Posts by Shay Lambert
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adventurous in what they support at the lower levels
The problem is that by moviemaking standards, the "lower levels" are 99.9% of locally made films. I bet a couple of mil doesn't go far if you're trying to make a feature on location with professional actors and don't want it to have the look and feel of an episode of Home and Away.
From what I've seen of no budget movies, pacing, character development, sub plot etc are all secondary to the concept - which is whatever can be done without sets, city locations, lighting and professional actors (hence the endless mockumentary/ Blair Witch-style horrors and talky hipster relationship dramas.)
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I don't see it as an either/or.
Nope it's a question of focus. And the focus at present seems to be on finding feature films/ filmmakers that will be internationally successful.
That's great when it happens - my point is that it's unfair to judge the success or failure of a funding body based on the inherently flukey nature of a film being any good AND then that good film finding a mass audience (and it is inherently flukey, otherwise why have so many brilliant and talented people been involved in making so many shit films - or good films that no-one ever saw).
We fund national sports teams to win. All I'm saying is we should fund storytelling based on a different criteria, and it may be the best way to do that is by putting more focus on the small screen, not the big one. (I don't have a dog in this fight by the way - I've no connections to the industry, just an avid consumer of film, and more recently started watching some great TV series on DVD.)
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Indeed, because one only learns from it the technical aspects of making a good feature, not - or only slightly, and incidentally - the creative; character development, pacing, plot/subplot balance, etc.
Fair point, but remain unconvinced that this approach would achieve much.
Maybe instead of desperately searching for the next Peter Jackson, we should try to find NZ's David Chase or David Simon? I know TV is NZOA's domain but if we want to foster talent, maintain a viable industry and have more NZers seeing more NZ stories,getting the NZFC to fund some artistically bold, challenging TV series could be the way to go.
No disrespect to the makers of Outrageous Fortune/ The Cult/ Insiders Guide etc. but I'd rather have an NZ series in the league of Cracker, Red Riding Trilogy, The Wire, Deadwood, Sopranos - hell, going back even further an Edge of Darkness (directed by a Kiwi) - than setting up a funding body to try and to capture lightening in a bottle like Boy or The Piano.
We all feel good when a kiwi wins an award at Cannes or their film makes some money in the US, but that's why we have sports teams, to get that "plucky kiwis take on the world" national pride thing.
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The budget of any one of them could've made a dozen cheap digital features and odds-on, one of them would've been really good (quite apart from the benefits mentioned above).
But surely that's the NZFCs rationale behind funding short films? And from what I understand that approach has been criticised as ineffective as well.
I just don't agree that giving dozens of hopefuls $20k and a digital camera will reveal a huge untapped pool of talent. Don't forget we have a number of publicly subsidised film schools in NZ to give them a chance to learn their craft already.
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Hollywood follows the money, and they have money to throw around - look at the proliferation of "Indie" divisions of the big studios in the 90s and their willingness to throw out dozens of low-to-mid budget movies in the hope one just one of them will be the next Pulp Fiction.
Here, every movie has to be the next Whalerider - as others have pointed out, it's the public accountability as much as the amount of funds available. That's an impossible situation to be in.
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Yeah, what a bloody tragic failure of vision. Here we are in the middle of really the first technical revolution in filmmaking since the invention of the movie camera, and neither the Commission nor Jackson & Court seem to have recognised the once-in-a-lifetime chance to democratise filmmaking, and thus cast a much wider net over the possible talent.
I'm not sure we need more democratising of film - look at the dozens (hundreds?) of no-budget features being churned out with cheap digital technology by aspiring filmmakers hoping to get noticed. Setting aside value judgements on whether any of these films are good, none get seen by an actual audience, largely because low-budget indies (apart form horror and porn) are not what audiences want.
As for being risk averse because of limited funds, Hollywood studios spend the equivalent of the GDP of a small country every year making movies but are extraordinarily risk averse - they are only interested in something that will pull in millions of 13-yr-old boys worldwide on opening weekend.
I believe the UK recently went through similar navel gazing over their NZFC equivalent. But publicly funded studios like Film 4 and BBC Films seem to have an impressive hit rate for commercial success and artistic/ culturally relevant output, while fostering new talent as well as old pros like Mike Leigh/ Danny Boyle etc. Be interesting to know what their funding model is.
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I'd like to nominate Any Given Sunday for best sports movie.
Over-the-top over-acting histrionics from Al Pacino. Over-hyped coke-induced movie histrionics from Oliver Stone. More swaggering machismo than the first Predator movie. More homoerotic subtext than Top Gun. More training montages than Rocky 4. More everything, all the time.
Just like real American football.
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Quite apart from the various forms of oppression they have perpretated on their own citizenry (genocide, slavery, institutional racism, the war on drugs), they have and are doing plenty to other people, including their allies.
But the point is that the US's spectacular and ongoing failure to live up to its own ideals doesn't give us any insight into how China will behave when it's the sole remaining superpower.
Who knows how the China leadership of the future will decide is the best way to maintain their prosperity, stability, security and territorial integrity when they become the unchallengeable, biggest kid on the block.
I'm not suggesting they will go on a global rampage of military conquest, but China's track record of happily supporting the worst regimes in the world when it's in their interest easily rivals the US's. And to get back on topic, at least the US has the decency to be covert in how it monitors its citizens and controls the flow of information ;)
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But at least it means we get updated remakes of paranoid, jingoistic Reagan-era classics.
Expect another Rocky sequel soon with a geriatric Stallone facing off against Yao Ming.
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As someone with a gender-ambiguous first name myself, I can relate.