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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Seventh Workshop – 27 to 29 September 2017 – Finstadjordet, Norway

Module 7 – Engaging with Future

Introduction

This workshop provides an opportunity for MEDICI participants to look forward to how bigger strategic issues in the changing screen industries might affect their work in practical terms in the next ten years.

The issues in the workshop are selected based on the research for an EFADS vision paper about the future of public funds to be presented in Tallinn in late November 2017.

Or, in other words,

Every fund should ask itself the following two questions:

What are the 3-5 most pressing challenges facing European cinema and/or the audiovisual sector in the next five to ten years?
What are the most pressing challenges facing your organization in the next five to ten years?

Case study: Looking Ahead is Looking at the World

Presentation: Johanna Koljonen - consultant for the EFAD’s working group
Please also see Johanna Koljonen’s presentation (PDF)

CHALLENGE 1: New distribution strategies

Developing theatrical so that it becomes more progressive, while creating other paths towards the market. And this is not easy because the system still favours theatrical releases.
Figuring out how to place European content on digital platforms. It is not enough only to impose quotas on American platforms, but also to create and support more European VoD platforms.
Not drowning the market with films. Too much content is being produced currently and it is getting impossible to navigate through all the films. It is a challenge to find and connect the right people with the right content. There are a lot of films that do not get the audiences that they deserve. A better communication aim is necessary.
There should be more levies imposed on digital players, but also more strategic partnerships with VoD platforms. They make a very big part of the landscape now and it will only grow in the future.
Piracy. It is VoD platforms that are also affected by it.

CHALLENGE 2: Getting Europeans to see European content.

Do we need to re-brand the European content so that people want to see it instead of avoiding it?
Identifying core values and mission of cinema and being able to explain to citizens in countries why we support cinema.
Introducing film culture in schools and society
Film heritage and archives should survive and be more accessible
Awareness of released titles
Diversity and representation – RELEVANCE
Ease of experience. How to make films accessible to people that may be interested in specific films?

CHALLENGE 3: Drowning the Market with Films

In 2016, 1163 films were released in Europe, which was 300 more films than in the US. This happens because there are a lot of funders in Europe, there are tax incentives, it has become cheaper to make films, etc. This high number of films produced brings a bunch of side effects, both positive and negative. Namely:

Quantity brings quality – more good films are made
More voices are to be heard, bringing more diversity in European cinema

But,

Tougher competition for audience’s attention. There are not enough screening time slots in European cinemas for all the films. Films compete with each other. In some countries there could be 4 national releases in the same week. It is difficult to watch them all before they are taken out of cinema.
It also makes it difficult for sales agents. They have to patch together individual releases for each film in each territory, which means they cannot take on as many films as they would want. It becomes too risky.
Tougher competition for distribution channels (especially theatrical). It is very difficult to find films by first-time directors in art-house cinemas. Even those that were presented in Cannes cannot be certain of a reasonable release in art-house cinemas.
More bad films are made
More irrelevant films get made and released
Tougher competition for funding
Impossible to stay on top of, which means that the market fails.
We have no time to see all the films. Even people whose job is watching films cannot manage to watch all the films they are supposed to see. Festival people have the same problem. It is physically impossible to see even all the good movies.

CHALLENGE 4: Redefining relationship with filmmakers

International companies will never handle national, small art-house cinemas. Netflix will buy only one or two of the most successful titles. But maybe funds should think about it as a great opportunity. If an established director works for a while for HBO or so, it can be an advantage because the money that the public fund would normally give him can be redirected now to other filmmakers.
Have funds been funding mediocre filmmakers for far too long? Too many filmmakers in Europe are disinterested in the audience and the social relevance of their work, and the content that they make can be technically good, but is doomed to fail in any market. Should the funds fund those films that have no connection with any audience? Is it ethical to fund films that have no proof they connect with the audience? From the point of view of taxpayers, the answer is, for sure, no. So maybe money can be redirected somewhere else.

CHALLENGE 5: Funds are too conservative

Funds have to find a way to make audiences redistribute their time in a sense that they decide to watch funds’ films instead of doing something else.
Funds are working within a very traditional paradigm. They are very good at internalizing old-school business models because it still provides jobs.
Opposed to traditional attitude is “design attitude”. Design attitude means we should look at the problem, define it, take a look at the context and our resources, and try to find a solution. Funds do not do it.
Funds focus too much on cinema theater statistics and how to attract more people to cinemas. Cinema statistics, however, are irrelevant in solving the audience problem. They cover the people who actually go to cinemas. But we need a strategy for getting those who do not. Where are they, what do they do?
The following statements were picked up during the days of the MEDICI workshop:
- We need the DVD money back
- Piracy is the major cause of our problems
- Netflix is the spawn of Satan
- The cinema release window is still most important

