Producer John Barnett has long argued for the need for greater accountability and transparency on the part of the New Zealand Film Commission. As the local film industry awaits with baited breath for the release of the review of the NZFC that’s been conducted by Sir Peter Jackson and Australian academic David Court, a recent look at the figures (particularly from the past 12-18 months) have convinced Barnett more than ever that such an accounting is long overdue.

About two years ago I began a public call for a review of the NZ Film Commission. At the time I felt that the NZFC Act was outdated and the way the NZFC conducted its business displayed a lack of accountability and transparency.
Just over a year ago, with the change of Government, the new Minister said he would set up a review and subsequently appointed Peter Jackson to head that process.
During that period it has become absolutely clear that a Review was desperately needed.
I have no idea what the Review will recommend, but I do know that the past 12-18 months have seen the poorest performance of NZ films for the past 20 years.
My criteria for performance is how well these films performed at the NZ box office. The NZFC acknowledges this in its 2009 Report: “The NZFC's most important goal is maintaining the momentum of culturally specific quality feature film production for NZ audiences.” But “quality” is not worth much if no one goes to see the films. And we know films that perform poorly at the box office don’t generate DVD income and don’t secure foreign sales.
In a time of worldwide recession, the box office has defied the statistics and has grown everywhere, including New Zealand – but the box office for NZ films has declined to pitiful levels.
It must be stressed that the new Board, chaired by Patsy Reddy, and new CEO Graeme Mason have inherited this situation, and they are not responsible for these results.
The facts are quite simple. Between 1990 and 2005 the NZFC invested a total of $95,798,436 in 67 films. The NZ Film Fund invested another $20,400,000, and the total budget for those films from all sources was about $205 million.
Those same 67 films generated around $41,250,000 at the NZ box office. So for every dollar of total expenditure, about 20c was generated at the NZ box office, and for every dollar of NZFC and Film Fund expenditure, about 35c was generated at the NZ box office.
Now I don’t think that’s a bad result.
On top of the $41,250,000 there was NZ DVD revenue – most probably around another $15 million – and overseas revenue which was at least $100 million – with “Whale Rider” alone contributing over $50,000,000.
In that context, for every dollar the NZ film funds put into NZ films, audiences in NZ and abroad spent around $1.35 to watch those films.
But now we come to the films released in the past 12-18 months.
Budgets have blown out of proportion. Films that should cost $3-$3.5 million are going over $5 million – aided unfortunately by some aggressive use of the SPIF Fund. Films whose box office potential is in the low-to-mid hundreds of thousands of dollars are getting $8-$10 million and more for production.
Let’s look at some numbers – “Dean Spanley”,” Vintners Luck”, “Under the Mountain”, “Separation City”, and “The Strength of Water” have a combined production cost of around $50 million, and NZ film funding investment (NZFC/NZFF/NZOA) of around $22 million. And yet these five films have generated only $1.6 million at the NZ box office, even though ticket prices have risen sharply in the past three to four years.
These five films have generated only three cents for each dollar of total budget, and just over seven cents for each dollar of NZ film funding. I’m not passing any comment on the individual films, I am examining the appetite of NZ audiences for these titles, and putting them in a context of production cost and audience response.
The funding decisions for those five films were made by NZFC staff and boards in 2004-08, so the then-key staff and board members are no longer part of the process. But one has to ask how could they get it so consistently wrong, and that brings me back to my belief that the Review is long overdue.

There were two bright spots in the recent past, with “Second-Hand Wedding” and “Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls”, but it’s worth reflecting that “Second-Hand Wedding” did not get NZFC production funding. Only after it was finished did it get post-production support, and “Topp Twins”, a documentary, was always a no-brainer, which in fact returned over $2 for every dollar invested. These two films were standouts, and the investment in them was very small. But even if one includes these two titles in the list of recent performances we have total budgets of $52 million, with box office of $5.2 million, giving 10c per dollar spent and NZFC/FF funding of $22 million generating 23 cents per dollar spent.
The results speak for themselves – the decision makers did not understand NZ audiences, and they did not exercise restraint in the budget process. Too many projects were developed and the results would suggest that not enough rigour was applied in the total development process, and by that I really mean budget analysis, marketability, and the likely connection to NZ audiences.
As an industry we do too little analysis, and we definitely do not want to be reminded of the decisions that clearly failed. But it’s only by examining these facts that we learn. From what I understand, the new CEO and board are looking closely at the decisions of the recent past, and the poor results they generated.

