Bigger Picture Research

The BBFC at 100: A personal tribute

Contains scenes of mild self-indulgence, moderate impertinence and some strong whimsicality

Recently my Grandma celebrated her 100th birthday. Though increasingly commonplace thanks to improved living standards, medical advancement and the somnifacient magic of daytime television, it is still a remarkable demonstration of sheer, bloody-minded staying power.

For well over 36,000 days (imagine!) Grandma has fought off wave after wave of bacterial assault and avoided numerous genetic tripwires, all the while maintaining a stately pace through a world of ever quickening transformation. And until recently she still had her own teeth.

Now, it just so happens I have the pleasure of acquaintance with another venerable centenarian, and one no less admirable. Between 1998 and 2001 I was a Film and Video Examiner at the British Board of Film Classification. A few years later I sat on the Board's Advisory Panel on Children's Viewing.

What do we need to know? Part 3: Means and ends

Much has changed since this series began. It was unclear at the time of the first post whether publicly funded film research of the kind undertaken by the UK Film Council had any real future. Now it seems there’s reason for hope.

I’ve been told research was one of the topics discussed at the first Ministerial Film Forum chaired by Ed Vaizey. Meanwhile, attendees at last Thursday’s BSAC Film Conference learned the UK Film Council Research & Statistics Unit (RSU) is transferring to the BFI. This is a welcome development, for all the reasons given by contributors to earlier posts.

More dispiriting is news there’s no money attached to the transfer, which means the BFI’s shrinking pot will have to be further eked out. Unfortunately, research is an expensive business. The last UK Film Council three-year plan earmarked £500k for the task, a figure that looks fancifully high now. To do a half-decent job you’d need a low six-figure sum annually…but even that looks like a stretch too far in the present circumstances.

What do we need to know? Part 2: Academic and other contributions

 

“The global film industry is potentially able to provide a rich and fruitful research basket for those wishing in particular to straddle industrial practice with academic study.”
Angus Finney, The International Film Business: A Market Guide Beyond Hollywood

 

“Openness and transparency has the potential to transform government. It can strengthen people's trust in government and encourage greater public participation in decision-making.”
Cabinet Office web site, February 2011

 

“There is nothing a government hates more than to be well-informed; for it makes the process of arriving at decisions much more complicated and difficult.”
John Maynard Keynes

 

Industry practitioners are not the only ones with an interest in the fate of publicly funded film research activity. The audience for this output goes far wider, and includes academics and those involved at all levels in education, plus observers and commentators of every hue, of old media and new.

The contributors included below are drawn from different parts of this wider research constituency, though what they have to say covers much common ground and connects with many of the views expressed by industry contributors in the previous post.

What do we need to know? Part 1: industry contributors

“The lack of authoritative, widely available statistics for UK film, video and television, is both a symptom and a cause of the troubles affecting the industry.”
Introduction to the BFI Film and Television Handbook 1993, the first to include a section dedicated to market intelligence

“If we cannot measure trends in performance, we cannot establish with any degree of certainty whether this action plan is having any effect and whether and how it needs to be modified.”
A Bigger Picture, Film Policy Review Group, 1998

“[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.”
Donald Rumsfeld, former United States Secretary of Defense

 

What do we need to know? That is the question I put to a number of film industry insiders, analysts, academics and interested observers over the last few weeks.

As worded, the question implies some degree of empirical evidence is necessary to the film business and the state apparatus that supports it, though I was quite prepared to hear from people who felt the contrary was true. Of course, nobody did. In fact, everyone I approached was clear that research and statistics are essential in one form or another, as a means to a variety of ends.

Guest post: Russian film distribution market

In late 2009 I flagged up a report on the Russian film industry authored by Nevafilm Research and Rfilms on behalf of the European Audiovisual Observatory.

Nevafilm has recently launched a new, and more detailed, study of the Russian distribution market, available to purchase from their web site (in the interest of full disclousure: I'm not working on commission).

Here Xenia Leontyeva, Senior Analyst at Nevafilm Research, explains what the report covers and how it can benefit industry professionals with an eye on the Russian market:

In a recent blog post, Jim Barratt asked what market players need to know about the film distribution market in the UK. Specialists at Nevafilm Research asked themselves the same question about the film distribution market in Russia last year.

We wondered: do many producers (in Russia and abroad) know what it takes to effectively sell their film on the Russian market? What fundamental knowledge will help them navigate Russia’s vast expanse? Let’s not forget that Russia, with a population of 141 million, boasts a truly massive market, spanning nine time zones and one-third of Eurasia.

Film data: what do we need to know?

Last night I was musing on which, if any, of the historical, headline data reported in the previous post can tell us anything useful about the ‘sustainability’ of the British film industry.