But,

DVD is not a human right that we can claim back. Funds must simply accept that we will never get it back. Their sources are not DVD money. Their sources are audience.
Piracy is the product of funds’ disinterest in technology and audiences. Without piracy, films would make more money, but blaming piracy will not help funds make better choices.
Netflix also funds high-quality work which we all like very much, so if you watch it regularly, you are not allowed to say that Netflix is the source of your problem. We have to accept that their content is often better than the content made by people supported by public funds. Trying to punish them for being better in a job that funds are supposed to support is not constructive. Netflix also builds audience for European stars and trains its audience to read subtitles.
The majority of films have been watched at home since the1980s. TV and VHS posed the same threat to cinemas.

CHALLENGE 6: Redefining relationship with audience

From the audiences’ perspective, the platforms and formats are overlapping and converging. They do not understand the conservatism of funds’ business model and why the funds have to pursue it.
Today’s audiences are active, engaged and social.
Today, in order to connect the film with the audience we have to create the proper context. That context should provide the following:
- audience should be personally moved or transported,
- shared experience,
- cultural moment/icon,
- establishing role models,
- representing and shaping contemporary culture,
- topic or focus of conversation,
- subculture identities and social context (fandom),
- social status (expertise).
Social importance of film culture has changed. In the past, you have to work hard to get to see your favourite movies and films have undivided attention. Today everybody has access to all the films and audience spend more time on favourite games, TV shows, etc.
Where are the films actually watched? Cinemas are symbolic temples, they have a cultural impact and value but they are not the only place where audience watches films. So go find your data on audience on different platforms.

CHALLENGE 7: What is a film?

There are a lot of new developments today that can change the traditional definition of film. Films can be made to be more interactive and participatory in synergy with virtual reality (VR), theater, digital and analogue narrative games, cross-media+web, museums, galleries, TVs, etc. Is interactive or participatory storytelling included in funds’ remit? Is a filmmaker who has an interactive or participatory component automatically excluded from funding?
Films and games, for example, are increasingly converging. There are already audiences who do not see the distinction.
There may also be a new chance in virtual reality. There is still no proper business model, but there is a huge potential market in this field. VR will create its own separate ecosystem, but it will compete for time and attention with filmmakers.
There are films that are not made for theatrical release, but for home cinemas and VoDs.
Film and broadcast TV represent a top-down mode of culture that is rapidly self-correcting back to the original order of things where humans produced cultural artifacts for their own communities. Today, it is not only professional artists who make and share stories. Ordinary people can also engage in stories and share experiences through storytelling.

CHALLENGE 8: Value chain paradigm shift

The old value chain consisted in the following three steps:

What story do I want to tell right now?
What version of that film can I get funded?
Someone sells my film to some people who should see it.

But,

Today, when everything is becoming digital, the value chain paradigm is also changing and it contains the following steps:

What stories are interesting, funny, relevant, under-told right now?
What story do I want to tell right now? Is it a film? Also, funders should ask the filmmaker if he/she is sure that it is a film. Some directors write a script for a feature film, but it is more suitable for TV drama.
Who is the audience who will pay for my film?
Digital files are sold through different channels.

CHALLENGE 9: Film culture for this century

What kind of film culture do we want?
What is sustainable? What is healthy?
How do we envision the cultural role of feature films?
Shouldn’t our public infrastructure, from film schools to funding, train and support outstanding filmmaking on all platforms – and then what is film culture?

CHALLENGE 10: Securing the fund’s financing and independence

Politicians can make some terrible decisions regarding public film funding. They can de-regulate everything, like they are doing in the US. Brexit may take away a lot of public funding possibilities for the UK producers. In Serbia when the government changed in 2012, the new Minister of Culture decided to give zero funding for films in 2013.
How many of public funders are under threat from either neoliberal or nationalistic/populist policies in their country? Funds should look strategically at these unfortunate political decisions and be ready for them at any time. In some countries they may seem impossible, but they can happen over night if populist parties come to power. What if Swedish Democrats come to power in Sweden? Funds are the only ones who can protect public film financing and stand up against politicians.

Opportunities

Funds should learn from Television and producers of video games

Filmmaking and TV making is not in crisis. There is more money and more quality in TV drama than ever. It is true that traditional broadcasting as a business model is challenged and expected to disappear very soon, but that is only a technological change - a business model change. It is not a content change. There is also increase of estimated numbers of scripted original TV series shown by online services, broadcasters, paid cable or basic cable. They all find their way. So why is that not the problem, but producing too many films is?

