SUBMISSION 7
Memorandum submitted by the Film Societies
North West (part of The British Federation of Film Societies)
THE INQUIRY INTO ALL ASPECTS OF THE BRITISH
FILM INDUSTRY
I am writing not from the point of view of people
employed by the film industry, nor of people involved in jobs
connected with the film industry that are ultimately funded by
public money. I am writing in respect of people who give up their
spare time to get involved in amateur film exhibition and to which
film is a hobby, an interest, a passion, and a concern.
I wish to comment with regard to "awareness
of and access to moving image", and in particular to address
the two questions:
— How can the distribution and exhibition
of British films be improved in the UK? Is the right balance being
struck between these elements of the film industry?
— What has the Film Council contributed
to education about, and access to, the moving image? What should
the Council do with the bfi and the Museum of Moving Image?
WHAT IS
A SUCCESS?
The glory days of British Cinema Screen Exhibition
has long gone, like the golden ages of canals and railways. DVD
and video releases produce four times as much income to the Hollywood
studios as do box office receipts, and the Computer Games Industry
generates more money than Hollywood, which is why Hollywood encourages
tie-ins with films. Our film industry must not take its eyes off
this ball if it does not wish to drop further behind.
Hollywood films and Hollywood values dominate
the multiplex chains. I go to my local multiplex at least once
a week and I see a lot of USA films that I like. There is competition
over the "opening weekend" box office figures and this
is a battle the Film Council must not be sucked into. The reputation
of many fine UK films is destroyed because it did not set the
box office alight, and while the successes like Billy Elliott
are to be applauded and savoured, it must be remembered that
this is only a second stage in the exhibition lifestyle of a film.
I observe six stages in the life of a film and
the Film Council and film producers should pay attention to all
these stages if it is to be rewarded.
1. The first stage is the pre-release stage,
when some films are taken on the Film Festival circuit to hopefully
gain themselves awards but mainly a good distribution deal.
2. The second stage is the theatrical release,
either through a multiplex deal, or the more limited number of
screens available through the alternative circuit of Independents
and Regional Film Theatres.
3. The third stage is the DVD release, which
follows around six months later from the cinema release. The trade
papers suggest that a Hollywood studio can earn three to four
times as much money from the DVD release as from the box office
receipts, yet the British industry releases their DVDs almost
as an apology. At least some directors I have talked to, such
as Asif Kapadia and Danny Boyle, have put considerable thought
into what makes the DVD release different and special.
I spend a fair amount of time browsing in HMV
and Virgin stores, particularly in the DVD sections, and the British
idea seems to be to release a DVD with the minimum of fuss and
budget, and let it sink or swim. There are exceptions where a
DVD distributor makes an effort with names such as Bend it
Like Beckham. Perhaps the Film Industry should study more
how the British Music Industry has kept its place in our hearts,
in our entertainment culture, and in our music stores..
4. The fourth stage is where the film appears
on one of the digital /satellite film channels, or DVD and video
rental shops.
5. The fifth stage is where a film goes
around the film society/film club circuit. This can be between
six months and three years of the original cinema release. This
again is a stage that the industry ignores, but into which local
film groups put in a lot of time and effort to locally promote
the films they screen.
6. The sixth stage is the screening on terrestrial
channels. How many industry names can be seen on chat shows trying
to promote a wide viewing audience? Probably none. The industry
has lost interest after the second stage anyway, even though all
the subsequent stages can still rejuvenate DVD sales.
The public is involved as an audience in all
six stages, and the public interest can help determine receipts
in all six stages. Therefore if public money is advanced to help
in the production of a film, the responsibility of the film-makers
for helping in the promotion of the film should not end, or seem
to end, with the cinema premiere, which is only the start of the
financial returns.
A THIRD EXHIBITION
CIRCUIT
The sixth national Cinemas in the Community
conference in April will promote the worth of cinemas to a community.
I do not dispute this, but wish to draw attention and press the
case for a third Exhibition circuit, one based on "Home Cinema
Technology" and DVD discs and equipment, that is almost as
simple to use as presenting a slide show, and which can reach
far more communities and smaller groups in the twenty-first century
than cinemas can.
