Managing Director Sam White and Creative Director Eddie White talk to Bloomberg about Sweet & Sour and the Chinese film industry.
Archive for June, 2008
Cable news story on Sweet & Sour
June 30, 2008Josh Bowman on “Justice League of Australia”
June 21, 2008From one of our freelance animators…
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Josh Bowman Says:
June 20, 2008 at 7:05 am edit
I think it’s great that you guys are doing “The PRA Dec.”
It seems to me that the people responsible for the deduction want to finance movies that are “Australian” and I find that extremely short sighted and pompous. As if in some way they think that if it’s not Australian then it’s not worth it because it doesn’t do anything to promote “Australia”.
This is all based on my view of these events, if someone has more information on the situation or if there’s anything in what I’ve said that’s incorrect let me know.
The fact is that in the next 6 – 8 months there’s a very real possibility of me having to look overseas to find animation work just so I can survive. There are so few places in Australia being used for animation in movies and if there aren’t any incentives for overseas movies to be produced here then we’re all just going to have to leave.
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Josh is one of the very real people affected by how this legislation works. There is some confusion over how these incentives work, which has not been helped by some of the selective reporting we’ve seen about Justice League Mortal.
Essentially, a number of rebates were announced as part of the Australian Screen Production Incentive. There were:
- Producer offset – 40% rebate on “Australian” Films (minimum budget on 1M)
- Producer offset – 20% rebate on “Australian” TV series
- PDV offset – 15% rebate on post, digital and visual effects (Minimum spend of 5M)
- Location offset – 15% location rebate for overseas productions shooting in Australia (Between 15-50M spend, > 70% of total expenditure to be in Australia)
Generally speaking, the new producer offset leaves Australian producers better off, so long as they’re producing features with budgets over $1M. For ultra-low budget filmmakers, they’re neither better or worse off. For visual effects and production crews servicing foreign production, there’s definitely an improvement as we didn’t have these sort of incentives at all before. 15% is not as generous as the 40%, but when the government is footing the bill, there should definitely be some “Australian-ness” to it – whether it is cultural or where the profits go.
The 40% offset is designed so that Producers can borrow against it and assume a high equity position in their projects and make more out of their films, so they can keep making more films. I think it is the second issue is more important here. The previous system often left producers worse off after after finishing their films.
By giving them a high equity position in their films they can achieve more sustainability in their businesses and increase the output of production in Australia. Would Warner brothers have given George Miller a high equity position (around 30% as the regulations won’t quite give you a full 40%) in a film based on one of their most lucrative franchises? The Producer Offset isn’t intended to just give the major studios a discount. The producer has to gain more out of it in exchange.
So the real question with Justice League Mortal wasn’t about whether it was Australian or not, but whether it would qualify for the 15% location/pdv offsets, or the 40% offset.
In the end, Justice League didn’t qualify for the Producer’s offset because it wasn’t deemed “Australian” enough. If it did, it might have broken the bank! I’m not sure if it would have qualified for the 15% location offset either as the budget was over 70M. Regardless, according to The Australian, Miller insisted that “Justice League Mortal would not [have] be[en] viable in Australia if it attract[ed] only the 15per cent rebate”.
It is truly unfortunate that Australia lost out on a mega project that would have changed the whole lanscape here. It could have done for us what Lord of the Rings did for New Zealand. And if (big if) Warner Brothers would have allowed Miller to keep the rebate and take a high equity position in Justice League Mortal, who knows what great things he could have done with the money as possibly the most powerful Australian producer ever.
BUT, in spite of all this, we shouldn’t forget that we still have a location and PDV offset that is an big improvement on what we had before. These industries should still be able to attract more work from overseas than they did before and make us more competitive globally.
Now if only we could do something about that high Aussie dollar right now!
Completed Work: Rundle Mall TVC
June 19, 2008This is our latest TV Commercial, which we made for Rundle Mall, Adelaide’s (Australia) premier fresco-styled shopping district in the heart of the city. The TV Commercial was produced with advertising agency, Clemenger BBDO Adelaide.
more about “Completed Work: Rundle Mall TVC“, posted with vodpod
According to James Calvert, who directed the TVC:
Recreating the Adelaide institution that is Rundle Mall turned out to be one of the most challenging yet rewarding jobs I have had to do as an animation director. Our main character “Ginger” had to walk down the Mall in one continuous shot, while around her the seasons changed. Ginger had to change costumes and so did each of our 100 background characters.
The trees drop their leaves in Autumn, the flowers bloom in Spring. Normally something of this magnitude would be reserved for a feature film! I guess thats the point of difference with this commercial, is that we’ve packed all these elements and a bit of magic into a 30 second spot.
The biggest artistic inspiration for us was the Japanese artist Tadahiro Uesugi [Below]. Tadahiro’s work captures the colours and light quality of each season and this was something we wanted to replicate in the commercial. We made the ad in a way that if you were to pause on any frame it would look like a piece of artwork in it’s own right.
Justice League of Australia
June 18, 2008The 730 report did one of those inconclusive “things are great but they’re not really” stories last week on Australian film. Included was an interview with George Miller on his decision to not shoot his US$200M Justice League (of America) project in Australia because it does not qualify for the 40% production offset…
Without a successful film (or any film for that matter) made under the new rebate scheme, this has become the most visible story in the Australian media regarding the new film offset legislation. I’m sure this is not the sort of publicity the bureaucrats who have come up with this bold new scheme wanted.
Essentially, George Miller isn’t happy that his Justice League Mortal project is not eligible for the 40% producer offset and has decided to take it elsewhere. We’re falling behind the Kiwis, Europeans, Asians etc he says. We’re denying the industry of millions in jobs and letting skilled people go overseas. All because a bunch of bureaucrats have decided that this project isn’t Australian enough.
Much of the spin on this has come down to (1) what should culturally qualify for this generous incentive; and (2) how do we attract and keep skilled people in Australia.
Culturally, the project is based on the DC Comics (does anyone else think this brand name is retarded? It’s essentially “Detective Comics Comics”) franchise “Justice League of America”.
Does dropping the “of America” for “Mortal” in the title might make it Australian enough? You decide.
As a comic book property whose marquee characters are Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, it has an air of inevitability of being made into a blockbuster feature. If not Miller, it would have eventually been made by a Michael Bay, Brett Rattner, Bryan Singer et al. Given this, the creative Australian impetus behind the decision to make this project is open to interpretation.
In terms of depriving Australians of a $200M blockbuster being made here, what I’m wondering is why the other aspects of the new rebate scheme haven’t been discussed as much in the media? Alongside the 40% producer offset the Federal government is also offering a generous 15% location rebate an incentive to attract and keep the very people Miller is talking about losing.
On top of that, the Australian rebates are claimable on expenditure, whereas many others like Canada’s is based on the spend on labour. You’d have to be going to some pretty obscure places in the world to get a better offer.
So if Justice League Mortal is still eligible for some very competitive incentives here, why not shoot it here? It might not be that much cheaper elsewhere.
So I think it’s a bit unfair to apportion the blame of losing this $200M project to the Australian Government. However, as reported in The Australian (the one local newspaper that seems to have gotten it right), Miller reckons that contrary to industry rumour, the location rebate isn’t enough to make shooting the film here viable, and only the 40% would have been enough to get the project up.
The only other question for me is how the rebate would have worked with Warner Brothers. The rebate comes back to the producer – ie Miller, who would usually use it to take a high equity position in the film. But I can’t see WB giving Miller a 30% ownership in their Justice League film!
If they did, then that’s a lot of money Miller could be getting, and using to make more potentially Australian films. And isn’t that what we want after all?
