Screen Forever – an annual industry event presented by Screen Producers Australia – enjoyed its fair share of back-slapping along with no small amount of hand-wringing this week, as screen content professionals wondered how to position themselves for the next stage of the national industry.
Here are five takeaways from the annual three-day Melbourne conference, which wrapped up on Thursday.
The industry is spooked by Trump
The orange spectre of the US president-elect haunted proceedings, as the industry sought to understand the uncertainties of the new Trump era.
Speaking with US producer Graham Yost – writer of Speed, Justified, and The Pacific – ABC Radio’s Virginia Trioli indulged in the age-old journalistic error of prosecuting a foreign nation’s political follies against a single helpless resident of that country. (Yost protested that he is actually Canadian, but that didn’t help him.)
The amount of times the issue arose spoke to broader industry anxieties, not just about the international mood for storytelling (in the US, the producer of Quantico has suggested a more “hopeful” direction for the show in the aftermath of the election), but about possible changes to the terms of trade between Australia and the rest of the world.
The media is in an existential panic
The Trump effect has also made itself felt in the media’s general identity crisis. After traditional and mainstream news outlets (and pollsters) in America and the UK failed to accurately predict the outcome of Brexit and the US election, many in the Australian media are also wondering whether they really understand – and effectively communicate to – their audience.
Speaking on 7:30 recently, the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, insinuated that the ABC, and an “elite media”, spends too much attention on narrow issues rather than those of broader concern to the electorate.
The recently appointed managing director of the ABC, Michelle Guthrie, rejected that characterisation, in a session with the Australian’s media editor on Wednesday. Acknowledging the existential crisis in journalism “is an issue”, she suggested the problem affects the ABC less than commercial media, which may be under economic pressure to withdraw from regional areas.
Guthrie has been visiting regional ABC centres as part of her orientation, and praised the public broadcaster’s “depth and breadth” of coverage and its ability to focus on “bread and butter issues” in a range of communities.
Producers love diversity, but aren’t yet sure how to get it
The challenge of reflecting the Australian community on-screen aligned with a broader conversation weaving through the conference: the issue of diversity.
In a week that saw Screen NSW announce a Diversity Action Plan, debate at the conference touched on the economic incentives for diverse productions – not just from funding bodies but from advertisers and audiences. It suggested a new understanding that the issue is not only morally worthy, but financially beneficial.
At a panel discussion on Wednesday, some speakers seemed firmer on the notion that lack of diversity is a problem than on any practical solutions. Foxtel CEO Peter Tonagh spoke persuasively about the responsibility of businesses to take a lead in diversity issues – the pay TV broadcaster internally advocates for marriage equality, for instance – but he was conspicuously silent on what concrete measures could be pursued to ensure that screen productions are diversely staffed and cast. Co-panellist Courtney Gibson, chief executive at Screen NSW, later won applause for her organisation’s refusal to fund projects that lack women in key creative roles.
Panellist Keli Lee, a managing director at the ABC Television Group in the US, and moderator Darren Dale, managing director of Blackfella Films, both said internships offered key opportunities for them early in their careers. But the Australian screen industry is marked by competition and precariousness, with creators often working project to project and fighting for limited funding. A foot in the door becomes less appealing if it’s followed by a long solitary climb to a glass ceiling – particularly for those from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
The Australian Film and Radio School (AFTRS) used the panel as an opportunity to launch a new study, which outlines some steps that might be taken towards maintaining a diverse screen industry.
But a glance at the delegates at the conference suggests real change will only happen when current screen professionals admit they need to make sacrifices.
Millennials are feared, misunderstood and needed
This theme cropped up in the head-scratcher event of the week, a panel titled The Millennials – WTF Do They Want and HTF Do We Work With Them?
At one point in the discussion, moderator Paul Walton from Princess Pictures (the company behind much of Chris Lilley’s TV work) remarked that the industry needs a diversity initiative for millennial talent. Facetious or not, the suggestion reflects a growing awareness that employment structures have hardened not just against marginalised groups, but against a new generation of creatives with a surfeit of ambition and no clear pathways for advancement.
There’s a sense older workers don’t even know how to talk to young employees, much less capitalise on their skills. Karla Burt, a producer at Princess, described a lucky intuition she had about one young production assistant. “Are you any good at making memes?” she asked – and on learning that the woman had a successful blog, promptly transferred her from dishwashing duties to meme production.
Toward the end of the panel, a young producer from Vice Media stood up from the audience and explained that respect is a two-way street, and that older workers need to break down their own culture of entitlement – but it’s unclear whether anybody really listened.
Local creators are getting rorted
The minister for communication and the arts, Mitch Fifield, launched the Screen Currency report at the conference on Tuesday. The research from Screen Australia highlights the economic benefits the screen industry brings to the country, including a $3bn contribution to the GDP, 25,000 jobs, and 230,000 tourists.
Screen Australia CEO Graeme Mason, speaking to a roomful of producers on Wednesday, praised the high quality of Australian screen content, and called it “arguably our best soft diplomacy tool internationally”. But he had harder words for this audience of professionals, and in a sometimes combative address seemed frustrated at the number of times Screen Australia has been expected to lend a hand to projects that are doomed to creatively disappoint.
“Poor content doesn’t work on any meaningful level,” Mason said. “Especially in today’s funding and viewing environment.”
Chief among his concerns was an the quantity of disadvantageous deals being presented to Screen Australia. Referencing some of the arcane procedures of Australian screen funding, Mason claimed that a few local producers, in their quest for funding, are letting international screen financiers muscle in on income from Australian productions, which should properly be kept within the local screen economy. “[A] lot of money is flowing in from international,” Mason said. “But please don’t sell the farm to get it.”
That’s one of several ways in which Mason said local creators are allowing themselves and their local industry to get rorted, and putting well-established funding mechanisms such as the Producers Offset at risk through misuse. It’s also suggestive of the broader tensions in the local landscape.
In an era marked by a glut of screen content and production – and more distribution channels than a consumer can shake a stick at – Australia still needs a “giant market manipulator” like Screen Australia to keep the industry on its feet, one whose focus on the national interest often overrides the needs of individual makers, the audience heard.
But Screen Australia now has less money for more funding requests, and producers are abandoning opportunities to build a firmer economic foundation for their work – one of several ways in which this industry is lurching towards a future full of discomforting changes.
