Bigger Picture Research

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.

Some sort of public-private partnership is being considered to address the shortfall, involving the BFI (and presumably other public bodies) and the principal trade associations (FDA, CEA, Pact and BVA). I understand discussions are already underway, but the main stumbling block is that trade bodies don’t have any money either. They do have access to data, although it’s not all their own. In a partnership every party has to bring something to the table, and it’s hard to escape the feeling that penury and good intentions are all that’s on offer in this instance. At least there’s common ground between the prospective partners.

But we are where we are, and there’s no point bemoaning the fact. In any case, I think there are two reasons for remaining positive.

First, the moment is right for a fundamental rethink of publicly funded, and industry sponsored, research activity. There’s an opportunity in this transitional moment to consider how best to utilise available resources and prioritise those areas of most pressing need.

It makes sense for the future direction of research activity to be considered in parallel with development of the next iteration of film policy. The forthcoming film policy review, flagged last Thursday by the Minister, will look at ‘improving the sustainability of the industry’. Research ought to feature prominently, not least in setting terms of reference for judging industry sustainability against agreed measures.

Furthermore, as contributors to previous posts have argued, UKFC has done much to be commended on the research front, but more is always needed to meet existing and future requirements.

Viewed from another angle, filmmaker Chris Atkins once described UKFC’s research output as ‘a running joke among friends’ in an article in The Times. This points to a breakdown in trust among certain sections of the industry that should be tackled directly, and now’s the time for the BFI to start afresh.

As expressed by contributors to earlier posts, top priorities include addressing the information asymmetry between the biggest companies and the smallest, promoting awareness of market trends and audience behaviour, and making accessible the types of data needed for investor-friendly business plans.

None of this will directly address the trust deficit Chris Atkins alludes to. That’s largely a presentational matter, and so I’d add to the list of priorities the need for greater care over the way research is mobilised in news stories about changing industry fortunes. The current practice of using statistics-heavy press releases to trumpet home grown successes misses a trick, as Arvind Ethan David described in last Friday’s FT (‘The King’s Speech and British Cinema’). Puff pieces may garner column inches in the red tops but nobody in the industry really buys into them. And given the UK Film Council’s premature demise, it seems this kind of cheerleading doesn’t always wash in Westminster either.

The second reason for optimism poses a more fundamental challenge to the established way of doing things, driven this time by developments in information technology. 

A recurring theme of previous posts is the desire for ready access to free (or low cost) data. This in turn requires greater openness on the part of public and private sector providers, and a willingness to do things differently. One possible solution is to strike a more appropriate balance between ‘push’ and ‘pull’ in making data accessible.

The current model operated by UKFC is classic ‘push’: research reports and summary statistics are published at regular intervals or on an ad hoc basis during the year. In this scenario, the RSU acts as a gatekeeper, deciding how and when to release information based on its assessment of need and mindful of institutional factors (like communications planning). This approach enables the RSU to observe any restrictions placed on the publication of commercial data, and ensures information is quality checked and analysed in ways deemed most appropriate. Which is all well and good…

…But as several contributors have argued, users want access to more raw data (not just statistics) in readable formats so they can generate their own analyses.

Benefits of such an approach include:

• Increased transparency (summary statistics only direct the eye to where the analyst is pointing, and they can also mislead by omission. Here's a quote I never tire of: ‘Statistics’, A.E. Housman once noted, ‘are like a lamppost to a drunk: used more for support than illumination’);
• Greater relevance (open disclosure has the potential to serve a wider range of needs beyond those envisaged by gatekeepers);
• Harnessing all the talents (users can analyse, ‘mash’ and share data in any way they choose, bringing more minds to bear on the task);
• Encouraging user involvement (push= passive reception; pull= active engagement).

Some vestige of the push model may still be desirable, in the form of, for example, an annual summary of key indicators linked to the main struts of film policy, or a 'Yearbook lite'  that draws on RSU's expertise in presenting market overviews. Nonetheless, the default should surely be pull not push, as information technology suited to the task is already widely available. At the most basic level, a pull model can be operated much like the Guardian’s Data Store; all that’s needed is an online platform and a willing community of users.

There are challenges, and they should not be underestimated. For one thing, the RSU cannot unilaterally decide to make its data holdings freely available. It is bound by commercial licenses that impose strict conditions on disclosure to third parties.  And in the case of UK production data generated through UKFC tracking and certification records, the publication of individual film budgets is currently prohibited.