Unable to sleep (and still reeling from the awfulness of 10 O’Clock Live), connections formed in my mind between the data and certain recent developments, including Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s appearance at a London School of Economics event (I  know. On reflection I should have taken a sleeping pill).

Contrary to what we’d been told about perniciously high salaries and quango combustibility, the Minister informed his audience the decision to abolish the UKFC was down to their ‘failure to arrest the relative decline of the British independence [sic] film-making sector, compared with those of France, Germany and even Italy’ (as reported by Raymond Snoddy).

“There ought to be a huge opportunity for British independent filmmakers to grow and grow to a significant size”, the Minister is quoted as saying in Snoddy’s report in The Spectator.

UK feature film production, box office and admissions in 2010

In keeping to its research publication schedule, the UK Film Council has published summary statistics for film production and box office returns over the last year, while the Cinema Exhibitors Association has also released annual admissions figures.

The UKFC press release can be found here, and though I won’t repeat the full detail the headline numbers are as follows (you can click to enlarge any of the charts below):

 

• 119 feature films with budgets over £500,000 began principal photography in the UK during 2010, down from 144 in 2009.
• There were fewer inward investments features in 2010 than the previous year (28 compared with 35), and the number of domestic features and co-productions also fell (to 72 and 19 respectively) (see Figure 1):

Using movie reviews intelligently

We're in the thick of awards season, that febrile period of movie marketing madness when professional film criticism helps to gauge the year's best offerings, and not simply advise us which ticket to buy at the box office.

But as David A. Gross, Editor & Publisher of MovieReviewIntelligence.com, makes clear in the guest post below, we should be wary of aggregated results that smooth over subtle gradations in opinion. Methodology is critical.

There is a lot of commentary at the moment about which movies were well reviewed in 2010, which is the best reviewed movie, and the implications for Awards.

The Social Network and Toy Story 3 were both exceptionally well reviewed.  The Social Network's reviews are slightly better.  For example, Roger Ebert, Ann Hornaday and Christy Lemire each gave Toy Story 3 three stars, and Peter Travers gave it 3.5.  Each of these critics gave The Social Network four stars.

Some of the confusion comes from the methodology that Rotten Tomatoes uses to generate their score.  They classify each review as either positive or negative and then take the percentage of positive reviews.  That means that a B- review is the same as an A review, and a C- review is the same as an F.  They consider a C review or 2 out of 4 stars negative.  By not recognizing any gradation or anything in the middle, they push scores higher and lower.

How to Train Your Dragon was very well reviewed.  Critics gave it lots of Bs along with As.  But it is not in the uppermost echelon (its reviews were 77.2% positive; Rotten Tomatoes has it at 98%).

(An example of a movie in the middle is Eat Pray Love.  By pushing its middle scores down, it ended up with a 36% Tomato score.  According to the scores that the critics themselves chose, Eat Pray Love reviews were 56.2% positive.)

According to the critics themselves, which is what counts, the best reviewed movies of 2010 were

The Social Network (94.4% positive)
Toy Story 3 (92.1% positive)
The Kids are All Right (91.7% positive)

Rotten Tomatoes recently awarded best reviewed movie to Toy Story 3, while most critics groups have called The Social Network best movie.  The disconnect comes from the methodology flaw described above.

This is an issue the industry is currently focused on.  It would benefit from some clarification.

The following is a complete list of best reviewed movies in 2010, per Movie Review Intelligence.

David A. Gross
Editor & Publisher
MovieReviewIntelligence.com

BFI offers first glimpse of future film policy

I had intended to make the first post of 2011 a bumper compilation of annual admissions and box office totals from around the world, but the numbers are still coming in so it’ll have to wait (for example, UKFC will publish UK box office and market share numbers on 20 January).

But here’s something to chew over in the meantime. Today saw the first public pronouncement on the likely shape of film policy under the BFI, cunningly disguised as an advertisement for new Trustees.

You may have heard the BFI is looking to recruit five new Board members, details of which can be found on the web site. Among the supporting documents offered to prospective candidates is an overview of the BFI’s transformation into ‘A New Organisation for Film’, providing a glimpse of how the handover from UKFC and the strategic objectives for film are developing.

The document confirms much of what we’ve already been told: the BFI will assume responsibility for all Lottery funding for film, as well as the Film Certification Unit, the MEDIA Desk and funding of Creative England, in the process becoming ’a coherent new body’ with ‘a clear, single strategy for film in the UK.’

