Richard Harris responds to 'Embracing Innovation - White paper'

Richard Harris: A Response to Robert Connolly’s White Paper

Robert Connolly’s paper Embracing Innovation is provocative, thoughtful and immensely timely. Robert is one of the few people who works successfully as a film practitioner who has the ability to step back from the industry, examine his own practice and preconceptions, and really look at how things could be done better. It’s a rare gift.

What has always amazed me in the almost twenty years I have been in this industry is how resistant it is to change. This is an industry that prides itself on its creative and technological innovation and yet it in so many areas it remains locked into paradigms and methodologies that were developed over 100 years ago. And there so often seems to be a fear within the industry of challenging them. This is the reason, whether you agree with Robert’s analysis and recommendations or not, that interventions like this paper are so valuable.

Robert’s paper starts with a look at the changing framework for filmmaking in this country and with a challenge to some of the myths and preconceptions that exist in the industry. However, the greatest strength of the paper is that Robert not only identifies problems but tries to make recommendations for change where possible. He is willing to go out on a limb on a number of issues, but just as importantly he is also willing to recognise that there are some issues that cannot be solved immediately but will require further discussion and negotiation with numerous industry players.

In terms of the analysis itself, Robert makes crucial points about the state of our sector, and the structural limitations within which filmmakers operate – the failed business model, the need for innovation, the perverse incentives that exist, and the bizarre treatment of income for filmmakers whose films are commercially successful. These are just some of the big picture issues that he correctly identifies as needing addressing.

Then he moves his focus to wages and fees – dangerous territory because there are always stories of abuse and exploitation in the film industry. What is important, however, is that he identifies that there are models outside of Australia that could provide models for moving forward, and that should be considered.

He correctly questions the fixed percentage model for producers’ fees (and also writers’ and directors’), which has always struck me as an odd invention, because in a system where there is no incentive for success – because there is no way to share in it for a producer – the only incentive is to bump your fee up in order for you to survive until you make your next film. The more the budget is, the more the producer earns – surely there has to be some more sophisticated way of calculating this; surely there needs to be some connection between success and rewards.

Finally, Robert looks at cast fees, an issue that has caused much consternation over the years, because of the seeming contradiction between the need to attract back our best and brightest stars and the need to keep budgets more realistic and in line with the size of our market. Robert’s nuanced proposal to cap cast fees is a vast improvement on a proposal that I made a number of years ago to simply cap, at a fixed rate, actors’ fees on FFC films (along the lines of the Fox Searchlight cap), because Robert’s proposal makes allowance for the marketplace value of that actor. This makes eminent common sense as a proposal, as it allows flexibility while recognizing the constraints within which our film financing operates.

Robert’s final four recommendations focus on issues that seem so basic and simple that you wonder why they have never been addressed – until you remember that there are very few ways for the industry to look at issues at a whole-of-industry level. Insurance, the seemingly endless expense of legals even on simple projects, the level of unnecessary reporting required – surely some of these mechanical blockages and expenses can be removed or streamlined so that filmmakers can get on with the job of filmmaking. It’s like the whole industry needs an enema to clear out all this detritus that has gathered over the years – and I hope Robert would forgive me for suggesting that that paper is the first dose.

Finally, Robert touches on just one of the issues of distribution – an area that gets scant attention so often within the production industry, and its seeming refrain that if we build it they will come! Robert focuses on the ever increasing delivery demands of the marketplace, which are becoming more and more excessive – and makes a plea for some sanity to return and for the responsibility not to continue to lie always with the filmmaker.

In some ways, I see Robert’s paper as just the start of a discussion that needs to continue beyond those structural areas that he has identified and really delve downwards into the production methodologies themselves. Why are crew structures the way they are? Do they need to stay that way? How do we maximize the benefits that can accrue from new technologies in the actual production process? There are countless questions about the micro that are worth asking and that could take the industry in interesting directions if there was a will to take it there.

This discussion only gets us so far, because it will not solve the many issues that the industry faces that are outside the scope of innovation in production – and in particular issues related to financing and distribution. These will have to be teased out and, who knows, even solved by Robert’s next paper. What this paper does, however, is start the process on what we can do in our own backyard – to fix a few of the problems that we have right now. He’s thinking global but acting locally (as the slogan goes). And who knows, if we can start to embrace a culture of innovation within the production sector perhaps we will even have the guts to begin to challenge the locked marketplace structure within which filmmakers operate. For encouraging this kind of radical thinking, Robert Connolly should be applauded.

This article is found on the Centre for Screen Business website.