26 February 2007
interview
Johannesburg — Last week, Business Day hosted a round-table discussion on the South African film industry. Participants were producer Gillian Gorfil, who came up with the original idea for the movie Blood Diamond, Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan, producer and Videovision Entertainment CEO Anant Singh, Film Afrika executive producer David Wicht and Moonlighting production services company founder Philip Key. Leading the discussion were Business Day associate editor Michael Bleby, Cape editor Dave Marrs and Dezi Rorich, owner of film marketing firm Metal Moon.
How did the idea for Blood Diamond came about and how did you make it happen?
Gillian Gorfil: I started 10 years ago. At that time it was set in Botswana and called Okavango. The original writer was Charlie Mitchell, who I persuaded to come to SA and write the script. In 1996 it was ready and he sent it out. Within one hour Warner Brothers bid and bought it and then we ended up in the stop-start nightmare of the film almost being made and then not being made. Chuck Leavitt came on, he did the final rewrite and changed it a lot. It was decided to base it on the conflict diamond story. So, in hindsight, it ended up benefiting the film because it became Blood Diamond, although the core of the story had always been about a miner finding a very large uncut pink diamond.
What was the significance of producing Blood Diamond in SA from an economic and skills development point of view?
Philip Key: Every time we do have a Tsotsi or a Blood Diamond, it raises the profile of our industry and the competence of the people in it. Because of this film and others generally, we are going to see a raised amount of production work. The other thing is that on a film like this, our artists, our actors and actresses and our crew get to work alongside significant talent. It's almost like an instant film school they put on for our benefit. Over the last 18 months, there were six films filmed in SA that had a combined budget of about R780m. That brings a lot of education, a lot of opportunities and a lot of experience.
Is there more of a role government should be able to play in supporting the industry?
Pallo Jordan: Government supports the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), which funds film making in SA, but in addition to that, through the department of trade and industry we also offer a number of tax breaks to film makers from outside of SA. We are also looking at other forms of support for our film industry.
SA has been regarded as a film-making destination, where film makers come from other parts of the world, shoot their films and leave. What we are trying to do now is to transform that into a film-making country, not a film-making destination. In other words, South African films produced by South African directors and South African producers telling South African stories from SA, rather than being told by outsiders with outside money. Now, it is very rare that one studio or one country can carry the cost of a film, which is why we have a number of co-production treaties.
What is a typical example of a joint co-production using co-financing treaties?
David Wicht: I can give an example of Goodbye Bafana, which we've just been in competition in Berlin with. Effectively that's been a co-production between five countries: SA, Italy, Germany, France and Belgium. We contributed our portion in SA, but it was certainly significantly less than what was spent in SA. So that's the benefit of treaties. To some extent, a treaty is meant to be a reciprocal arrangement. The truth is most people use the treaties to get access to SA and our locations. That's a great thing for us. It certainly makes us a much stronger partner internationally by having treaties.
What sort of international financing models are there?
Anant Singh: In the case of Blood Diamond, it's a 100% studio-financed film. The next scenario is you have an independent film, which is the way we make most of our films. We finance it from either equity investors who come in upfront and fund the budget of the film or a combination of some presales. In other words, you would sell the UK or a few territories to hedge your bets and then utilise some of the incentive programmes such as the NFVF or the trade and industry department rebate.
One criticism of Blood Diamond was that it was similar to the 1937 movie King Solomon's Mines. Does Africa as a storyline come and go with fashion?
Jordan: There is the old Tarzan image of Africa which you have in Hollywood, and which is why people say the storylines are not different from King Solomon's Mines. I haven't seen King Solomon's Mines referred to, but if that is so, that's very much in that tradition of the Victorian boys' adventure story, and it's very much part of the Hollywood paradigm about Africa.
It's up to us whether we are going to make stories about ourselves and primarily in SA for an African audience. Now, many people will, of course, argue that in terms of sheer value, we don't have the numbers. But if we make African stories primarily for African audiences that is going to make the big difference.
About a decade ago I was talking to a South African -- or a former South African -- film maker about making films about Africa and she said to me: "You know, stories about black people don't sell." Well, the last few that have been made here in SA and about SA have been extremely successful, so obviously stories about black people sometimes do sell, depending on how they're told and how well they're told. And I would say that's the determining factor.
