Feature
Issue No. 35 - June/July 2007
Filmmaking gets down to business
Renowned creative director and copywriter Geoffrey Reed is venturing into filmmaking (reed.com entertainment) and is moving his HQ from Franklin Street in the CBD to co-locate with the SA Film Corporation in Hendon.
Geoffrey hopes the new film finance rules announced in the latest Budget - and explained in a seminar to the local filmmaking community by Australian Film Finance Corporation CE Brian Rosen earlier this year - will stimulate a new era in Australian screen achievement.
His commercial background gives Geoffrey a useful practical perspective on filmmaking. He says Division 10A of the Film Finance Act, the tax incentive clause often cited as the driver for the golden era last century that produced local classics Breaker Morant and Gallipoli which achieved international success, had a serious flaw.
10A enabled capital raising, but allowed the concessions immediately. Too many projects were not funded to completion; too many projects were funded on plausible ideas which did not have proper business plans or well-defined target audiences.
The early classics, made by filmmakers who well understood marketing, gave the illusion of a successful system. Geoffrey understands successful contemporary filmmaker Rolf de Heer works out his production scale according to the capital raised to be sure his projects get done - but this business sense is rare.
“It's really hard for Australian films to make money. The film Suburban Mayhem was a very good production made for young audiences but somehow it missed its demographic,” Geoffrey says.
“The message from Brian Rosen was that films need a business plan - they need to be positioned like a brand.”
Bryce Courtenay - who came up with Mortein's Louie The Fly character in the 1960s - thoroughly understood this when developing The Power of One and implemented the power of promotion to the project's great benefit.
Media marketer Alex Alexander of Alphalpha agre...
