Examination of Witnesses (Questions 76
- 79)
TUESDAY 6 MAY 2003
MS PAT
TRUEMAN, MR
JOHN HOUGH,
MR ANDI
REISS, MR
JEFF ALLEN
AND MR
HUGH WHITTAKER
Q76 Alan Keen: Good afternoon, everyone.
Can I, first of all, make the Chairman's apologies. He is in Foreign
Office questions and will be along as soon as he can. Sometimes
the people who come before us are delighted if Gerald is not here
because he is a hard taskmaster, but we are certainly not happy
when he is not and I am sure he will be along before you have
finished. Is somebody wanting to make an opening statement?
Ms Trueman: I am the chief executive
of the Directors' Guild of Great Britain. We have attempted to
look at the questions you sent to us. One of the things we really
want to highlight is obviously, because of who we are, the role
of the director in film making process. We do have concerns that
that role has been somewhat eroded and diminished over the last
15-20 years with the rise of the producer, and we are hoping to
focus you a little more in our direction. Particularly we would
like to see the director in the film business much more at the
centre of things, much more the person that also can be partly
controlling the budget. The director, after all, is the person
that has the big idea more frequently than not. We would also
like to highlight the role of training within this. We believe
there has not been enough investment in training and we are very
concerned that when our current crop of senior, well-established
film directors moves aside, we simply do not have enough younger,
well-trained film makers ready to leap in and take up the challenges.
Obviously one of the other things we will be highlighting with
our evidence this afternoon is the role of distribution and how
that affects films in this country, and how we deal with the Goliath
of Hollywood and America and American money.
Q77 Alan Keen: Could you explain
the role of the director now? We know what directors do but you
complained that the director is not at the top. Could you explain
how it fits in now, and how you would like to see that change?
Ms Trueman: Yes. When a film is
being planned the director is often not the first person to be
brought in. They are often brought in after the producers and
the money people have been doing their job for quite some time,
and then the director is frequently hired to do a movie. Should
a director want to get their own film off the ground, they encounter
nothing but a series of problems and we have asked Andi Reiss
to join us today because Andi is a young film maker and is currently
encountering a whole series of problems, and I would like to hand
over to him to take over this role as he is a current practitioner.
Mr Reiss: Thank you, and thank
you to the Committee for giving me the opportunity to speak this
afternoon. As Pat said, it is very difficult when you want to
try and do something that you have a passion for, and being in
the creative arts no one goes into this to make a lot of money—they
go into it to try and do what they feel they can provide creatively.
Having done numerous things within multi-media and commercials
for a while, I had a burning passion to do a film called "Cargo"
which is about asylum seekers; it is not begging any argument
either way but it presents a challenging debate, and I was very
keen to make this film, and literally had a huge amount of enthusiasm
and support from private contacts within the business, within
the industry, for getting a low budget film off the ground. Jeff
Allen and Panavision were very supportive initially and within
the industry it was fine, but when it came to trying to find public
money it became nigh-on impossible. I think the reason I found
it impossible was that I am not dealing with a Spielberg movie,
I am not dealing with an episode of EastEnders and I am
not dealing with a reality TV programme; I am dealing with something
that is specifically relevant to a British audience at the moment.
