Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 114)
TUESDAY 6 MAY 2003
MS PAT
TRUEMAN, MR
JOHN HOUGH,
MR ANDI
REISS, MR
JEFF ALLEN
AND MR
HUGH WHITTAKER
Q100 Mr Doran: I listened carefully
to Mr Reiss' tale of woe in trying to sell his film but it strikes
me that is a tale that anybody could tell. Why should potential
directors be different?
Mr Reiss: I am not suggesting
that potential directors should be any different from any other
artist; it just happens to be that the medium in which I have
been working, which is specific to the question you have just
asked about my film, is a film I passionately believe is topical,
relevant and poignant for a broadcast and should be seen by a
wider audience, so therefore I am not a painter or an abstract
artist trying to pull off a stunt just because I want my own work
to be put up there. Film as opposed to any other medium, or more
than any other medium, is a collaborative business and process,
so I am not talking as just an individual artist or director—I
am talking for a collection of people who have put something very
poignant and intense together which deserves to be screened.
Q101 Mr Doran: One of the points
that is made to us is in other evidence that we have heard is
that there are lots of film schools producing lots of graduates
and various skills but there are not the jobs for them. Again,
why should directors be any different?
Mr Reiss: They are not because
a lot of student directors are finding exactly the same thing,
but there is an argument I think that nothing beats hands-on experience,
and I think the current state of the lack of money means that
people have to borrow money in order to go through a post-graduate
situation in order to then go and do exactly the same as everybody
else who is trying to make low budget films. There is no special
ticket once you come out of a film school. The Directors' Guild
does have internships which are increasing year by year but that
is really where we need to be able to train our people—not
necessarily just in a film school, which is a very secular environment.
We need to be able to show that we can train people on the job,
and there is not the opportunity to do that.
Q102 Mr Doran: You used the word
"collaborative" earlier and I understand the amount
of collaboration and the breadth that is necessary to produce
a film. One thing that seems obvious to me on the written evidence
we have had so far is that there does not seem to be a lot of
collaboration in the fundamentals like training. What particular
efforts has your Guild made to try and improve that, because it
is quite clear that there is a gap there and it is not being filled?
Ms Trueman: We are working with
a variety of different agencies to start doing that. It is fairly
recent in that the Guild has identified this quite recently. It
is easy to say that there are lots of people coming out of lots
of schools all trained up, but you could say that of almost any
graduate coming out of any course anywhere in the country. What
is interesting is that we link up with the Writers' Guild and
various organisations like that as well to work with director/writer
attachments as well. If you look at a lot of the successful films
over the last few years they have also had directors on them who
have been theatre directors. The directors we talk about currently—Danny
Boyle, Stephen Daldry, Sam Mendes, those famous directors now
that we all relate to—have all come through theatre originally,
and the Directors' Guild is working closely both with Equity,
Writers' Guild, all the organisations like that, to link up in
training programmes and we are really beginning to get our act
together on all of that.
Q103 Mr Doran: How does that relate
to the work the Film Council is doing?
Ms Trueman: We have worked with
them closely on the Skillset standards as well that they have
been working on, which is training a whole new generation mainly
of technicians not so much directors, but we have worked very
closely with them and we expect to do even more. We have a very
fluid relationship with the Film Council at officer level; it
is a constant relationship and we are beginning to put together
programmes of skills training.
Q104 Mr Doran: Finally, the BBC seems
to play a big part in everybody's thinking about how things might
change but most of that seems to be wishful thinking. The BBC
has set its own course, and one thing the government could do
is what it is doing on the Communications Bill, for example, in
confirming quotas for independence. Do you see a role there for
the Directors' Guild, and what contact will you have with the
BBC to discuss this, or with the DCMS?
Ms Trueman: As far as quotas are
concerned I think it would be interesting, yes.
Q105 Mr Doran: Have you got firm
proposals?
Ms Trueman: Not as yet, no.
Q106 Mr Bryant: Can I ask about the
money and how it gets through to a director, in other words how
you get recompensed, because although I understand that this is
one of the areas where you are also in dispute with all the broadcasters,
I think you would like to see a greater share of the copyright,
is that right?
Ms Trueman: Certainly there is
a huge issue over ownership and copyright, yes, and intellectual
ownership of the property.
Q107 Mr Bryant: So where would you
like to see that going, Mr Hough? Do you get enough of the money,
or do you think that could be changed—you as an individual
rather than as an industry?
Mr Hough: In England, as against
the States and other European countries, film directors do not
get residuals from television showings or any other ancillary
showings.
Q108 Mr Bryant: And on The Avengers
that would be quite useful.