But this is where a public-private partnership approach could yield genuine benefits, by involving trade associations, public agencies and the main commercial data providers in a thoroughgoing conversation about how to liberate data for mutual gain. That really would be a radical development.

While we’re at it, let’s not confine this partnership approach to the UK. Existing networks have a role to play, notably the European Film Agency Research Network coordinated by the European Audiovisual Observatory, which brings together the research interests of public bodies across the continent. Europe is certainly a key market for UK film and television, as a paper authored by the Observatory for the BSAC conference makes clear (‘The Importance of the European Market for the UK Film and Television Industry’). But just as significant in the present context is the fact that European agencies face common data acquisition challenges. In the search for UK-based public-private solutions, there’s good reason to remain attentive to creative thinking wherever it hails from, and to collaborate across borders wherever the common good can be served.  

How to bring this series of posts to a close? We’ve covered such a wide terrain. Let’s follow up Housman’s quote with another inebriated fellow, who’s looking for his house keys under a lamppost. A policeman comes over to ask what he’s doing.

“I’m looking for my keys,” the drunk says. He points across the road: “I lost them over there”.

The policeman looks puzzled. “Then why are you looking for them all the way over here?”

“Well obviously,” the man slurs matter-of-factly, “because the light’s much better.”

This drunken encounter is a reminder that doing something for convenience, rather than because it’s the best course of action, can have certain logic; and that extends to film research provision. But there really is no point in simply going through the motions, especially when public money is at stake. In straitened times the temptation is to become fixated on means (or rather, the lack thereof), yet it’s ends that really count.

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.

In their joint contribution, Prof. Paul McDonald and Nigel Culkin (University of Portsmouth and University of Hertfordshire, respectively) unpack the question of what we need to know, to consider why such knowledge is necessary and how it can best be acquired and communicated for the common good.

One glaring omission in the existing data record they highlight is the absence of readily available information on the home entertainment market (DVD, Blu-ray and online platforms). Aside from aggregated data on the retail and rental markets (published by the British Video Association and reproduced in the UKFC Statistical Yearbook), title-by-title numbers are unavailable except to subscribers of commercial services (e.g. The Official Charts Company).

Yet as Paul and Nigel make clear, anyone seeking to understand the shape of the UK film market, and changing patterns of consumption over time, needs such information. (The UK is not alone in this; even in the US, where box office figures are ubiquitous and freely accessible, home entertainment data are restricted to subscription-based services).

In a related vein, Phil Wickham (The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture) sees quantitative film research as essential for broadening our understanding of the historical context within which films are made and consumed, as well as for holding the delivery of public policy to account (in the spirit of the Cabinet Office’s current transparency drive).

Turning to Paul and Nigel’s question of how such data should be made available, Phil makes the case for reinstating the BFI’s information service research function, drawing upon their expertise in analysing and interpreting data for different users, as in the days of the BFI Film and Television Handbook.

But as Nick Redfern points out, responsibility for making data readily available lies not only with public bodies. Nick argues forcefully that trade associations could do more to open up good quality data to the wider research community, and in so doing serve their members’ interests through wider promotion of sector-specific market intelligence.

David Steele draws on his experience as a former Head of Research and Statistics at the UK Film Council in sketching out the wider research constituency and its needs. He reminds us that government requires ready access to authoritative and timely data for its own internal purposes, and also in answer to Parliamentary scrutiny (although as Keynes observed, evidence and political expediency often make unwelcome bedfellows).

On a different tack, and lest we get too enthralled by hard numbers, Eddie Dyja, a former editor of the BFI Film and Television Handbook, cautions against over-reliance on statistics. There are indeed limits to what numbers can tell us, even with unfettered access to our data wish list; which is perhaps another argument in support of Phil Wickham’s call for informed analysis of publicly-available statistics (which in turn is part of the wider debate about the status of expert opinion in the 24/7, self-service information age).

Paul McDonald and Nigel Culkin also touch on the industry’s ambivalent attitude to film education, which links neatly to Cary Bazalgette’s detailed contribution on improving the standard of evidence gathered about publicly- (and industry-) funded education initiatives.

I make no apologies for including Cary's contribution in full here, even though at 2,000 words it could readily stand alone. While most contributors have fixed on the question of what we need to know about the film industry and audiences, Cary’s piece casts light on those other areas of public policy, like film education provision, with equal claim to inclusion in decisions about what kind of public sector research is needed in future.

