilla. And if you tell this story in the normal way, you won’t be getting any character definition from the nameless humans he kills either. You’re left with the military commanders staring helplessly at the destruction, which is as one note as it sounds.

To see how the writers solved these challenges, and the process we might work through on a similar project, we begin by going back to the genres, or story forms, on which Godzilla is based. This is epic horror, technically a story in which the fate of the nation is determined by the actions of a single individual fighting a monster. This basic principle governs all major character and plot decisions the writers make.

The Titanic was the best disaster film ever made. The key technique James Cameron used to elevate it above one of the lowest of all genres was to begin with a love story. This allowed the audience to get to know two people extremely well, and to invest deeply in their love. Then when the disaster hit, it wasn’t just mass destruction of a number of characters we never got to know. This disaster really hurt.

Here, writers Dave Callaham (story) and Max Borenstein (screenplay) establish a single human character, Ford Brody, who will be the fulcrum of the epic. Some have criticized the film for its slow start. But this time is crucial to show Ford’s ghost and his intense emotional need to solve the problem no matter the cost. It also connects him and his family to the audience, so that the later mega-battles will mean more to the audience than amazing special effects.

So how does the genre of epic horror help the writers set up the character opposition? They go back to the single most important technique in horror, first used in Frankenstein, where they flip the human and inhuman. In other words, at some point in the story the monster becomes the hero. This technique was also used in Terminator II, where the relentless monster of Terminator I turns into the good guy and an apparently normal-looking human is an even-deadlier terminator.

Of course the writers don’t take this technique as far as Frankenstein or King Kong. Godzilla doesn’t become a psychologically deep character capable of falling in love with some pretty human. But we get a nice plot beat, and it sets up the real battle of the story.

The decision on how to set up the character opposition gives us another benefit. Since humans are apparently impotent in the face of Godzilla’s power, why not create a second and third monster that can give Godzilla real trouble? This opposition may lack the emotional power of a fight between Godzilla and humans, but real emotion requires a fair fight, so that wasn’t going to happen anyway. And since this is both a horror and an epic action story, the fight between mega-monsters is guaranteed to generate much better action set pieces.

The epic horror genre dictates a third major decision for the writers, having to do with the story structure. Adding epic to horror means the action story beats will track the plot. And the most important beat in any action story is the vortex point.

A good action story always converges to a single point known to the audience fairly early in the story. This allows the writers to begin the story on an epic, often worldwide, scale without paying a heavy price. The big danger to the epic action story is that the grand scale can destroy narrative drive as the story meanders from place to place. But by setting up a vortex point, the writers create a cyclone effect where all characters and action lines converge at progressively greater speed.

Sure enough, the vortex point here is San Francisco. All monsters and humans, including our everyman hero, Brody, drive relentlessly to this point in space and time. The storyline speeds up and the battle they fight there is a whopper.

Most writers forget that horror is consistently the most popular story form in worldwide storytelling. But it’s also a very narrow form. Combining it with a genre like action magnifies its power tremendously, especially in the film medium. The trick for writers is learning how to combine the forms so that you get the best of both.

This particular mix of genres won’t get you any respect. You won’t win any awards. But you will get the pleasure of laughing all the way to the bank.

Docklands studios Melbourne makes it to 10 years

Film, Latest News, Television

Rod Allan, chief executive of Docklands Studios Melbourne. ‘The studio is being used more widely, and that was the ideal a few years ago’.

EVEN by the standards of the forever fluky film industry, the young life of Docklands Studios Melbourne has been rocky. However, after two name changes, a change of ownership, a government bailout and much gnashing of teeth, the purpose-built film and television studio that sits in the windswept shadow of the Bolte Bridge has this month made it to its 10th anniversary.

“The 10 years is an opportunity worth celebrating,” says studio chief executive Rod Allan. “A lot of production has come through here in the last 10 years, international and domestic.”

The mere survival of the complex is worth celebrating. The Docklands studio hasn’t had it quite as easy as its two peers.

Sydney’s Fox Studios Australia has survived a downturn in the number of international film productions coming to Australia by hosting Hollywood films fuelled by Australian talent and the 40 per cent producer offset — ¬including Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, Stuart Beattie’s I, Frankenstein and currently Alex Proyas’s Gods of Egypt —and a steady flow of TV talent shows, including The Voice.

Meanwhile, the Gold Coast’s Village Roadshow Studios has plugged away with steady production including The Railway Man and Bait, a valuable water tank and a solid community of film services.

But Docklands struggled for years after the initial fanfare by the Bracks Labor state government in 2001 of a grand public-private partnership that would bring Hollywood to Melbourne.

The reality was Hollywood brought the occasional film to Docklands — such as Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are (Allan’s favourite during his time at the studio), thriller The Killer Elite, with Robert De Niro, and the Nicolas Cage vehicle Ghost Rider— but not at a sustainable rate.