Mr Hough: Yes, and all the Irish
shows that I have done, but that is beginning to change and we
are beginning to get residuals now from Europe, so that is a better
picture, but in terms of how a director makes money, he makes
money with his initial negotiations for the film, the project
he is about to do, he takes a percentage profit if he has the
stature, and that profit can come at various points from the film's
release and, hopefully, if the film is a success he will eventually
see some money back. That has, however, been quite hard in the
past because the film company are able to deduct all their expenses
and the whole print and advertising and, at the end of the day,
very few films can show a residual return at the box office. They
do quite well over a number of years, however, and residuals from
television, DVDs and other ancillaries can be quite good. That
has not happened in the past but it is now, so I think that is
going to help the directors' case.
Q109 Mr Bryant: We were told last
week that one of the processes that the film companies go through
is trying to make sure that those residuals are going to be as
small as possible which is why they will put more of the earnings
into the screening than into the—
Mr Hough: Yes. There is always
a problem. That would be quite a good thing to change if there
was any kind of investigation into the accounting situation in
films, but it is quite an involved subject. In the States it is
widespread. There are quite a few famous films that never made
any money at all on the balance sheet at the end of their term.
I personally cannot complain about that because the films I have
made have shown a return and I have received it so I am not the
person to complain about that.
Q110 Mr Bryant: If we want to ensure
a lively British film industry, is it more important for us to
get the money flow right or the talent flow?
Mr Hough: You can only get the
money flow right if you can show the film. If you do not have
an outlet for the film, no matter how good the film it is like
building a car and not have a showroom. If you cannot show the
film there is no way you can get money back—either on television,
other ancillary ways or the cinema—so that has to be addressed
because one builds from that and then builds the film. Over the
last number of years there have been many films made that will
never be distributed and therefore can never make any money back.
Q111 Mr Bryant: Some of our more
famous directors recently are people who have transferred from
the theatre rather than television. Do you think that is a likely
growing trend? I am thinking of people like Sam Mendes, obviously.
Mr Hough: It will grow because
there is room for it to grow because in the past most film directors
came from television. I do not agree with something that was said
earlier in that I do not think there could be a self-sufficient
film industry without television. I think it is an integral part
and they both rely on each other, and that television is a very
useful training ground for film directors which is where they
came from. Will they come from the theatre in future? Yes, there
is room for that but then I think it will go back again to television
and the film industry.
Q112 Mr Bryant: I suppose a keen
example of somebody who went from making documentaries into films
is Ken Russell, but the kind of programmes he was making then—the
training programmes, the Arenas and so on—just do
not exist on television any more, do they?
Mr Reiss: In the same way that
Play for Today does not exist on TV at the moment, which
is where Mike Leigh got his initial training.
Ms Trueman: Or someone like Jon
Amiel who did Singing Detective and is now in Hollywood
doing big budget films.
Mr Allen: The other area in terms
of producing directors of international renown has been commercials.
The two Scott brothers, for instance, came from commercials, and
there is Hugh Hudson from commercials, so that has been a hot
bed.
Q113 Mr Bryant: But somebody made
the point earlier about how these are not stand-alone industries
any more in any sense at all. The gaming industry—and I
do not mean gambling but the games that I cannot understand and
use—seems to be an area of significant growth in United
Kingdom talent; we have the advantage of both having the technology
and speaking the language that has a currency around the world;
but how do you foster that whole pool of talent, rather than just
people thinking in their individual silos?
Mr Allen: Well, if I can answer
it maybe in this way, we have a young cameraman doing his first
film at the moment, Spivs, who a few weeks ago was doing
a pop promo, then he has been doing commercials, he has done a
bit of television in the past and now he is doing his first feature
film, so he has gone across four creative disciplines using his
crafts basically—and we see the same. We see people coming
from music into the film industry or into television or vice versa;
we have worked with directors in the past who started their life
dealing with computer games and have now moved into moving image.
Q114 Mr Bryant: But if that is true,
is not government intervention in all of these fields going down
the silos? It is not across the field; it is not about the creative
talent of the individuals; it is about either being supported
through film or theatre or through—well, that is probably
the end?
Mr Allen: The truth is that all
of these are fudged at the lines and they all have overlap. Yes,
you can specifically target certain things for certain parts of
those industries like Section 42, Section 48, but there is talent
brought in for Harry Potter, say, from commercials. The
post production companies that have been involved in Harry
Potter also do commercials and TV shows. They do not just
exist to do Harry Potter but they are an indirect beneficiary
of the tax incentives that enabled Harry Potter to be shot
in the United Kingdom. That is why it is not an easy question
because there is overlap between those creative industries.
Ms Trueman: We find, even in some
of the seminars that we organise, we will get young film directors
coming to us because they want to learn how to work with actors
so they will work with our theatre section on that. There is a
huge amount of crossover.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
We are hugely grateful and I apologise for missing the start.
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