Then in a section entitled ‘Founding Aspirations’ the document sets out – for the first time, that I’m aware of- the emerging strategic goals of the new body:

'1. Effect a smooth and supportive transition of responsibilities from the UK Film Council to the BFI;

2. Achieve a vibrant film culture and successful film industry across the UK;

3. Achieve the best balance between economic benefit and cultural benefit;

4. Strengthen the sustainability of film businesses;

5. Maximise the use of Lottery and other public funds for front line activities, and reduce bureaucracy and costs so that more money can be concentrated on film activities;

6. Achieve greater coherence across the whole film sector; and

7. Develop partnerships with other bodies that substantially increase the impact and reach of British films (for example, working with broadcasters to increase exhibition opportunities for film, on broadcast TV and video on demand, as well as on the big screen).'

If it all sounds rather familiar, that’s because it is: 

(1) is reasonable enough: 'steady as she goes'.

(2) has been cribbed directly from UKFC’s homework book.

(3) implies a clear distinction between economic and cultural benefits of film, which may be less clear in reality. Besides, any ‘balance’ to be struck is needed in terms of support not outcome.

(4) supplies the obligatory reference to the S word (see earlier post 'On Sustainability: UK Film Policy After the UK Film Council').

(5) is very much in tune with Government mood music ('Do More for Less').

(6) is a mystery- I’ve no idea what it means. Anyone?

(7) sounds like a jolly good idea, but will Sky take note? That’s the real challenge.

There’s nothing here that UKFC hadn’t previously committed to deliver, or would have committed to had it been given half a chance. Granted it is still early days, yet on the available evidence the only thing the BFI offers afresh is that it will do much the same as the previous incumbents but for fewer Scooby snacks.

The document also sets out some next steps and a timetable, including a public consultation ‘on a new, refreshed film policy across all areas from archive, through distribution, exhibition, skills and education, to production’ during spring 2011. This will report in the autumn, for introduction from 1 April 2012. In addition the new BFI Board will establish a Film Strategy Development Task Force chaired by the as-yet-to-be recruited Deputy Chair (though presumably with minimal administrative support, to keep back office costs down and help preserve front line activities).

On sustainability: UK film policy after the UK Film Council

So there we have it. Earlier this week the culture Minister, Ed Vaizey, confirmed the widely rumoured transfer to the British Film Institute of responsibility for delivering UK film policy. Though understandably guarded, industry responses have been broadly positive, welcoming news that Lottery funding for film will increase to £43 million by 2014, and the existing tax credit will continue for the foreseeable future.

Other changes were announced, including the agglomeration of all but one of the Regional Screen Agencies into Creative England, while Film London takes the lead in promoting inward investment.

What the Minister didn’t say, of course, is how all these changes will manifest themselves. We’re told there’s a period of due diligence to go through, in addition to the obligatory industry consultation. ‘This is the beginning of a process,’ said the Minister on Monday, ‘not the end.’

Alongside the legal legwork and attentive listening, Vaizey will chair a Ministerial Film Forum to meet every six months starting in January. The Minister said the group, whose membership is yet to be announced, will start with a ‘run around the houses to address key issues.’

I’d like to humbly suggest the very first task of the Forum should be to establish the parameters of ‘a sustainable independent British film industry’, one of the stated goals for film policy set out in the Minister’s speech. It’s a phrase that needs to be unpacked for it to have any genuine utility, and it comes with plenty of historical baggage. Oh yes.

For starters, the word ‘sustainable’ has warm and positive connotations, making it popular within policy circles. But just take a moment to consider the concept- what does it actually mean?

Truth is, when deployed without further elaboration it is an entirely empty term. And its use within the context of film policy obscures rather than illuminates a number of heavyweight issues, which is probably why the UK Film Council chose to drop it a few years back. But it wasn’t always thus.

To explain further, let’s make a distinction between what we’ll call the hard concept of sustainability and the soft. The hard conception implies an enterprise capable of perpetuating itself (and, ideally, growing) without outside support or influence. It’s a version of what Sir Alan Parker, former UK Film Council Chair, dismissed as the ‘self-sustaining, purely British film industry’ that ‘has been the Holy Grail for Government and industry for many years’.  In contrast, the soft concept is the idea that a given state can be maintained at a desired level without exhausting available resources. Doesn’t sound so compelling, but it may be much more realistic.

If a course of action is pursued in accordance with the hard concept, the question of success comes down to whether or not outside support or influence is required to keep the industry afloat. If the soft conception determines policy then the question instead becomes: what level of activity is it desirable to maintain? Either way, attention must be paid to what the end destination looks like, and what route to take to get there.

Later in Sir Alan’s speech, delivered back in 2002, he poured scorn on the idea of ‘building a stable of rights owning film production companies’ as the basis for a sustainable industry. Sustainability, the early UK Film Council argument ran, was attainable only by means of distribution-led production operating from a film hub of world-class skills and infrastructure capable of attracting international investment.