It is:
— one that can improve the opportunities
for more British films to reach a nationwide UK audience;
— one that does not compete with the
existing 35mm cinema circuits;
— one that does not take up a great
deal of funding, because all the raw ingredients are already out
there, the venues, the equipment, the community groups, the local
authority arts officers, and the film fans;
— one that does not take a great deal
of manpower to oversee, because the volunteer activists are out
there;
— one that is democratically-based
because its choice of films is based upon the choices made by
its own members; and
— one that is capable of astronomical
growth and of generating a change of climate as to how UK film
culture fits into our world of arts and entertainment. It is the
positive encouragement of film societies and film clubs all over
the country.
What is needed centrally are initiatives to
get these local people into dialogue and information exchange,
"to maximise the utilisation of existing resources"
as they say, and to make it easy for such groups to know what
British films are available for hire, what their plot lines are
(to jog the memory) and to send over the Internet marketing material
for local promotion, and to make the booking process as easy and
attractive as possible.
According to the statistics I heard at a previous
"Cinemas in the Community" conference, an average of
26,000 surrounding catchment population is needed for the establishment
of each cinema screen in a town or city to be remotely viable.
By contrast there is almost no lower limit needed to the establishment
of a film club or film society in a community. When one reads
the local papers and observes the number of amateur and school
football teams and the economic input they put into the community
and the country, so it could be for film societies and film clubs.
It is almost as easy to set up a small cinema style screening
for a smallish audience as it is to set up a slide show. Technology
is making the equipment easy to use, user-friendly, and to produce
impressive results that comes from the digital source.
The circuit must be based on DVD digital projection,
and because of the time lag between the availability of 35mm prints
and the DVDs, the cinema circuits do not compete with the same
films.
To get such a community group off the ground
in terms of prices is almost of "Home Cinema" proportions.
Most schools in the country have access to a digital projector,
a video player and/or a DVD player. They are also beginning to
be acquired by local authorities, amateur film-making groups,
and other community groups. The equipment is coming down in both
price and ease of usage and familiarity of usage (how many people
have handed a CD or DVD disc as opposed to a 16mm reel of film?).
Such equipment can now be bought for between £1,000 and £3,000,
and such facilities should be utilised to the maximum by the community
rather than be allowed to gather dust.
The venues are already out there, be they village
halls, school rooms, conference rooms in public buildings, community
centres, and function rooms in pubs and clubs.
Most local authorities have arts officers or
arts teams, who are ideally placed to assist in the formation
of such clubs in their area, and to get interested parties together
around a table to explore how such facilities and such a club
can best benefit their community.
Local authority bodies such as the libraries
and Councils for Voluntary Services are aware of the school, youth
club, age concern, and minority ethnic, cultural or disadvantaged
groups in their area.
Local authority libraries are all taking the
first steps to setting up DVD borrowing sections, yet this is
another market/audience reach that is being ignored or overlooked
by the Film Council.
THE ECONOMIC
CASE
The economics of a film society screening will
be similar to that for any school or community group. A film society
is a private cinema club, that is a screening at which the public
cannot be admitted, but members or guests can attend, so it is
like a Labour Club or Conservative Club. There are two distributors
of DVDs for Exhibition purposes, Filmbank and the British Film
Institute, with Filmbank concentrating on the mainstream and the
bfi more on World Cinema.
Each Society pays around £60 to £100
for the hire of a DVD, and this includes all the appropriate nights
including music performance. To include publicity and venue hire
etc, £150 would cover the costs of a screening, and this
is normally met by member subscriptions. Such small overheads
make screenings a possibility in small rural communities far away
from a cinema, in places such as old folks homes where transportation
to a venue presents problems, and in small ethnic or culturally
different communities where cinema screenings cannot be justified.
Going into a community generates long-term goodwill.
If an organisation like the BBC can market its
own products, then the Film Council should have a commercial arm
to help exploit its own products to their potential, where other
distributors have decided to pass on opportunities. Such an arm
of the Film Council should be capable of the arranging of bureaucratically
easy hire of DVDs to which they have had some financial input.