Forty-five New Zealand films have returned less than $75,000 each at the NZ box office. The directors of 29 of those films have never made another film.
And this is a statistic that should concern everyone, because much of the pressure on the Commission throughout its 32 years is the presumed importance of creating opportunities for directors who are seen as the integral building block in the local film industry.
The NZFC invested over $40 million in those 29 films – nearly one third of its lifetime of feature film production expenditure. That is a lot of money to spend to see whether people have a career, and it is far too high a failure rate. Many of the directors were competent, some are very good TV directors, some are good commercial directors, but the feature film material they were trying to realise never had a chance. The director’s career is inextricably linked to the choice of material, and its subsequent performance at the box office, and the reality is that directors carry the highest burden for poorly performing films. And before anyone blames producers or writers, here is another frightening statistic: thirty-six of those 45 films were written by the director. And in some cases not only did they write and direct, they also produced.
I think it’s pretty clear in NZ that, apart from Peter Jackson and Roger Donaldson, who are really producers at heart, no NZFC finance should be given to any project where the director is also a producer. All films need checks and balances, and these disappear when one person fills these two roles.
The new Board has introduced one long overdue reform. It has removed the ‘dog & pony show’, whereby every project seeking production finance did a presentation to the Board. These were really a waste of time. For many Board members it was the first time they had ever met the filmmakers, they had no context in which to interrogate the project, and often no knowledge, and various Chairmen, encouraged by senior NZFC staff, stifled rigorous questioning. But in reality the whole process was too late. NZFC staff who have been involved for a few years with a project and who have advanced development funding will naturally be committed to the project, and the filmmakers have enormous emotional and financial involvement resting on the outcome. The Board members are asked to make decisions against this background and in my knowledge over 90% of the decisions carry conditions, which really suggest that they didn’t get approval at the meeting but were deferred back to NZFC staff.
Surely these interactions/presentations between Board and filmmakers would be more useful when a project is seeking advanced development funding of say $100-$150,000 or more.
At that point there is room to have a full and frank interchange, involving not just “is this a good idea” or “do we like the applicants”, but also budgets, likely audience response, potential cast etc, and to question whether or not a project really meets the criteria necessary to ensure it will become a film that will attract a NZ audience.
Saying “yes” at this point would most probably mean that a project will have a clear run ahead, but it’s also easier to say “no” at this point, and such action in the past may have saved the NZFC $20-$30 million and the careers of 10-15 directors.

Filmmakers have to take some of the responsibility.
Getting a project funded by the NZFC/Film Fund etc is not a right. It’s a privilege. The funds come with no real financial obligation, but with the expectation and hope that the project will deliver a “culturally specific quality production for New Zealand audiences”. So if filmmakers consistently, or even regularly, fail to achieve this, should they receive further NZFC funding?
If a producer makes three consecutive films that attract less than, say, 50,000-60,000 cinema patrons in total, can he/she expect to get funding to make anything else?
If someone is the writer and director of two consecutive films that attract less than 20,000 customers, why should they be encouraged to continue in a career for which the audience says they have limited appeal?
Maybe they can direct, maybe they can write, but they can’t expect to automatically receive funding to continue as an auteur.
It doesn’t happen in any other business, unless you are using your own money.
At the very least, any future applications ought to receive a lot more scrutiny than that given to people on their first go, and certainly a lot more scrutiny than those who achieved successful outcomes. I’ve been critical of the NZFC for a number of its actions, but it is in a symbiotic relationship with the filmmaking community, and both parties need to be more disciplined in their actions and take the responsibility for the outcomes.

A new “low budget” initiative has been foreshadowed, and I know that there are a number of people in the film community who believe that this will provide solutions.
But I have to urge some caution and once again I point to the facts.
Between 1990-2005 the NZFC invested in 11 films with budgets of $1 million or less. Four of the 11 were documentaries, and of those "War Stories" was the standout. The seven dramas included “Magik & Rose”, which cost $1 million and generated $201k, but the total combined NZ box office for the other six was just $109,000. For every dollar invested in these low budget dramas ($5,600,000) the NZ audience spent less than two cents to see them. Needless to say, DVD returns and overseas sales from those titles were negligible. But what should be even more concerning is that, of the seven low budget dramas, six of the directors have never made another film.
So I have a view that more “Low Budget” Films alone will not be a panacea.
Reaching NZ audiences is going to be even more difficult with films that:
a) are based on elements or material that is unfamiliar to audiences;
b) have compromised production values through inadequate budgets; and
c) feature unknown actors with no audience recognition or appeal.
It is possible to break out with low budget films, even with these limitations, but the stories must have good marketable content. That may mean ‘genre’ titles, it may mean low cost indigenous films like “Samson and Delilah” in Australia, but it definitely means discarding projects featuring characters that are charmless, and stories that audiences are clearly going to ignore.
In the 1980s and ’90s NZ audiences had little faith in NZ films, but “Indian”, “Warriors”, “Whale Rider” and “Sione’s Wedding” have created much more confidence in NZ films for today’s audience.
And NZ audiences have shown great support for local TV drama with “Shortland Street” and “Outrageous Fortune” attracting 500,000 plus viewers a night and “Go Girls” and “The Cult” grabbing 200,000-300,000 viewers per episode.
But our recent big budget films have only been seen by 20,000-30,000 people or less.
The poor performance of these recent films has most probably frightened off key distributors, Paramount, Disney, Icon, and Hoyts have all been badly burnt, and Arkles Entertainment is withdrawing from distribution. So that’s another hurdle for low budget films. Because without skilled, experienced and well resourced distributors, they may not even get cinema dates.

We have a crisis on our hands – one that has been looming but at best was ignored and at worst was denied.
Let’s hope the Jackson Review and the new NZFC staff and Board can generate the solutions.
– John Barnett