Singh: We want to make films that tell our stories as authentically as possible, but at the same time, to have a film maker like Phillip Noyce doing Catch a Fire is a very positive thing and to have (Blood Diamond director) Ed Zwick here telling a story where there is criticism -- is it Leonardo (DiCaprio)'s story, is it a diamond story? -- at the end of the day, does it really matter? You're getting an audience to see Africa, for better or for worse. Sometimes it is good to get worldwide audiences acclimatised to this.
Gorfil: Coming to the point whether Africa's fashionable or not, I would say that we've also had the Last King of Scotland, the Idi Amin story, so this year at the Oscars, two African pictures that are being recognised with Academy Award nominations, which is astounding. If we can continue to tell real stories, with integrity and focus and class and passion, it's not so much a thing of being fashionable because it takes so long to make a film, as opposed to the fact that real stories are emerging and they are good and they are well told. Just before Blood Diamond was released, I had a conversation with a studio, Warner. The vice-president said it's really important for African films that this film makes money because we are spending so much money. And thankfully we passed the $130m mark as of this morning, which is fantastic.
Wicht: I think it's a red herring to talk about whether Africa's fashionable or not. The only thing that matters is whether it's a good story or not. The world isn't particularly interested in SA any more than it is anywhere else in the world. To try and go out there and think people are going to take my project or buy my script because it's about Africa or about SA -- it's not going to work. We need great stories that can compete with the rest.
But SA has never really had an industry that was self-sustaining. During apartheid years, the film industry was heavily subsidised by government and it has become very clear in the last 13 years of independence that we don't have sufficient cinema-going audiences in SA to sustain the domestic industry without dramatic and comprehensive intervention from the state. We are going to need a dramatic, dramatic shift in the way we look at the business model for local films. How we are going to do that, I don't know.
We're a population of, let's say, 40-million. We have 25-million cinema admissions a year. Australia, with 18, 19-million, has 125-million cinema admissions a year. So, every Australian is going to the cinema four or five times a year. We only go half a time a year. So if we can bring our numbers up to where Australia is, we will have a sustainable industry, but we'll need a lot of government intervention in order to do that.
What more can government do?
Jordan: Do we have the revenues to intervene more than we do at present? I'm not certain that we do. But I'm sure there are various forms of government intervention that could be examined.
Talking, for example, about the value of our cinema audiences, one of the big problems is that our cinemas tend to be in city centres, away from the huge population centres. I cannot think of a single cinema within the whole of the Soweto complex, which is a huge population. Those are people who I think would be interested in seeing films. Now, is it the responsibility of government to step in and set up movie houses, or is that something the private sector should take on?
You think also about the extent to which our own television, for example, uses South African movie materials. I know Anant and film makers would start screaming blue murder if we put the movies they made on the small screen immediately, but that's where most people these days see movies -- on the small screen in the privacy of their homes, on DVDs or television. And those are issues that do need discussion between government, the private sector and especially with movie makers themselves.
Singh: In defence of government, the programmes that we have available to us today are far better than we've ever had in our country. And I think the trade and industry department is looking at the offset programme as another possible means towards getting involved in film production. When you look at countries like Korea, where they had almost a 90% American or western movie-going audience culture and today it's more than 50% Korean films.
Is digital media a threat or is it going to benefit by adding a variety of delivery platforms?
Jordan: Well, the digital format, I've been told by those who claim to know -- the people who own cinemas -- is that it is a little bit expensive. Other people who don't own cinemas but who make movies are very excited about it. Now, if the movie makers like it, and they think it will extend their audiences and expand them, they will be attracted to it, but if no-one setting up cinemas uses that equipment, it does lead to a cul-de-sac. So again, it's an issue that needs to be examined by all the players.
Singh: I think where digital platforms are going to be valuable is the new emergence of things like YouTube and myspace.com where you will probably, in a very short space of time, be able to deliver a whole film into these mediums and be paid for it, and I think therein lies a big opportunity for film makers.
Key: I think there's been an unfortunate attitude currently that looks at the foreign film industry as the enemy rather than as allies and I think it's critical that we recognise the value that comes from abroad which supports the local industry. I believe that eventually will fast-track our ability to make South African films more than any incentive, more than any subsidy we can provide on our own.
When you ask what more can government do to improve the chances of the industry, there are a couple of things that could be improved. It's very difficult to go out there and try and put together deals with international film makers when one doesn't know from one day to the next what's happening on the ground here in SA. There's a lot of opportunity. We've been talking around the tax benefits of section 24 incentives for years and years and years now. If we could get certainty in that it would help us.