Estimates that the studio would generate $100 million in film production every year and deliver “lasting economic and cultural benefits’’ were wildly optimistic. As it happened, the studio ¬recorded successive multimillion-dollar losses and, in 2008, Victoria was forced to take control, at a further cost of $15m, after shareholders withdrew.

Those days appear to be past after the studio, and government, realised Hollywood would not be enough. “Originally, the focus was much more international,” Allan says. “In the last five years, we’ve had to maintain that focus, but at the same time make sure the studio is available to the domestic market. I think we’ve done that quite successfully.”

A deal with the Nine Network ensures one studio is well used at all times, hosting programs -including The Footy Show and Millionaire Hot Seat.

Network Seven uses the studio for its local drama Winners & Losers and Slide Show and, before that, Australia’s Got Talent. As well, smaller Australian films — including horror remake Patrick, Kath & Kimdrella and, most recently, David Parker’s comedy drama with Noah Taylor, The Menkoff Method — have been able to afford space at Docklands.

“Certainly, the high Australian dollar has made it very difficult to attract production under the location offset, which we refer to as footloose productions,” Allan says.

“That’s an aspect of the market that has definitely slowed, which is why we and Ausfilm continue to lobby the government to increase the location offset to 30 per cent. “Currently, the 15 per cent incentive (plus usually a mixture of state government incentives) is not enough to be competitive globally,’’ he says.

The global success of The Lego Movie, produced in Sydney by Australian digital studio Animal Logic for Warner Bros and Village Roadshow, has helped generate interest, particularly with the lift in PDV (post-production, digital and visual effect) Incentive to 30 per cent. The Lego Movie used that incentive. “At 30 per cent, we’d still have to compete with everyone else, but that 30 per cent would make us competitive again,” Richards says.

Michael Bodey – The Australian – April 16, 2014

Cannes 2014 lineup: ‘A mouth-watering selection’

Film, Latest News

The Guardian’s film critic, Peter Bradshaw, gets his teeth into a Cannes programme that includes new films from David Cronenberg, Olivier Assayas and Ken Loach

The announcement of the Cannes competition list is an event that becomes more tinglingly tense and exciting every year. These are the films that will, for good or ill, dominate world cinema conversation in the coming 12 months. They’re an alternative canon to the English-language “awards season” movies that emerge after Venice and Toronto in the autumn. With films by big-hitters including Cronenberg, Godard, Hazanavicius, Ceylan and the Dardenne brothers, this is likely to be the case once again.

The formidable Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev will be there with his Leviathan and from Mauritania, Abderrahmane Sissako will represents new African cinema with Timbuktu. However, some will be disappointed not to see the new movies from Terrence Malick, Emir Kusturica, Fatih Akin and Roy Andersson. (It is possible that Andersson’s film, gloriously entitled A Pigeon Sat on the Branch Reflecting on Existence, will be put into selection later this month.)

So the veteran titans of British progressive cinema, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, are once again facing off for the Palme D’Or, something to cause some patriotic pride in the ranks of the British industry, though perhaps some twinges of secret exasperation about quite so much emphasis being put on these names. It is Thierry Frémaux’s seventh year completely in charge of the festival as “general delegate”, and he has reinforced the mighty predominance of Cannes, not least with his shrewd development of its Un Certain Regard sidebar as a repository of movies that would well be headliners at rival festivals – thus pretty much doubling its selection prerogative.

This newspaper takes an even keener interest in Cannes than usual, having recently awarded it our best festival prize in the inaugural Guardian Film Awards. Festival president Gilles Jacob elegantly and whimsically offered us his thoughts on the choice of Cannes: “The spirit blows where it pleases, as my master Robert Bresson said, and everyone does as he pleases.”

It is certainly a big year for the big British players. Ken Loach (a Palme winner in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes The Barley), is the Cannes equivalent of a “made guy”, much loved and admired by both Frémaux and Jacob. In fact, Frémaux offered some pointed remarks at the press conference about British directors being unappreciated in their native lands. Loach’s film this year, Jimmy’s Hall, is another collaboration with screenwriter Paul Laverty, and is understood to be his final fiction feature: a drama centred on Ireland’s red scare of the 1930s, and the communist challenge to the Catholic church’s censorship.

Mike Leigh is a director who does not have quite the freehold on Cannes enjoyed by Loach. Notoriously, the festival rejected Vera Drake in 2004, although the film went on to win the Golden Lion at Venice. This year, however, Leigh has been accepted for Mr Turner, a look at the life of the painter JMW Turner, with Timothy Spall in the leading role.

