MEDICI — The Film Funding Journey

Methodology, Skills and Professional Benefits Participants Participants' Comments MEDICI Head of Training «The 12 Labours of Hercules» Report of the Reports – Workshops 1 to 4

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Sixth Workshop – 27 to 29 September 2016 – Warth (Switzerland)

Module 1 – Evaluation of funds' portfolio

The main goal of the funds is to support projects through different funding schemes covering the value chain. The decisions taken depend on different factors: objectives of the fund (political, cultural, and economic), volume of projects, sustainability of the audiovisual industry, diversity and, above all, the quality of the submitted projects.

Or, in other words:

If the funds had the opportunity to estimate their portfolio in terms of quality of the projects only, what would their appreciation, their “personal” evaluation be? Satisfactory? Unsatisfactory?
What would they like to improve (schemes, skills …)?
What would they do if they had the possibility to redesign their project supporting processes?
How to define quality?

The first issue to consider:

Are public funds players or pawns?

Outcome of group discussions

1. Are public film funds players or pawns?

Or, in other words:

In what context and under which circumstances are public film funds a player – the one changing the game?
Do funds decide to be pawns because they cannot do anything but play by the rules or because they simply do not want to be players?
When do funds prefer taking radical initiatives and more responsibility?
In which segments of the value chain are film funds players and in which ones are they pawns?

Funds as players

Funds are more of a player when it comes to scriptwriting and project development:

Quebec film fund strives to keep control over all stages of development. Funds invest in certain projects and, therefore, they must make sure that those projects have a certain quality
Telefilm Canada uses its influence to make production companies more responsible. The fund sometimes allocates funding to production companies to develop multiple projects, not for specific projects. The decisions are made in accordance with companies’ track records. If their projects fail, their track record points go down and every next application is more challenging
Hungarian National Film Fund is a player when it comes to the first-time filmmakers, which is not the case with the experienced filmmakers who prefer the fund to be a pawn
Scandinavian Film Institutes have commissioning editors as individual decision makers who stay players for a longer time in a life of a project including long development phases

But

As soon as a project has been green lighted, producers do away with the fund
For the funds with selection committees as collective decision-makers, the members of the selection committee gather only briefly in order to make funding decisions, and then stay away from the supported projects
The impact of the fund decreases with every next stage in the value chain, whereas the resources allocated to the project increase

Funds as Pawns

Funds are more of a pawn in the distribution phase:

At the moment, the funds allocate more money to the films that are getting a bigger audience and less money for the difficult films. Maybe, it should be the other way round when it comes to distribution
Funds do not adequately evaluate the impact of the distribution support on one hand because they are understaffed and also because they do not have a complete overview of the potential audience and lack data (like on VoD platforms, non commercial and educational markets, etc.)
Funds could be players by:
- Establishing distribution support schemes and creating more impact in the distribution phase.
- Asking producers (especially producers of difficult art-house films) who have access to distribution support, to provide realistic audience and marketing strategies, and to respect the fund more.
- Encouraging both producers and distributors to invent alternative distribution strategies. Producers insist too much on theatrical release even though most of their films perform poorly in the cinemas and contrary to all producers’ optimistic projections at the moment of application
- Imposing regulations in order to change a discriminatory landscape if there is the lack of diversity in projects on the market,

But

A film fund is neither a studio nor a producer!

2. Public film funds and the idea of quality

Or, in other words

What is a quality mainstream project or an art-house project?
What is the volume and diversity of the project flow?
How can the quality and diversity gaps be removed?

Challenges

There are so many development schemes around Europe on different levels, but almost none for quality mainstream films. As a result, funds support many films that are basically mainstream films disguised as art-house films. Continental Europe may learn maybe something from the UK in this regard.
European mainstream films should be considered as having high cultural value (quality) and high admissions at the same time. Swedish Film Institute gave priority to the art-house projects in the past years, without taking care of the mainstream films. Now they are trying to establish the rules and objectives for a quality mainstream scheme and implement it in synergy with the SFI’s commissioners. The idea behind such a scheme is to encourage more films like FORCE MAJEURE (Östlund, 2014), which, in addition to its artistic quality, also drew 200,000 admissions. Such success stories should be made more predictable.
The automatic schemes almost never improve the quality, diversity or volume of mainstream films. How can such schemes be modified?
There is no agreement on what art-house is on the local level, and what art-house is on the international level. What some countries support under the art-house schemes are their local films that have no international potential whatsoever.
For example, TANGARINES (2013), a Georgian-Estonian co-production that was nominated for the Oscar and traveled all around the world, was considered as a mainstream film in Estonia. However, according to all international standards it is a niche art-house film with a micro budget of 300,000 euros.

The Development of Content: Challenges and Opportunities – Public Funds as Pawns or Players?

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