Not everyone bought the argument (far from it), and in the years to follow the lack of credible evidence of ‘sustainability’ didn’t help to win over the naysayers. Problem was, no formal success criteria were ever adopted internally or approved externally. So while plenty of data were collected, analysed and published, and arguments mounted about specific achievements, the case was never convincingly made in terms of sustainability. There was no coherent framework for judging the various statistics in a way that could either substantiate or repudiate the argument.

The enemy of reason is not ignorance of facts, but a lack of understanding. And here we come to the nub of the matter. What’s needed, right from the start of this ‘exciting new vision for the British film industry’ (that’s the Minister talking), is clarity around the objectives for film, and- most importantly- a set of indicators (that may be quantitative, qualitative or both) against which to gather market intelligence and judge progress towards the goal.

It won’t be an easy task, because there are likely to be many factors at play in a sustainable industry (however one chooses to define it, whether a hard or soft conception, or something in between).* But the transparency, discipline and rigour involved are crucial to ensure both continuing support for film policy among industry players and its successful delivery over the coming years.

If you’ve followed this blog before, you can probably guess where this is leading. I think what’s really needed, and was conspicuous by its absence from last Monday’s speech, is a film policy research function capable of gathering, interpreting and disseminating data that speak directly to the indicators derived from agreement of what constitutes a sustainable industry.

I'm not going to get into the question of whether 'a sustainable independent British film industry' is even the best and most appropriate goal of film policy. Whatever the goal, my argument remains the same. It comes down to transparency, accountability and good governance.

In closing I’d like to offer up one further thought while it occurs to me. The Minister’s speech specifically mentions Pact’s proposals, but what does sustainability mean outside the direct interests of producers and production companies? What does it look like from the perspective of sales agents, post-production houses, distributors, facilities companies, exhibitors & film societies, retailers etc.? In other words, what does sustainability mean in the context of every other link in the supply chain (or value chain, if you prefer to look at things that way)? How do these perspectives cohere and diverge? Can one industrial policy accommodate them all, and is it even desirable to do so? Sir Alan didn’t think so, back in 2002. ‘We are not one film industry’, he said. ‘but many industries. One solution doesn’t fit all.’ The Minister would do well to remember this when drawing up the invitation list for his first Film Forum.

 

* (A side note- is ‘a sustainable industry’ the same as a collection of ‘sustainable organisations’? There’s some slipperiness in the Minister’s speech: the terms of debate shift in scale, back and forth, from the level of individual companies to a whole class of industry.)

European digital cinema screens in 2009

As flagged last week, the European Audiovisual Observatory has published a good helping of European digital exhibition data.

According to MEDIA Salles, who collected the information, there were 4,693 screens equipped with DLP Cinema or SXRD technology at the end of 2009, a rise of 207% over 2008.

Digital screens accounted for 13% of all European screens in 2009, up from 4% in 2008 (Table 1). The average number of screens in digital sites has also risen, from 1.6 screens per site at the end of 2007 to 2.0 screens per site in 2009.

Table 1: Digital cinema sites and screens in Europe 2003 - 2009 (courtesy of European Audiovisual Observatory- click to enlarge)

 

According to MEDIA Salles, most digital theatres are found in Western Europe (Table 2). The five leading European markets in terms of admissions also have the highest number of digital screens. France accounts for 19% of the digital total, followed by the UK (14%), Germany (13%), Italy (9%) and Spain (5%).

Meanwhile, Russia has witnessed strong growth since 2008, and now accounts for 7.5% of Europe’s digital screens (352 in total).

The Observatory’s press release picks up on the fact that a handful of companies account for a large share of all digital screens. ‘In Europe’, the release explains, ‘the development of digital screens seems to be highly concentrated in terms of exhibition companies, in view of the fact that, at June 2009, 5% of exhibitors were responsible for 33.6% of the overall number of digital screens.' Further evidence, perhaps, that smaller operators are being left behind in the switch to digital.

The press release goes on:

'The top five players are the French company CGR (with 13.1% of digital screens), Kinepolis (6.8%), operating in Belgium, France and Spain; Cineworld Group (5.6%), present in the United Kingdom and Ireland; Odeon and UCI Cinemas Group (4.8%), operating as Odeon Cinemas in the United Kingdom, as UCI in Austria, Germany, Italy and Portugal and as Cinesa in Spain; Cineplexx (3.4%), present in Austria and in Italy.’

3D has proven to be a significant catalyst for digital screen growth. One indication of this is the fact that 69% of all European digital screens were 3D-ready by December 2009 (in time for Avatar in most European markets), up from 54% only six months earlier in June 2009.