If they can offer attractive discounted rates to such clubs, this
can promote additional screenings of more British Films.
If one person in fifty can be tempted to join
a local film group, and the average membership of such a group
is 20, that is 50,000 film society/club groups throughout the
nation. If the Film Council could obtain just £30 for the
film hire of a UK film from each group, that is a potential £1,500,000
per film. If such societies could be persuaded by the low overheads
to fit in an extra British film per month, that is a potential
return of £18,000,000 on hire fees alone, and some of the
audience may have been persuaded to buy their own copy of the
DVD. That is the potential to be explored.
THE LAW
A venue can only accommodate six or fewer screenings
to which the general public can be admitted in a twelve month
period to avoid the need for a cinema licence. Any more and a
cinema licence is mandatory. Film societies do screen more, but
they are private clubs. A DVD distributor would require 50% of
the Box Office or the standard hire fee, whichever is the greater.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
I am an active member of the Sons of the Desert,
the Laurel and Hardy Appreciation Society. There are about 30
branches up and down the country screening the Boys films monthly
in diverse small venues, usually pubs. In this capacity I have
accepted invitations to put on screenings of the Boys films to
such groups as Downs Syndrome Sufferers and Parkinsons Disease
Sufferers, and to Heritage Groups needing extra entertainment
at an event.
Being part of a Local Heritage Network myself,
I have also been able to add a few video treats for the benefit
of an audience curious about their locality. I have been saddened
to find that such community activity is rare, and it is a vast
under-utilised further educational resource considering the material
in such archives as the Imperial War Museum.
It is not really the economics that are the
problem, but establishing a dialogue/information exchange between
the archivists, the film distributors, the local authority arts
officers, and local activists. Such material can provide many
a valuable "supporting programme" to a feature film.
THE FILM
CLIMATE
We should all be working together to establish
a better climate for film, film culture and film heritage, in
the UK, and like all climate change there is no single long-term
factor, but several strands have to be pursued long-term.
The Film Curriculum in schools and colleges
appears to work in isolation from the rest of the community, and
when a student leaves college he has to fend for himself. Yet
film can be a pleasurable lifelong experience for all ages, one
that can benefit the UK film industry if the spotlight is moved
away from Hollywood all the time. The DVD format, in the form
of "extras", gives the opportunity to educate and inform,
yet how many people with film educational expertise are permitted
input? Those DVDs into which the Film Council has some input must
contain extras that are there to educate, inform and help promote
the UK film industry.
THE AUTHOR'S
BACKGROUND
I started a St. Helens Film Society in 1994.
When the Centenary of Cinema took place in 1996 we helped to promote
George Groves (who helped Warner Brothers to earn 32 Academy Award
nominations for Sound), Herbert Mundin (who featured in films
with Clark Gable and Errol Flynn) and Lion (built in 1838 and
over 100 years later became the Titfield Thunderbolt). I later
joined the Film Societies North West Committee and in 1997 became
its secretary. There are only five active regional groups in the
UK, Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire, the South West and the North West,
so there is potential for more growth.
We joined the North West Film Exhibitors Consortium
because we believe in the strengths of talking to each other,
and I am now that organisation's Treasurer. I became a member
of BAFTA North which is particularly active in this area.
I became a member of the Network of UK Film,
Television and Multi Media Festival Organisers, to help me learn
and to help me with my voluntary duties. I joined because I still
have this ambition for a Great British Feature Film Festival here
in the North West and I want to learn how best to make it a successful
event.
I am an active member of the Sons of the Desert
(the Laurel and Hardy Appreciation Society) and a passive member
of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers (because I am interested
in making short films about aspects of local history) and a passive
member of the Cinema Theatre Association.
I enjoy the cinema experience and I pay for
it myself. I go to my local multiplex at least once a week, and
I also visit cinemas in Liverpool and Manchester, but less frequently.
I also watch two or three films a week taped from terrestrial
television, quite often black and white or mainstream.
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