“The producer doesn’t have a direct relationship with the market. We don’t take the takings form the cinema and use them to make another film and I think that’s a big economic flaw in all this.”
The major issue for Rebecca when it comes to the distribution of profits made by a film, is that the bulk of the income goes to the exhibitioners and the distributers, which are heavily monopolised and often integrated into the studio system. Take for example the Odeon & UCI Cinema Group owned by the Terra Firma investment group: Out of the UK’s nearly 4000 screens this one exhibitioner alone owns 2236 (Sept ’14), making it the biggest player in the UK. The rest of the market is dominated by Reel Cinemas Ltd. and Vue cinema.
This leaves independents stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand they are very dependant on distributors and exhibitors – the first because they have a specific skill set and network that will get the film to the right exhibitors and will often provide a substantial part of the production budget through pre-sales financing, the latter because they control the infrastructure needed to bring the finished film to the audience. On the other hand both distributers and major exhibitors are keen to back only projects that will be commercially successful. But as Rebecca puts it “you never know how well a film is going to do. It’s really not a scientific measurement at all. Hollywood keeps on proving that no one knows anything – that’s why they keep on churning out franchises, because they daren’t risk making new stuff.”
When I asked her how this problem might be solved for future generations of independent producers, she suggested that it “would be really good, if there would be some direct relationship between the means of distribution and production.” So what Rebecca would like to see in the future is a portion of box office revenue to go into a pot that gets distributed back directly to a film’s producers proportionally to the success of the film. This would have two effects. Firstly it would give independent producers more freedom to keep trying out new interesting ideas without having to convince exhibitors and distributers that the film definitely will be a financial success, driving innovation and new talent. Secondly it would help decrease the dependency on public funding that is often, and to an extent rightly, criticised as warping the free market principle of demand and supply.
This idea isn’t really new at all, as Rebecca points out. Between 1950 and 1985 there used to be a system in place in the UK called the Eady Levy that set aside 5% of all UK box office revenue to be pooled. 50% of this money would go straight back to the exhibitors, as a kind of discount. The other 50% would be distributed directly to UK producers proportionate to how well their films had done at the box office. The money came with the condition that it had to be spent on further UK productions. To determine what counted as a “British Film” and could thus be financed using money from the Eady Levy, a set of rules was put in place not un-similar to the cultural test used by the BFI today.
To simply reinstate this old law won’t be the solution to all the problems faced in the world of indie film funding, not to mention the resistance the exhibition sector would put up against the idea. But perhaps it could be the basis for some serious though about change. While calling for more mainstream commercial successes is understandable on the one hand, we need to also have the courage to fail every so often. There is no absolute recipe for success and original filmmaking will always stay a high-risk business. But if we resort to simply recycling successful blueprints over and over again audiences will get bored and turn away eventually.
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