Table 2: Digital cinema sites and screens in Europe by country 2007 - 2009 (courtesy of European Audiovisual Observatory- click to enlarge)

European box office, cinema admissions and feature production, 2009

With Cannes almost upon us, the European Audiovisual Observatory has released its annual round up of European box office, admissions, market share and feature production numbers, in advance of next week's publication of FOCUS 2010: World Film Market Trends.

The numbers, some of which are based on provisional data, paint an encouraging picture of cinema going and film making in apparent rude health (certainly at an aggregate level).

Headline data as follows:

• Total EU box office gross reached a record high of EUR 6.27 billion in 2009, a rise of 12% over 2008.
• Admissions rose by 6% to an estimated 981.1 million in 2009, up from 925.3 million in 2008.
• Annual box office gross increased in 21 of the 23 EU member states for which data are available, with only Ireland and Latvia seeing a decline. Admissions increased in 20 EU markets, and deceased in only six (see Table 1).
• European films had a market share of 26.7% of total EU admissions, down from 28.2% in 2008 and the lowest level since 2005.
• Market shares for national films declined in 18 out of 23 member states for which data were available in 2009.
• French films remained the most successful films in the EU market in terms of admissions. German films ranked second, taking 4.1% of the total, followed by UK productions accounting for 3.9% of total EU admissions.
• The Observatory estimates 1,168 feature films, including feature documentaries which accounted for 20% of the total, were produced in the EU in 2009, 28 more than in 2008 (the previous record year).
• The Observatory cautions that ‘differences in production measurement methodology between European countries make it difficult to evaluate the effects or non-effects of the economic crisis on overall production output in 2008 and 2009.’ ‘Nevertheless’, the press release continues, ‘the high in 2009 production data suggests that the European public funding system has prevented production levels from dropping significantly.’
• For the first time in recent years, Germany had Europe's highest production output (194 feature films), followed by France (182 features).

Click to enlarge:

You can find additional data and tables on the Observatory’s web site (including details of the top 20 performing titles at the European box office).

For those of you heading to Cannes (ash plume permitting), the Observatory is hosting a digital cinema workshop in the Salle Buñuel (Palais des Festivals) on Sunday 16th of May from 3.00 pm to 4.30 pm.

Speakers include Professor Ian Christie, Vice President of Europa Cinemas, Christine Eloy of Europa Distribution, Aviva Silver, Head of the MEDIA Programme of the European Union, and Antoine Virenque, President of the European Digital Cinema Forum. There’ll be a further announcement about European digital cinema data on 12 May.

Plus if the fancy takes you, you can swing around to the Observatory’s stand at the Marché du Film (stand A6 Riviera) and collect your free copy of FOCUS 2010: World Film Market Trends (a PDF version will be available online in due course).

A quick film business blog round up

Keeping up to date with industry commentators and the musings of well-placed insiders is one of the more enjoyable aspects of maintaining this blog. Reading widely around the subject has become a necessary habit, and it rarely becomes onerous.

The print-led trade press has always performed a valuable service in this regard, marshalling fact and opinion in digestible portions. But the internet- particularly web 2.0 platforms like Twitter, blogs and the like- puts readers/listeners/viewers in touch with developments in a more immediate and less filtered way.

Best of all, it’s possible (as suits your needs) to move seamlessly between eavesdropping and networking, between bearing mute witness to and actively participating in an ongoing conversation among the informed, the interested or the idly curious.

Quite how dynamic this free and fulsome exchange of film business information has become is evidenced by the blog roll in the right hand sidebar, which has grown enormously since this blog started, and continues to expand (although it is still only a fraction of what’s out there).

Anyway, I want to draw attention to some recent additions that make an excellent contribution to the ongoing conversation.

I’ll start with the most recent of recent additions, The A.K.A. Indie Film Blog. Author and industry consultant Jeremy Juuso kicked off this blog last month with a post about Cantor Fitzgerald’s movie futures market, the Cantor Exchange.

Juuso is author of Getting the Money: A Step-by-Step Guide for Writing Business Plans for Film, and I first strayed across his writings from a link on Ted Hope’s blog to a post on Baseline Research’s Research Wrap site about the box office chances of ‘self-released specialty films’ in the US.

It’s a canny and provocative analysis (witness Hope’s commentary), and the issues raised are absolutely pertinent at this time of shifting film distribution models.

As well as filing copy for Baseline Research, Juuso runs a consultancy whose web site hosts a marvellous array of freely accessible film data.

Throughout 2009 Juuso published monthly PDF reports listing independent and ‘independent-style’ films released theatrically in the US. Among the data included for each title are details of their theatrical release pattern and box office numbers, the involvement of above-the-line star talent, plus estimates of the budget and a summary of financing sources.

