Filling UK box office coffers
****Jeremy Hunt is to abolish the UK Film Council although he insists that government and lottery support for films will continue. The Council says it has backed 900 films since 2000. Hunt says money can be better targeted to the film industry without the bureaucracy.
No wonder the Council span its figures so hard, it was fighting for its life. Despite the glamour of the Baftas and Oscars, the coalition has taken a hard-headed look at the UK film industry and it wants closer scrutiny of how public money is spent. But let’s not have Jeremy Hunt picking which films get made…****
Beehive reckons you’ll be reading in the papers how receipts in UK cinemas reached a record £944m, while inward investment in production more than doubled from £357m to £753m.
The headline figures from the UK Film Council are usually dutifully reported in the papers as a sign of the robust health of “our film industry”.
It’s a fact that cinema admissions in 2009, at 174 million, were the second highest since 1971, boosted by the success of blockbusters such as Avatar – the UK’s highest-grossing film of all time, which has raked in £92m – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Ice Age III.
Harry Potter: a British film?
But how much British pride can we really take in those Hollywood-backed films? And when the UK Film Council claims an “astonishing” year, boosted by an “111 per cent rise in inward investment”, the Beehive bullshit detector sprang into life.
Is this astonishing good news story, which would enhance the film industry’s powerful lobbying arm in government circles, actually covering up some other home truths?
Let’s actually look closer into the Film Council yearbook. There were 71 UK domestic features in 2009, down from 77 in 2008, with a UK production value of £169.2 million which was 18% down from the 2008 figure.
A UK film to be proud of
Those domestic UK titles in 2009 included Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang and St Trinian’s 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold, not Brit classics to be sure, although the acclaimed Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy also did some business.
The number of co-productions remained static at 22 in 2009, down from 57 in 2006 (partly a function of changes to the tax regime). Their combined value made up £35 million of the total level of production, down from £48.9 million in 2008. Median budgets for UK domestic feature films fell from £1.7 million in 2008 to £1.5 million in 2009.
So whilst John Woodward, chief executive officer of the UK Film Council, said: “British cinema has been weathering the recession well” and “firing on all cylinders”, it’s getting harder than ever to produce smaller, independent films that tell uniquely British stories. The likes of Chris Morris’ Four Lions, backed by Film Four, are becoming a rarity.
“I’m not saying this is a catastrophe, what I am saying there is something quite serious going on here,” Mr Woodward admitted.
“Around the world broadcasters are paying less for feature films, and there’s a slow erosion of the DVD market.”
Four Lions from Chris Morris
On the plus side, the Avatar-backed resurgence in 3D cinema, accounted for £176m in box office receipts, 16 per cent of the UK total.
It’s ironic that the UK music industry, which produces exportable homegrown talent every year, can’t match the positive coverage and good news story of annual rising admissions for largely US-backed films, that its silver screen counterpart regularly achieves.
The lesson probably is that you have to be as creative with the story you tell as your talent is on the pitch.
Thank Goodness that someone has the knowledge about the industry to analyse the spin and get to the truth.
People in the real UK film industry can always legitimately take credit for movies made in The UK, which 15% of Hollywood financed product now is at Pinewood, Shepperton and Elstree while we retain these factory facilities for hire in The UK.
We can take pride in UK talent and crew in any movie wherever made and wherever financed.
Bt it is hard to take pride in stealing from The NHS, fire brigade budget,
and other vital services to give the fattest of fat cat salaries and lunch expense accounts to people who often had several other jobs. This was all The UKFC was.
Having lobbied hard to get rid of The UK Film Council, those of us at Save The British Film Industry have obviously been celebrating all week and congratulating the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
For there to be a British Film Industry, there needs to be sound stages built around The UK. Ideally at least 4 in every county. Hollywood $50 million to $300 million productions can only go where sound stages are. For those who do not know, they are glorified warehouses, more normally found in The Midlands and The North YET curiously sound stages are confined to a very very small 200 acres in the area of west London, and just North and West of London. The UK Film Council fought tooth and nail to ensure not one penny of Lottery money was spent on building sound stages outside of this small 200 acre zone..thus guaranteeing a UK film industry could not arise. They did not want one and used the public money to block one. They did spend £300 000 a year on their ground rent. They did employ 75 people on £70 000 to £150 000 who often had several other jobs. But sound stages, post-production facilities, nope. If these existed across The UK, then many more entrepreneurs who invest in fast food franchaises, laundrettes, restaurants, shops, etc will take the risk and hire them to try their luck at film making for profit. It was the volume of risk taking entrepreneurs which created Hollywood, and they then built sound stages, before selling them for houses, and forever thereafter seeking to rent them elsewhere such as Pinewood, Shepperton, Elstree.
Now the MD of Elstree earns a fraction of the salary of the average UKFC employee, yet he has delivered two years of block booking of Elstree sound stages by Hollywood Studios creating lots of UK based film jobs. Why is only little Hertsmere Council, owner of Elstree, wise about sound stages ? Why did The UKFC not educate people outside West London that they are the essential infrastructure of a real industry ? Now UKFC is gone, and hopefully certain very very high paid, huge expenses Regional screen Commissions with them, the sound stages can get built and UK film making enter a true golden age.
We urge people not to sign any Petition to save UKFC fatcat jobs. It has nothing to do with The UK Film Industry, indeed it was the enemy of most people making films in Britain both now and in the future.
http://www.savethebritishfilmindustry.com/2010/07/ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead-save-the-british-film-industry-kill-the-uk-film-council/