This is the second part of our musings on the MCH-mooted merger of the Film Commission and NZ On Air.
Last week’s editorial (here if you missed it and are keen) focused mostly on what the agencies do other than fund the production of screen content – the support they provide for development, industry support and training, attractions, administering the SPR, etc.
This week we’re digging a little deeper into what the agencies support for production and what that might mean as two become one. What we won’t do is start citing individual titles as examples of success or failure, because this piece is more about the processes than the products.
If we remove the SPR administration from the mix (as that’s set up to be more of a box-ticking exercise, and isn’t a competitive fund) and focus on what’s achieving support from the agencies’ own funding pots, NZ On Air manages the bigger funding budget of the two agencies. It also supports a wider range of types of screen content (including, historically, investment into NZ feature films destined for FTA broadcast down the track). The titles NZOA funds are usually more ‘successful’ than most NZ films – in the size of audience they attract, costed as a dollar cost per viewer or per minute of screentime.
From an industry perspective, NZ On Air has had a better reputation within the industry than the Film Commission for quite some time.
If delivering cash support for the production of NZ screen content for NZ audiences is what the agencies are primarily about, and you’d have to hope that will continue to be the case given the amount of work required to update legislation and merge the two agencies, a first glance would suggest NZ On Air should be the favoured agency when it comes to determining how to combine two into one.
Is NZ On Air Better Positioned to Lead?
It isn’t quite that simple, of course. Both agencies bring plenty to the party, but basic principles suggest that the agency that deals with the higher volume of projects, the broader range of projects, and the broader range of destinations for those projects is probably already positioned closer to the place government wants a merged agency to go.
Both agencies have supported titles that have achieved significant success, whether you determine success as critical/festival acclaim, audience sizes, or financial ROI. They’ve also both been behind titles that have woefully underperformed against expectations. Nobody’s perfect and risk is an inherent part of screen production.
That’s the nature of the biz, and you’d be foolish to expect that merging the agencies will reduce that risk.
People bring ideas, experience, expertise and best efforts to the table, and hope they’ll deliver success more often than failure. Most of the time, most projects will land in the space between total success and failure, and the next day those people who made them get up and try it all again. You’ve got to admire the amount of grit it takes to keep doing it year after year, while remaining mindful of the old adage that if you keep on repeating the same actions while expecting a different result, you’re an idiot.
There are always things anyone can do better, so agencies and filmmakers and creators constantly striving to improve is to be applauded, but there’s also quite a lot of evidence over the years of agencies (and filmmakers) choosing to fail by pursuing the least-likely strategies for victory.
When it comes to the competitive nature of funding, one of the advantages NZ On Air has had historically was that it had gatekeepers, in the form the broadcast networks, who reduced the chances of bad ideas getting funded. If the broadcaster was prepared to put money on the table, went the logic, they felt confident they could deliver an audience. Most of the time that approach worked.
The downside to it was that those gatekeepers also closed the doors on a lot of ideas which could have found audiences commensurate with the production budgets they were seeking – but the style or genre or people involved weren’t to the broadcasters’ tastes.
The NZFC has had no such gatekeeper luxury. NZ distributors and exhibitors have historically been willing to give local films a shot, and the system in place has incentivised them to do that, often at a lower level of risk than they would incur with equivalent international titles.
It’s About Culture
We’ll admit to a bit of bias here. We’ve never agreed that the possibility of selection by an A list festival should be a significant factor driving decisions about whether or not the NZFC should support a local film into production. History shows that the bulk of those A list festivals programme exclusively or predominantly arthouse titles, and arthouse titles are those whose festival pedigree is usually in inverse proportion to their box office earnings. There are, of course, occasional break-out success stories, but generally an investment in an arthouse feature is as good a way to make money as putting a bunch of bank notes on a table and setting light to them.
We don’t have an objection to arthouse titles per se (although, in the interests of honesty, it’s a genre that rarely makes it to the top to this writer’s preferred viewing list). We do, however, have an objection to the Film Commission supporting so many of them over the years, often – given the limited funds available – at the expense of supporting other projects. It often hasn’t done the industry any favours either, with a huge percentage of first time feature directors becoming people who only ever directed one feature, after its poor performance discouraged the Film Commission from supporting future projects from those directors.
That objection only grows in size when times are tough, as they have been for the last few years.
