Another one Bites The Dust

Well there goes the American film we were contracted to work on for the next 9 months.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=114495

This is a rant from me, on the deplorable state of the Aussie film industry...especially NSW.

In the last 4 years, we have watched so many of our friends and business associates go bankrupt, loose absolutely everything, and some of them commit suicide.

We are one of only 2 studios left in NSW, and believe me, its been a bloody struggle to hold onto.
And why is this?

1-The Australian Government doesn't want to give tax credits to overseas films, thereby guaranteeing that no big films are made here, and with the Aussie dollar almost the same as America, what is the incentive?The government only wants to give credits to Australian films, but most Aussie films are low budget, and cannot sustain a large crew. And it has been shown that they are pretty much uninteresting to the wider market, how many Rabbit Proof fence's, Danny Deckchairs, Prissilla , etc can you watch?

2-You have rich media moguls (not mentioning names) who keep the biggest film studios in Australia booked up and constantly empty, so their equally spoilt favourite directors can decide at their leisure if they want to make a film there or not, with the result that no big films can be made, they usually go overseas. The rent of these studios to the rich moguls is an unbelievably low amount, so they are under no pressure to make it profitable, its a tax write off to them.

3-When something does finally get made, you have the piranhas that are in the council circling around, all wanting a slice of the pie, and charging exorbitant location fees. The last big TVC we did, we rented the premises privately of a company, worked out the price, and away we went.

A council officer stepped in, and tried to blackmail the production company into giving them $10,000 a day. Now as this was private land, it was pretty obvious who's pockets this would be lining. Luckily the producer called the council big Whigs in and called them on it, and they had to drop it, but this sort of thing happens all the time.

The upshot of this shortsightedness, is an industry that was once thriving is dead, not dying, actually dead.
It was an industry that once employed thousands of people, and trained young people in the actual (not film school) way of film making.
Now any talented people who want to survive have to go overseas. ..which puts a huge strain on families, relationships, and guarantees that our brightest and most talented are not working here, and again flows what could be money into Australia, out of it.

So that's my rant.