Wicht: We talked about over R700m being spent on a few films last year. If we apply a multiplier of two-and-a-half to that, then over R2bn worth of economic activity generated in SA by virtue of a handful of films.
Gorfil: John Malkovich is here now to do Disgrace. Our authors are top class. We've got some brilliant writers in this country and I think that the more these books get made and we have these extraordinary actors coming, again, it's big for our industry.
Singh: Philip, you're doing Doomsday, right? I was with the producer of Doomsday the other day and he said to me they budgeted the same script in the UK and it came out at $50m. They're doing it here for $30m and they're getting a better picture at 30 than they would have in the UK for 50.
What is it about stories that people like? What accounts for Blood Diamond's success?
Gorfil: The point about Blood Diamond is that it's based, to a certain extent, on truth, which horrifies people. Then this is attached to something that is glamorous and linked with romance and love. Most people in the world know what a diamond is, so it's a familiar story that you're telling, but the content is not familiar. The fact is, it is a human drama and that it could have been set anywhere -- it's the story of this man fighting for his family against horrible circumstances.
When you have actors of the calibre of Jen Connolly and Djimon Hounsou and Leonardo DiCaprio, who question the part they're playing, they don't just accept their characters, they do in-depth research. I don't believe you can make good films from bad scripts, but I certainly think you can make a bad film from a good script.
Wicht: My sense of it is that what makes a great film is that you tell a great human drama and it's less to do with where it takes place. You could make an absolutely riveting film about a guy spending an hour-and-a-half deciding if he's going to eat a slice of cake or not and it can be a very human, a very powerful story. It's all in the skill of our ability to tell that story. And that's where we as South Africans -- we keep saying to ourselves we have great stories, but until we have the skills to turn that into a film which is going to attract an audience, that story will remain exactly where they are and in folklore.
Singh: If you take two films like Catch a Fire and Hotel Rwanda, both well-made, good-quality films, and you find a film like Catch a Fire has barely done $1,5m when they spent $15m marketing it, and Hotel Rwanda, which I think grossed about $30m and they spent about $5m marketing it, the business of releasing a film is such an important component also. Which market do they target? How do they position it? Is it an art film? What's your competition? You can be a casualty of a release date and have a wonderful film with great reviews and just be clobbered.
Interestingly enough, Catch a Fire, which received quite good reviews in SA, has done very badly. It opened last week and it had a 50% drop on its second weekend this weekend and again, a film that deserves to be seen, but again, audiences have not responded to it.
How have audience tastes changed, if at all?
Singh: I think audience tastes do change, or more importantly, the audiences are changing. You're getting a migration of audiences on to DVD, the quality of delivery on television, the choices you have, piracy and all of those factors restrict the number of people going to movies. The demographic of the largest movie-going audience is generally younger, so they're looking for more commercial fare. They don't want to know about -- taking the Catch a Fire example, a political film -- and interestingly enough, the best performance of Catch a Fire was in Carlton Centre, in Southgate, and so the black audience felt more interested in Catch a Fire than any other audience. So, certainly the trends and the competition we have is making the business of getting people into movie theatres more difficult.
Gorfil: If you're trying to make a drama, it becomes difficult because television has become so unbelievably good. When you've got programmes like the West Wing and Gray's Anatomy, they are hugely watched. People do like to go home and watch television, so to compete against that is a really hard thing to do. Our challenge as film makers becomes more difficult every day and the ante is raised every day.
What does our film industry need to guard against? Could Nollywood, the flourishing Nigerian film industry, give us a run for our money?
Wicht: I don't know that Nollywood would give it a run for its money, but certainly we can take a leaf out of their book in terms of how to create films at a very low cost and distribute them informally and make a return. It's all about an economic model. If I spend R50000 making a film and I get R75000 back, it's good business. In SA we tend to look for the big films, the big budgets and the big returns, and I think Nollywood has just reacted to its own economic reality -- making films on very little money and making good business out of it.
Key: The playing field has levelled enormously over the last decade. But certainly, SA has had a huge negative impact on the Australian film industry. When we emerged from the apartheid era, and at one stage we had the R11 dollar, we virtually wiped the service industry out in Australia. It's interesting that they've come back in their own way and they clearly now have a more Asian focus, but right now I can't think of anything that would be a major threat to us. The biggest threat would be the currency.
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