Arthouse films are, by and large, not the ones most people spend their disposable income on watching in cinemas. When life sucks, most people don’t spend $15 to be reminded of that. They want an escape, to be taken away from all the daily crap and taken somewhere that’s enjoyable to be for 100 minutes or so. It doesn’t have to mindless entertainment, but – with the arguable exception of horror – it usually does need a positive vibe, and that’s not often a strong feature of arthouse titles.
In recent years, we’ve seen the Film Commission support a broader range of titles, and that’s certainly been welcome. But it remains hard to shake the feeling that the Commission still favours a set of laurels from an A list festival above seeing its investment repaid by commercial success.
The NZ films of the last decade (as opposed to filmmakers) that have achieved good results overseas are very hard to find.
It’s certainly not a level playing field to make comparisons between film and TV in this way, as the Film Commission usually supports somewhere between six and a dozen features, including docos, that make it to release in any given year. NZ On Air is supporting as many programmes that go to air every week.
But, if a major reason to fund local titles is so audiences can (and, hopefully, will) will see NZ content, it is important that people want to watch whatever’s getting produced.
So, Where Are The Audiences?
Not in cinemas, 99% of the time. It seems ironic to write that when Miki Magasiva’s Tinā has just completed its opening week, sitting atop the local box office chart and taking just over $900,000 – but exceptions do prove rules.
As we’ve written elsewhere, a local film here is considered a success if 1% of the population goes to see it in a cinema. It’s a bar so low you’d think it would be an easy win, but in real terms that means over 50,000 bums on seats and a box office of over $750,000. TV audiences for local content are diminishing, but NZ On Air’s spending puts a lot more eyeballs in front of a broad range of local content, at a much lower cost per viewer.
However you slice and dice the numbers, cinema is a dying business. We might like the concept of being gathered together for a communal experience in a darkened room – and filmmakers certainly like seeing their films on a big screen – but the facts are that very few of us actually make that effort for local titles, and although the audience numbers are better for international titles, we don’t really do it that much for them either.
There are fewer cinema screens, here and globally, than there were five years ago.
It’s easy to pin the bulk of the blame for that on covid, and it would even be fair to do so. But it doesn’t change the facts.
The number of people going to the cinema in NZ is down 20-25% against pre-pandemic numbers – and our population has grown every year. Next month is the fifth anniversary of the first lockdown. It’s deluded to claim that, five years on from covid’s arrival, cinema audiences will recover to what they were. They’ve had plenty of chance to do that, and they haven’t.
Every year there are more people in NZ, and they go to the cinema less frequently.
Wishing it were different won’t make it so, however much we might want it to. For this reason, we can’t see a good reason for the NZFC to have the lead in whatever is built from the two current agencies. It doesn’t make sense to us that an agency that’s focused on film, and has been steadfast in defending cinema exhibition for its funded projects, should lead the way into a future where cinema exhibition is an ever smaller part of how New Zealanders consume screen content.
This isn’t bias against cinema as a place to enjoy films. It’s the reality.
This week, in The Herald, Roger Wyllie, co-owner of Auckland’s Capitol Cinema, talked about the state of exhibition in NZ. Asked, “What could bring people back to the cinema?” Wyllie’s response was, “I don’t think anything. I think it’s too late now.”
Others will surely disagree but, unless those disagreeing are cinema owners with a dog in the fight, they’re sharing opinions not facts.
NZ On Air Already Works Across Platforms
Whether cinema dies, finds new ways to survive, or simply limps on for a while longer (which is more possible in the major centres than in much of the country), the reality is that most Kiwis have already voted with their feet. They get most of their screen entertainment elsewhere – on a phone, a tablet or a computer, on a TV via an aerial, a box, an HDMI cable or casting. That content comes from a variety of sources, some NZ-based, some not; some free, some not; and some legal, and some not.
As a funder, NZ On Air has been supporting content screening in most of those spaces for close on 15 years. It has experience to bring to the table. It already funds content that plays across multiple platforms, sometimes simultaneously, and that is very much what the future looks like.
The NZFC hasn’t done anything wrong by supporting NZ films to play in cinemas. That is, after all, what it was set up to do. But, with a few exceptions, it has largely avoided and in some instances actively opposed becoming part of the online world to which the vast majority of the global population has already migrated.