The information is derived from various online and public sources, and each title takes Juuso around 2-3 hours to research. ‘The goal’, as Juuso told me when I enquired about his approach, ‘is to paint a clearer picture for filmmakers and investors of just what kind of landscape they face when launching an indie film geared toward the US market.’

The result is a detailed release catalogue, of obvious benefit to anyone drafting a business plan or thinking of acting on one (or, for that matter, anyone trying to understand the way the contemporary indie sector operates in the US).

Screen Finance used to provide a similar service in the UK (for the price of a subscription), until it bit the dust last year (the bfi Library tells me the last issue of Screen Finance they hold is dated 17 December 2009, following Tim Adler’s departure to manage the London bureau of Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood blog). In the absence of Screen Finance, I’d love to see Juuso’s approach replicated in the UK and Europe.

Alongside the monthly PDFs you can find The A.K.A. Report 2009, an overview of the US theatrical market based on analysis of summary data. And returning to where we began, the first post on Juuso’s A.K.A. blog lays bare the operation of the Cantor Exchange in lucid detail (check out entertainment attorney Roger Goff's blog for another view of the same). If, like me, you’re only dimly aware of terms like ‘going long’ and the ‘short position’ from coverage of the global banking crisis, Juuso’s post lifts the shroud on this arcane world and makes it comprehensible.

Now to a blog of a very different order. David Graham is CEO of Attentional, a television industry data provider and consultancy that supplies, among other things, BARB data to the UK Film Council, and is responsible for a number of film-related projects over the years including a study of the economic impact of the UK screen industries (with Cambridge Econometrics and Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates).

Graham’s newly launched blog, Building an Entertainment Powerhouse, takes a critical look at the current model for UK TV, setting out alternatives informed by a staunchly (but not unthinking) free market approach. There’s an engaging openness about the posts, and Graham has the advantage of working from hard data in crafting and elaborating his position. Check out, for example, his posts on the desirability of a European Pay-TV platform, and the growth of internet-based TV viewing and its implications for the licence fee. It’s still relatively early days, but this blog is definitely one to watch and will no doubt become more relevant if the general election goes David Cameron’s way tomorrow.

Over the coming weeks I plan to introduce other relevant industry blogs in a similar way, so if you have any suggestions for inclusion I’d be grateful to hear them. I’m particularly interested to learn about film business blogs from outside the UK and US.

Australian theatrical market update, 2009

And so to the business of working through the backlog.

Screen Australia released a series of updates to its Get the Picture resource a couple of weeks back.

Among the new data is an updated list of top grossing films at the Australian box office; annual admissions and box office gross totals, plus the top performing titles in 2009 by country of origin; average cinema ticket prices in 2009; and data on the growth of digital screens.

Brief highlights as follows:

• Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time in Australia, having taken Aus$108,621,853 by 7 March 2010, the first film released in Australia to earn over Aus$100 million.
• Total box office gross stood at Aus$1,087.5 million in 2009, up 15% on the previous year.
• Admissions also rose, by more than 7% to 90.7 million.
• The average ticket price was Aus$11.99, a rise of 21% over the past four years.
• The number of digital screens has risen from 27 in 2006 to 311 in 2009.

Check out the full list of updates for further information.

Incidentally, you can find additional commentary by Ellen Pittleman on the Australian theatrical market in Screenline’s 2009 Global Box Office Review (which covers other territories as well; reports for Brazil, China and France have recently been published). It’s all available for free and well worth a look.

UK cinema admissions and UK feature production activity, Q1 2010

Volcanic hyperemesis and bureaucratic incompetence conspired to keep me and the family in Portugal for a week longer than planned, hence the lack of recent posts. But at least we enjoyed a few more days at arm’s length from election campaigning (more of which later).

Looking across various news feeds, trade publications and assorted correspondence I see it’s been quite a fecund period for the type of research of interest here. I won’t attempt to cover it all in a single post, so expect a burst of activity over the next week as I work through the backlog.

To ease back into the swing of things, let’s begin with a UK-themed update on first quarter activity.

First off, cinema admissions. Last week, cinema advertising firm Pearl and Dean (P&D) was finally sold off for £1 after four years on the market. Regular readers will recall P&D forms one half of the Cinema Advertising Association (along with Digital Cinema Media), the trade association whose charitable work includes releasing monthly admissions data compiled by Nielsen EDI/Rentrak. Here’s hoping P&D’s new owners continue in this same vein in future.

In the meantime, the CAA has released admissions numbers for March, allowing us to gauge the strength of the UK theatrical market during the first quarter of the year. It’s a positive picture, with a total of 14,482,606 tickets shifted in March- the strongest performance for the month in recent memory.

This brings the total for the first three months of the year to 43,957,027, up 6% on the same period in 2009, and the highest figure since 2002 (Figure 1). Clearly the big screen continues to work its magic on audiences.

