Sir Film on TV
Here is the news. Television is bigger, and it might just be harder.
But Sir Peter Jackson and David Court appear to think that television is lower down the arty pecking order than real films – feature films like those funded by the New Zealand Film Commission.
Their recently released review of the Film Commission for the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage reveals a patronising attitude to television.
But television doesn’t deserve to be down-graded. Sure there is lots of poor quality television but that’s no reason for it to compare badly to films; there are lots of poor quality films too. In New Zealand’s case it was the poor quality of the Film Commission’s slate that was one of the drivers behind the review in the first place.
“Producing a movie to fit into a predetermined theme or formula is a system that works well for the television industry,” they tell us.
Really? Formulaic television usually bores the crap out of me. Me-too TV programmes always seem to look pale compared to the original – the program that took a risk with a new idea.
“Good cinema is the result of risk-taking, not playing it safe,” they continue.
Shortland Street may look like a formula now, but back in 1992 it was a new idea locally, and it must have looked pretty risky as ratings tumbled in the first season.
Perhaps they would argue that Shortland Street is not an apples with apples comparison with good cinema because it’s not good television – although half a million or so New Zealanders think it is good enough to watch.
Cinema claims big numbers too. According to the New Zealand Motion Pictures Distributors Association figures, in 2009 New Zealand cinemas sold about 15 million tickets. That is about 42,000 per day.
But last week Outrageous Fortune pulled over 700,000 viewers and Shortland Street wasn’t far behind – on a single day.
If any of the main television channels could only hold 42,000 people for two hours a day, they would be bankrupt.
To hold television viewers is not easy. But that’s not the way Jackson and Court see it.
“..we feel that the increasing pressure on projects to be ‘commercial’ has been counter-productive. It’s an approach that can lead to mundane, forgettable, boring movies – unfunny comedies, undramatic drama and material better suited to television than international cinema.”
Unfunny comedies and un-dramatic drama are suited to television, but not feature films?
It’s the other way round, at least for me and my family. If we go to the movies we either enjoy it, or we endure it while the director works out his problems; if it’s bad we don’t walk out.
I think the reason is something to do with the need not to disturb other movie goers with a whispered conversation that would precede a decision about how bad the movie is and whether we should stay or go.
(To be strictly truthful, I recall walking out twice. Both were New Zealand movies where a conversation wasn’t needed – we just walked. I still don’t know how Snakeskin ends.)
But at home watching television is a different story. If it the show turns out to be unfunny or undramatic in the first few minutes the person nearest the remote control makes a blunt executive decision. Any conversation preceding a decision to leave the room is loud, grumpy and short.
Jackson and Court go further: ”It’s possible to produce films without passion, and that’s what large industries like Hollywood do all the time. You feel it when you see the movie. The television industry, with large episodic turnover requires a similar factory like approach, especially in huge markets.”
The television industry requires a similar passionless approach just like Hollywood?
These guys need to hit the sofa and watch some good telly. Sure, anyone will find lots of stuff they personally don’t like, and I am not attempting – for now – to define good telly. All the same, maintaining interest for 13 television hours of drama is a pretty tall task.
It has to be good stuff to get you to come back week after week. 13 episodes might make it look like a factory product but given the pace at which it has to be shot, unless the crew and cast are committed to the job they are doing the audience will smell it, and it won’t make good television.
Wait, that sounds just like features.
None of all this is to say that the report isn’t generally a good one. It stands head and shoulders above your average governmental review in readability alone. You can penetrate the jargon because there isn’t any.
Take the recommendations any way you like. Right now there is a sort of limbo while the various apparatchiks make their recommendations to the Minister as to whether he should like it or not. The Film Commission itself is probably working along the same lines.
I reckon it puts some suggestions worth thinking about – and debating – on the table.
But if we happen to need a review of television funding body New Zealand On Air any time soon, let’s not ask Sir Peter Jackson or David Court.
I read the report, and the first comment “Producing a movie to fit into a predetermined theme or formula is a system that works well for the television industry,” doesn’t appear to say that ALL television is this way.
I think I get the point here, that films certainly should not be this way.
There is a place for formula in Television; just not all television.
What sticks me is “..It’s an approach that can lead to mundane, forgettable, boring movies – unfunny comedies, undramatic drama and material better suited to television than international cinema.”
I’m going to try to see the good side, and think that they mean that television is more able to accommodate lower budget and less “funny” or “dramatic”.
But it does slightly seem like a kick to the television industry.
It is a little ‘high and mighty’, and smacks of film is superior to television; not everyone aims to become a film director.
But then they do also kick the crap out of short films as being anything more then a stepping stone.
I have seen many great short films.
And to be told that unless they allow a director to make a feature film they are useless (paraphrasing but more or less what they say). Wow, that’s brutal.