One Door, One Message
The outcome the industry wants and needs is clarity. Simplicity would be nice too, but that’s probably a second stage part of a merger, as systems and processes are tested. The good parts will survive, the less good parts will be adapted or ditched. If the government is prepared to put up with the fiasco changes to providing school lunches has delivered, it’s hard to imagine a new merged agency of government’s making won’t have chance to find its feet.
Merging the two funders will create one clear door for projects. It won’t be perfect, because nothing is, but it can be simpler than the current situation.
We’re well aware that both agencies are, at their heart, people who will be impacted by the decisions taken about if, how and when to merge. We’re also aware that the Film Commission has already been through one round of that sort of major disruption in the last twelve months. But, with respect to those who may be impacted by further change, we’d suggest that it shouldn’t affect the decision-making that’s to come.
The intention is to create an agency that’s fit for purpose, not one that’s fit for those who happen to be employed at the time it’s set up.
It’s About Performance
Last year the NZFC was trimmed down (or gutted, depending on your POV) to do the job it was already supposed to be doing. It wasn’t reshaped to be a joint agency, and certainly its messaging since those cuts has not been about doing anything substantively different to what it was doing before, only about doing less but more efficiently.
Recently, there have been comments from the Commission about it giving greater consideration to projects’ commercial potential, but there’s been little evidence of such change happening as yet. Given the gestation period of feature films, that’s not unreasonable, but we don’t yet know if any such changes will deliver better results for films the Commission invests in. And neither the industry nor audiences can afford to wait the best part of a decade to find out if those changes are implemented and bear fruit.
In contrast to the NZFC, NZ On Air was exempted from the government’s across the board cutting of 6.5-7.5% from operating budgets, not because of favouritism, but in large because it has been perceived for several years as running a tight ship, delivering value for money and delivering on its objectives.
Generally speaking, you’d have to say that it’s more likely NZ On Air can find ways to slow down some of its processes (to suit the slower pace at which feature films develop) than it is that the NZFC can handle the much higher volume of projects supported by NZ On Air and speed up its processes to match the turnarounds and workflows most TV productions other than premium drama use, and .
This isn’t a case of playing favourites. It’s about recognising which agency has consistently delivered better outcomes for audiences, built stronger relationships in the industry, earned more trust and is already well-used to working in the new environment of, primarily, online viewing.
That’s NZ On Air.
If the government is serious about making a merger work, it needs to preserve the best of both agencies, and possibly consider ring-fencing minimum percentages of the overall funding pot for the first few years, to support specific outcomes while the new agency beds in and the inevitable teething troubles are identified and resolved. Outcomes might include genre-focused goals like a minimum amount of children’s content or media-specific goals like a minimum number of feature films supported.
Such approaches may provide some necessary certainty for the production community about what sort of fare is more or less likely to receive support going forward and, therefore, what sort of projects are more deserving of development effort and support in the meantime.
Government also needs to indicate clearly its own expected outcomes, and what criteria or KPIs it proposes to use to define the new agency’s success. It’s options are currently restricted in some instances – NZ on Air is prevented from exercising editorial control of content after it’s agreed to fund a production, for example, while the NZFC has been able to be more active in that way.
It’s not that one way is right and one wrong (and neither will be perfect), but there needs to be greater consistency under a single agency when projects won’t necessarily be so easily defined as film or TV going forward.
Just as the Labour government was clear when proposing to merge TVNZ and RNZ that it wanted to see RNZ’s culture of public media to prevail over TVNZ’s commercial leanings, the current government needs to be clear about what outcomes it desires, because those will help define who does what, who’s key and who’s not when it comes time to retain and/or appoint staff.
As we’ve noted previously, the worst outcome for everyone is a long period of uncertainty. While right is usually better than right now, a clear destination is necessary, even if building the road to get there takes a little longer.
We hope to see as few people as possible losing their jobs as a result of the merger, although there will be some departures as part of government’s hope is to reduce “back office” duplication. We’re also very clear that people from both agencies have plenty to offer a joint agency, but we’re of the opinion that the new agency going forward will need to look and behave a lot more like NZ On Air than the NZFC. Therefore, we believe that if one agency needs to be considered as the lead agency, it should be NZ On Air.
If you want to have your say about MCH’s call for responses, it covers a lot more ground than just the proposed merger. Here’s the full MCH Discussion Document, which includes info on how to make a submission. Submissions close on 23 March.