The third British film-maker in the official selection is Andrew Hulme, the former editor on movies such as Control and The American, who is making a directorial debut in the Un Certain Regard lineup with Snow in Paradise, a tough character study about violence and religion.

And speaking of titans, no discussion of this year’s festival could be complete without mentioning that never-sleeping giant of French cinema history, Jean-Luc Godard, returning to Cannes at the age of 83 with his new film, dauntingly entitled Farewell to Language. Godard is the great, implacably cantankerous and difficult warrior from the new wave generation, one that still makes its mark at Cannes. (One screening theatre, the Bazin, is named after the great new wave-era critic André Bazin, and the “next-day” catchup screenings are called les séances de lendemain, playfully referring to Truffaut’s famous phrase “the cinema of tomorrow”).

Godard is always being written off as a spent force. And yet his last Cannes movie, Film Socialisme, featuring loftily cerebral critiques of capitalist society, happened to be filmed partly on board the cruise ship Costa Concordia. This was later to become a spectacular wreck, fatally lacking in manoeuvrability, because it had been built on a huge scale to maximise profit. So perhaps Godard is still a film-maker with serendipity on his side, not yet out of touch with the zeitgeist.

This year was trailed as a festival that has paid greater attention to women film-makers, an issue for which it has been fiercely criticised in the past. In competition is Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s Still the Water, an emotional drama about a teen boy and a girl on the southern Japanese island of Amami. Alice Rohrwacher’s The Miracles, also in competition, is an Italian movie with Monica Bellucci: a 14-year-old’s life is turned upside down when a young German criminal shows up on a rehab programme. Elsewhere, Austrian director Jessica Hausner is in the UCR list with her movie Amour Fou, a period drama inspired by Heinrich von Kleist.

Two Days, One Night, by the double Palme-winning Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, features a very starry lead actor: Marion Cotillard as Sandra, a woman who has the weekend to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses so she can keep her job. It sounds like a more mainstream film than is usual for these directors, and set in a higher social stratum than usual. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep, coming it at a mighty three-and-a-quarter hours, will be keenly anticipated, again set in Anatolia.

Ryan Gosling has been the most glamorous of figures at Cannes in recent years, acting in movies by Nicolas Winding Refn. Now he arrives with his own film as director, in the Un Certain Regard section: Lost River, about a family living in a small town of the same name, involving a single mother and a troubled teenage boy, and starring Christina Hendricks and Saoirse Ronan. Sure to be a hot ticket.

Maps to The Stars by David Cronenberg is a competition movie avowedly about that most superficially attractive but difficult and elusive subject: celebrity and our current infatuation with it. It is written by Bruce Wagner (author of the excoriating I’m Losing You) and all about a dynastic Hollywood family, deeply embedded and dysfunctionally addicted to the culture of celebrity in Los Angeles. It will of course be interesting to see if the movie can analyse celebrity without being in some way hampered or compromised by the whole business.

Bennett Miller, director of Capote and Moneyball, comes to the Cannes competition with Foxcatcher, an intriguing-sounding movie about the wrestling champions Mark and Dave Schultz (played by Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo) and the family tragedy they endured. Steve Carell is boldly cast in a very serious role. Miller showed himself to be a brilliant chronicler of US sport in Moneyball and Cannes delegates will be very keen to see how this new film plays out.

The other alpha-male of US cinema, as far as Cannes 2014 is concerned, is Tommy Lee Jones who is on the Croisette with The Homesman, a frontier tale about a tense journey from Nebraska to Iowa. Jones, whose The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada was respectfully received in Cannes in 2005, is a Hollywood star whose professional personality as an auteur has very much been nurtured in Cannes.

As far as mainstream French cinema goes, the big contender is Olivier Assayas, a critic turned director in the high French tradition. Sils Maria is a fascinating-sounding tale, with something of All About Eve, about a veteran actor (played by Juliette Binoche), who finds herself coming into contact with a young pretender (Chloë Grace Moretz), who plays the role she once made famous in a remake.

Is there a more remarkable wunderkind at Cannes 2014 than the 25-year-old Québécois Xavier Dolan, making his competition debut with Mommy, his fifth feature film as director. I have been sceptical about Dolan in the past, but his last feature Tom At The Farm was terrifically good and this is another must-see.

Michel Hazanavicus is a French director whose fortunes were co-created by Cannes and the great American mogul Harvey Weinstein. In 2011, Weinstein (a true Cannes habitué) came to see Hazanavicius’s silent-movie pastiche The Artist, fell in love with it, and the rest is Oscar history. Now Hazanavicius comes to Cannes with a tough, serious film, The Search, again starring his wife Bérénice Bejo as a woman who forms an emotional attachment to a young boy in war-scarred Chechnya.

It is, as ever, a mouthwatering selection.

theguardian.com, Thursday 17 April 2014