Television faced the same problem when the number of TV channels dramatically increased. But today they have multiple accesses to the market and they connect every produced content with some kind of audience.

The film funds also have to come up with new business models that would help them connect the right film with the right audience. Today we have 15 TV series of extremely high quality and 15 years ago we would have only one on that level. But there are still audiences for all produced series.

In the past we would watch what was served up to us. Now we make choices ourselves and each piece of content finds its own way. For example, a Turkish TV series that attracted a global audience, or German TV content which started travelling after years of bad reputation. The same is true of Icelandic content. Even though it comes from a nation of only 300,000 people, millions of people watch their content – subtitled or dubbed. This all goes to prove that European content is not in crisis.

The same experience is true with digital games. They are global and the game market is worth over 100 billion dollars. They were in crisis, but recovered by including gamers in game creating through participatory business models. They solved piracy problems and built great relationship with their audiences.

Outcome of group discussions

CHALLENGE 1: New distribution strategies

How would you change what you fund and/or measure to better reflect the “platform neutral” media landscape in which the audience exists?

We should:

Not limit ourselves to cinema releases but open up to other windows as well. The problem is that regulations sometimes do not allow that.
Measure our market share outside the cinema.
Redefine the content we support. Definition of a film must be clear. What are the limits of the content we support?
Lobby with governments and competent ministries regarding the legislation change so that it can become more open to new release windows.

CHALLENGE 2: Getting Europeans to see European content

How can a fund’s actions and choices increase the content’s relevance?

Funds should:

Put more muscles into development of content by encouraging teams to engage more in targeting audience.
Get more data on audience information and provide them to producers to make them more motivated to be innovative. Producers find it hard to be innovative without data because they do not know where the audience is.
Be more strict on audience-projection requirement in the applications for production support.
Require producers to do a deeper research on audience predictions and relevance of the project and provide it to fund in the application even at the development stage. Funds should cover expenses that producers have during development, regardless of how non-standard they are.
Organize seminars for producers on how to do audience research during development phase. We have to teach producers how to think about relevance. It can be learned from TV channels and their tools for predicting the audience.
Take successful content and ask what made them successful and try to learn from that

Some examples:

In Canada, some films do not require a traditional distributor, so filmmakers themselves can take the role of distributor. They can, for example, do the festival distribution and then sell it to Netflix or to the US market. They are also allowed to propose new business models. There are also examples of day-and-date releases where films are released theatrically and on VoD on the same day. This attracts more different audiences.

In Norway, the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) does not have any audience numbers other than cinema theatres. They conduct surveys asking people how often they see Norwegian films on a platform, but the market share of Norwegian films on platforms is lower than in the cinemas. The NFI also contacts sales agents to ask about the performance of individual titles on VoD platforms and how they value a project when pre-buying it.

CHALLENGE 3: Film literacy/Audience development

What alliances would funds need to build to truly promote film and film culture?

There is an example of a film education framework event, financed by, among others, the BFI and Creative Europe, where twenty countries shared their experiences regarding film education.

Funds should:

Find a common framework for film education despite differences. Film education has no strong place in any school system, unlike visual art, music, etc. It does not have a national definition, so we have to invent the international one. We did the “what” part. But now we need to collaborate on the “how”. Ten years ago we started licensing short films to be used in education. It also included supporting teaching material. Other funds can do it the same way.
Think about having broadcasters more involved in film education as they do with other subjects.
Design film education programmes on the European level so that countries do not have to do it individually. It could be financed also on the pan-European level.
Find a way to move things forward. Many initiatives end up as a report available online, maybe a couple of countries apply some recommendations, but there is never a next step.

Some examples:

Croatia has a national programme (2017-2021) for building audience.

In Hungary, there is a national online competition in collaboration with schools for children between 14 and 18 years-old.

Festivals can also be more involved in film education since they already give a theme to their programme and have a lot of audience.

Conclusions

The problem with film is that all the content is in the same place, on the same screens and part of the same ecosystem. When we look at the film value chain from a producer’s perspective, we see that cinema release is the most important because funding structure dictates it. But it does not mean that it is culturally the most important and that it is not how it works in the real world?
What we are going through is not “digital disruption”. This is only a shift in the role of film culture in the wider cultural landscape.
The people working for/with the public film funds are too busy to think about the problem. But they should try harder.
If you think about a challenge really hard, look at its context, consider your resources and are no closer to an answer or a next step – then you are asking the wrong question = describing the challenge wrong. Get better data and ask again. The outline of the answer is delineated in the exact shape of the problem.

The Role of Public Film Funds in the Future

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MEDICI Seventh Workshop Full Report (PDF)

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