Karl Quinn Sydney Morning Herald, October 15, 2022
Australia is rushing towards a shortfall in filmmaking talent within the next five years, says acclaimed producer Tony Ayres, as the demise of Neighbours and other long-running TV series leaves nowhere for upcoming writers, directors and other key creatives to develop their skills.
Ayres – whose hit shows include Glitch, Stateless, The Slap, Barracuda, Seven Types of Ambiguity and Clickbait – says that while the local industry is enjoying an unprecedented boom in high-end production, much of it with the international market in mind, those shows offer few opportunities for emerging writers, directors and producers to hone their craft.
“My concern is that there is a systemic flaw, which is that if we only do the kind of top-end, bigger-budget, more elite work, there is going to be a gap in about five years, when one generation moves on and another generation has to emerge,” says Ayres. “Who are those people going to be if they haven’t had the opportunities to learn?
“There is a real and significant gap in our production output [which was once filled by things] like Neighbours, great shows like Packed To the Rafters, Offspring, All Saints – the basic, longer, returning series, which gave younger directors an opportunity to direct, gave newer writers an opportunity to write.”https://omny.fm/shows/good-weekend-talks-1/acclaimed-tv-producer-tony-ayres-on-the-filmmaking/embed?background=f4f5f7&description=1&download=1&foreground=0a1633&highlight=096dd2&image=1&share=1&style=artwork&subscribe=1
The writer-producer-director – whose company Tony Ayres Productions has a development deal with the US giant NBC Universal – explains this issue on the latest episode of Good Weekend Talks, a podcast featuring conversations between the best journalists from across our newsrooms and the people captivating Australia right now, where he likened filmmaking to professional sport.
“The skill set we’re in requires practice, it actually requires you just doing the work and putting the hours in and learning and getting better,” Ayres says. “It’s like an elite athlete or any kind of highly skilled area of expertise. So unless you give people those opportunities I don’t know how they grow and develop.”
One solution, Ayres suggests, is children’s television, an area that the commercial free-to-air networks have tried desperately to wriggle out of for years (they are no longer required by legislation to produce it) and into which few streamers other than Netflix have so far ventured. The ABC is by far the largest commissioner of children’s and young-adult content in Australia.
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“I’m a big advocate for children’s TV,” says Ayres, whose teen drama Nowhere Boys enjoyed four seasons and a movie between 2013 and 2019. “I think it’s really important that we keep making it, not only for practitioners but for audience growth, for getting children inspired by seeing Australian stories.
“Children’s TV is crucial, it’s an area where you can give people an opportunity, and audiences tend to like it – they like watching Australian stories on our screens.”
Ayres’ comments come as federal Arts Minister Tony Burke this week signalled that Australian content quotas for the streamers remained under consideration by the government, and just days after Amazon Prime Video’s local content boss Tyler Bern argued such measures were unnecessary.
Ayres – whose eight-part series Clickbait was a global success for Netflix late last year – believes strong support for the local sector is critical for its survival.
Other than America and India, he says, “there are very few market-based screen industries in the world that I’m aware of. We have to find some way of regulating the market so that we can actually exist as an industry. I absolutely believe that.”