It is topical, political and challenging and good drama. I could
not get any money for it because I was a first-time director and
there was not, as far as public funding is concerned, anywhere
to go, myself, individually, to go and get money. My producer
could, etc, etc, but that was even thwarted at the first furlong
as well because the BBC, for example, already have a certain amount
of money put aside for a couple of films based around that topic,
Stephen Frears' film Dirty British Things and Michael Winterbottom's
film In this World, and so they said "No", but
they did say, "Come back once you have made the film and
we will have a look at it". And, indeed, we have made a rough
cut and they have come back and said, "This is absolutely
fantastic; come back to us when you have finished it", and
I am now looking for an extra 30-40 peanuts type of money to finish
this film, which is totally broadcastable if it was given that
amount of money to get there. This is all grist to the mill and
it happens all the time. Everything is very tough at this point
in time but it is very disconcerting when you are trying to do
something which you feel is relevant and poignant and then you
get a letter back from the BBC or Channel 4 or Channel 5 and they
give you a bland answer and they say, "Well, it is not within
our remit to schedule these things", and you look down the
listings and there are six gardening programmes, two chef programmes
and a programme about baldness, and you just think there should
be a reason for this film to be there, and the reason why it is
not is because they have not put any money into it. Through bitter
and volatile experience this has been a lot of work; it has been
six months of continual hard slog; and I just wish that certainly
the publically funded broadcasters, ie the BBC, should be obliged
to have specific funds for directors and/or writers, not just
producers, to come into. As far as the cinema is concerned and
the Film Council, it is premature to judge anything about what
they have done so far and there are two very important funds out
there, but both of them, including the new Cinema Fund, are really
aimed towards producers and producers inherently are there to
make money and therefore to generate something else, and they
only, as Pat said, very often bring in a director and/or a writer
once they have decided upon what they want to do and how much
money they have to spend, and it would be very nice to have a
wing of a publically funded broadcaster who gives what happened
25-30 years ago to the likes of Michael Leigh, who would not be
the director he is and the British export he is unless he had
four or five years of good, ground BBC training.
Q78 Alan Keen: Thank you very much.
It might be good if Jeff Allen filled in the gap that Andi left
before I call on colleagues to ask questions.
Mr Allen: We represent a slightly
different element of the industry. We represent the facilities
companies that go to supply film makers with everything from cameras,
lighting equipment, studio space, post production, etc. We also
had some similar problems in that arena that Pat has already alluded
to in terms of training; we think the Film Council have done a
good job as far as they can go thus far but we think there are
certain elements within the industry that are being neglected.
There does not seem to be any kind of funding or remit for anybody
beyond the age of 25 in terms of vocational training, for instance.
Skillset say that they just do not have the funding for that and
they are aware of the problem but cannot really do anything about
it. We being an international company in terms of our reach, like
some of the companies we compete against, see the contrast between
the industry here in the United Kingdom and the industry as we
see it developing in other countries such as Australia, Prague,
South Africa and Canada, where they have either the benefit of
lower salaries or lower currencies that help them, or in the case
of Canada and Australia and Ireland, where they have much better
tax incentives overall and a much more stable framework in attracting
money into the country.
Q79 Derek Wyatt: How do you mean,
"more stable"?
Mr Allen: One of the things that
is important in terms of certainly framing tax incentives is that
there is an element of continuity to them because already we are
hearing that obviously one of the tax breaks is up for renewal
or possible discussion for 2005. Now, that may seem like some
time off but a film could take one or two years, maybe three sometimes
in gestation to get to where they finally shoot, and people need
to have some element of continuity when planning for that. Likewise
we as companies invest a huge amount of money in capital equipment
that we may take five to seven years to get a payback on. If suddenly
there is a tax incentive that we get indirectly that is now taken
away, that could jeopardise that investment we make into capital
infrastructure, and likewise the jobs of the people that we employ
full-time. There is a big difference for the facilities companies
by and large because they employ people full-time as PAYE and
not as freelance people. So any shifts like that can fundamentally
change the way we operate, and that is one of the things we are
mindful of with these kind of changes. Also, as I said, we are
acutely aware of the competition that is coming for the future
as well from other territories. Right now there is a studio complex,
for instance, being built in Spain just outside of Alicante to
challenge London directly. Within that facility they are building
a centre of excellence for training for their workforce, so they
are thinking about it right from day one when they are building
and designing the studio. We do not have anything comparable to
that within the United Kingdom at present. There are plans possibly
of doing something at Leavesden Studio, but nothing that currently
exists so there is a big yawning gap if you compare us just to
Spain, say.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
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