Figure 1: UK cinema admissions, Q1 (January to March) 2002 to 2010

Source: CAA/ Rentrak

Turning to UK feature production, the UK Film Council has released the latest data from its regular tracking work, covering the first three months of the year. 23 feature films with budgets of £500k or more started principal photography in the UK during this period, the lowest number since 2005 (Table 1).

Source: UK Film Council

The number of UK domestic features (those made by a UK production company and produced wholly or partly in the UK) and inward investment features (those that are ‘substantially financed and controlled from outside the UK, where the production is attracted to the UK because of script requirements, the UK’s infrastructure or UK tax incentives’) both fell from the level seen in 2009. On the positive side, the decline in UK co-production activity appears to have stabilised, for the time being at least.

The money spent in the UK on making these features stood at £426.5 million, which is considerably lower than the amount spent in 2009 (£485.1 million), but remains higher than the levels of previous years (Table 2).

Source: UK Film Council

Honouring their commitment to provide market intelligence specifically about UK independent films, the UK Film Council reports 2010 saw less activity than in recent years (Table 3), although this is ‘principally due to the decline in co-productions’.

Source: UK Film Council

Interestingly, the median budget of UK independent films (£3.0 million) was higher during the first quarter of 2010 than it has been for some time (between 2007 and 2009 the figure hovered around £1.9 million). This is due to the fact that four of the 18 UK indie features had budgets over £5 million.

The report ends with a projection of full year production activity based on Q1 results. The UK Film Council tentatively suggests the year could see UK production spend hit £907 million in 2010, making it ‘one of the better years on record’.

Given the hefty contribution of inward investment activity to this total, much will depend on the continued attractiveness of the UK as a production base for US studio productions; and the outcome of the general election may prove influential. If we're to believe the pundits, a hung Parliament may further weaken the pound on the international currency markets, and a stronger dollar makes the UK more attractive for inward investment features.

While on the subject of the election, Labour is the only party to mention film explicitly in their manifesto. ‘The strength of Britain’s film industry’, we’re told, ‘is a source of pride'. Labour has committed to maintain the film tax credit and to proceed with the BFI/ UK Film Council merger. In other words, business as we've come to expect it, except of course there’ll be a lot less public money available for film over the next Parliament.

Meanwhile, neither the Liberal Democrats nor the Conservatives mention film in their manifestos, which is hardly surprising given all the urgent matters of State requiring attention (in which context, Labour’s manifesto reference is all the more remarkable).

The Liberal Democrats talk of safeguarding the future of ‘Britain’s creative industries’ by ‘supporting upgrades to our digital infrastructure and taking action to tackle illegal file-sharing’, and of fostering ‘an environment in which all forms of creativity are able to flourish’. This will be principally by means of a Creative Enterprise Fund offering ‘training, mentoring and small grants or loans to help creative businesses get off the ground’. But past evidence suggests getting creative businesses off the ground is rarely a problem- it's keeping them afloat and thriving that proves challenging.

The Conservative manifesto makes only glancing reference to ‘arts and heritage’, but not film per se. This is disappointing, especially given publication late last year of Maud Mansfield’s ‘Report on the British Film Industry for Shadow DCMS’. It's a rather admirable document, both balanced and well-researched.

Alas, none of it found its way into the main manifesto, which talks of ‘making Britain a European hub for hi-tech, digital and creative industries’ (whatever that means). We do know the Conservatives plan to scrap the Regional Development Agencies, which will affect the Regional Screen Agencies whom they co-fund and, therefore, support for film in England.

There's little point in speculating further about future film policy. We'll know more next week...

Russian film market intelligence

Ksenya Leontyeva, Senior Analyst at Nevafilm Research, dropped me a line the other week to introduce further examples of Nevafilm's research (you can find an interview with Ksenya about the company's activities on the Media Salles site).

You may recall last year I wrote about a report on the Russian film industry compiled by Nevafilm and RFilms, published by the European Audiovisual Observatory. I was impressed enough by the work to list it as one of my discoveries of the year last December.

Nevafilm Research has since issued reports on the Russian theatrical market in 2009 and the expansion of digital cinema across the territory (which can be found here). On this latter point, Nevafilm has launched an online database of Russian digital screens, currently listing 382 of such screens in 292 cinemas across 116 cities.

And there's welcome news that the company is currently working on a report on Russian film distribution, covering theatrical, DVD, TV and digital media markets. The report ('The Film Distribution Market In Russia') should be available in early summer (around May, according to the web site) and Nevafilm is now accepting pre-orders. I plan to post further details on publication.

More on East Midlands investments

Last October I posted about the East Midlands Media Investments Fund (EMMI), as featured in EM Media's review of Economic Achievements 2008/09, which I was covering at the time.

Just last week EM Media and the East Midlands Development Agency announced a further round of EMMI investments, totalling over half a million pounds, including four feature films (The Brutal Game, Oranges and Sunshine, Tyrannosaur and The Weekender), a feature documentary (AnDa Union), TV development (Over the Hill and Under Cover), a documentary short (PS, Your Mystery Sender), a Facebook application (GangstaPets), and an online game (Natural Born Racer).

A tenth project will be announced shortly, and EM Media anticipates these investments will together deliver over 90 jobs, generating around £13 million for the East Midlands economy. This latest round of support brings EM Media's total to 37 feature films, 75 short films, 15 TV and 15 games and interactive investments to date.

Further information, including details of the talent involved in the funded projects, can be found on EM Media's web site.

UK cinema admissions, February 2010

The latest monthly admissions issued by the Cinema Advertising Association reveal a slight decline in February 2010 compared with the same month last year, but the year to date total remains marginally higher than in 2009.

February saw 14,890,936 tickets sold, 0.5% down on 2009's tally. This brings the year to date total to 29,474,421, a smidgeon above the same total for January and February 2009 (see Figure 1), making it the best opening two months since 2003.

The link is dead at the moment, but when Pearl & Dean have rectified it you'll find a list of the top ten performing titles in February on their web site (no prizes for guessing the top placed film...).

Figure 1: January and February cinema admissions, 2002 to 2010

Source: Cinema Advertising Association/ Rentrak EDI

UK films at the world box office in 2009

Figures released by the UK Film Council show the UK's share of world box office gross fell to its lowest level since records began in their present form in 2002 (Figure 1). As the chart makes clear, it's a wildly fluctuating picture year-on-year, driven by the performance of a small number of big hits.

UK films grossed around $2 billion in 2009, a 6.7% share of the total global theatrical market, down from 15.1% in 2008 when The Dark Knight, Quantum of Solace and Mamma Mia! topped the rankings (Table 1).

The highest grossing UK films in 2009 were led by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Slumdog Millionaire and Sherlock Holmes.

The UK Film Council expects UK market share to climb again in 2010, courtesy of some big inward investment feature releases during the year (starting with Clash of the Titans, which opens in April in most territories, and ending with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I as the year closes).

Figure 1: UK films global market share 2002 to 2009 (click to enlarge)

Sources: MPAA, Screen Digest, UK Film Council

Table 1: Top three UK films at the global box office, 2002 to 2009

Sources: MPAA, Screen Digest, UK Film Council             *still on release as at 25 March 2010

RIP NPA

As a rule I don't post 'straight' news stories unless they have a specific research angle. But rules are there to be broken, as our MPs keep reminding us, and I feel moved to record my thoughts on this particular story. It's not even a fresh item, which shows how rubbish I am at this sort of thing.

Anyway, the New Producers Alliance announced on 8 March it has closed for business, which is a huge pity. I once gave a talk about UKFC research to an NPA audience at the invitation of former CEO David Castro, and it was a great evening during which I learned as much as I hope those attending did. And earlier this month I was due to appear on a panel discussing marketing and distribution as part of the NPA's 9 Point Producer Training programme, but the session was pulled when the company started to wind up its operations.

The announcement, made on the NPA web site, blames 'the recession and increased competition for training', which have 'contributed to a loss of membership income.' I wonder whether these two factors are linked, as more players enter the training arena to supplement income from other sources hit by the economic downturn. Here's how Netribution covers the story.

This is bad news all round, as the Netribution post makes clear. Independent filmmaking has never been an easy path to tread, and while digital wotnots and social doodabs have handed the creative tools to the self-organising masses, money remains tighter than ever and competition for audience attention is at its fiercest. To be sure, these are exhilarating and dizzying times for aspiring producers. But dizziness, as any five year old who has puked on their own shoes will tell you, can be disorientating with unfortunate consequences.

Which is where organisations like the NPA can really prove their worth, offering much needed advice and support, training and networking opportunities, and generating a sense of common purpose and collective identity.

Arguably, the NPA may have fallen victim to the explosion of 'free' networking and peer support that now exists for indie filmmakers, on both sides of the Atlantic. But as with all these things, there remains a need for trusted brands who offer high quality services to complement the free stuff. After all, no one ever got a balanced diet gorging vol-au-vents stacked high at a complimentary buffet.

Still, premium services have to be made to pay, and maybe this is just another reminder that the cult of free (yup, that includes blogs) has far reaching consequences at all levels of business and culture. Speaking of which, there are two excellent posts by Michael R Barnard on this very subject over on Truly Free Film (part one looks at the fate of the film biz trade press, and part two laments the rise of 'near free' Redbox DVD rentals).