Once again, my thanks to all the contributors: 

 

Prof. Paul McDonald, Professor of Cinema, University of Portsmouth and
Nigel Culkin, Chair of the Film Industry Research Group (FiRG), University of Hertfordshire

“‘WHAT DO WE NEED TO KNOW?’ is a vital question directed at the types of knowledge judged to be required to serve certain purposes. But this is a query that invites at least two other questions. ‘WHY DO WE NEED TO KNOW?’: for what reasons do we need evidence on the film industry? And as such evidence can only serve its purposes if it is readily available, then there follows a question of access – ‘HOW CAN WE GET TO KNOW?’

‘WHAT DO WE NEED TO KNOW?’
Contributors to the blog have provided some answers and acknowledged current deficiencies in data collection and limitations e.g. ignoring productions below £500k.

Approaching this question from academia, when students learn about the shape of the UK’s film market, they need to understand the impact that home video has had on film consumption in the UK since the 1970s. We therefore find it incredibly frustrating with the lack of availability of The Official Charts Company data [TOCC is a commercial provider of UK DVD and Blu-ray sales data]. This situation obstructs detailed analysis on the volume and value of home entertainment apart from broad aggregate figures for the whole market.

‘WHY DO WE NEED TO KNOW?’: the public interest and value argument is a good one. Film is one of the leading forms of cultural expression and as such touches the everyday lives of the public in direct and immediate ways. For that reason potentially all members of the public have an interest in the industry and market of film. What films are produced, why are they produced, how do films get to audiences and, in turn, how do some not get to audiences? These are all questions that inform understanding of modern cultural life in Britain and as such are basic issues in film education. Such questions can only effectively be addressed with a solid evidence base.

(Just an aside. Given that the film industry itself has had to fight so hard to defend its corner against attack from external bodies, it never fails to strike us as bizarre and self-defeating that the business has chosen to repeatedly take an antagonistic stance towards film education - witness recent nonsense from Jeremy Thomas. It’s strange that some film business executives believe the stuff they produce is unworthy of study. Film education is not about vocational skills training for a job market that is already over supplied. It is about stimulating a deep engagement and appreciation of the medium. As film loses ground to other competing media in the attention economy, surely education directed at nurturing an enthusiastic connection with, and knowledge about, film is something to be embraced rather than rejected? Hey, who knows, if the interest is there, then maybe those students will be the very audience for your film? But anyway, that is an argument for another day).

‘HOW CAN WE GET TO KNOW?’: the BFI’s annual handbook grew to become a great resource for data but was considerably surpassed by the UKFC’s Statistical Yearbooks, which in their own way matured over time. The Research and Statistics Unit at the UKFC not only produced the yearbooks but also commissioned numerous reports, and provided a service to users across industry, government and academia, which is universally recognised.

We might question the reliability and coverage of some aspects the data, but this should not distract from the major gain which the RSU brought of providing a publicly accessible resource which made information on the film industry both OPENLY and FREELY available. It is therefore with deep regret that the coalition government’s closure of the UKFC means that future access to the historical data accumulated over the ten years of the Council is in no way assured and that there appears to be no immediate plans for supporting a unit to continue that service.

High cost, commercially produced data and reporting restricts access to knowledge about film. The ‘publicness’ of cinema should mean that a publicly funded agency be charged with making data and analysis on the film business freely available. Will the BFI have the funding and resources to do that? We strongly suspect not.”

 

Phil Wickham, Curator, The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture; former contributor to the BFI Film and TV Handbook

“I think that it is essential that there is access to data on the British film industry, not just for the industry and its organisations but also for those that study film or indeed just take an interest in film culture.

For many years I was involved in collating statistics for the BFI Film and TV Handbook, a publication that hopefully enabled the public to understand how the industry worked and gave a snapshot of screen culture. This data clarified trends and aided arguments about investment, and comparisons with other nations, as well as giving an insight into audience responses, whether that be cinemagoing in general or about particular film titles.

Over the past decade the UK Film Council took charge of this information gathering and its publication. Now that the UKFC will be no more it makes obvious sense for this research function to return to the BFI’s information service – although it is uncertain whether cuts being made to the BFI National Library would make this impossible.

Certainly someone needs to take up the task – we need this information to make the industry and its bodies accountable, to take the temperature of film culture, and to develop some sense of film history.

I now work at the University of Exeter, as Curator of The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture. Our students use the collections we hold to link films to the contexts in which they were made.

Statistics are a vital piece in the jigsaw of evidence that creates good research – knowing that this cult film actually only made x amount of money on its original release; discovering the extent of the fall of cinemagoing in the 1950s, or the revival in cinema screen numbers in the multiplex revolution in the early 1990s; allow us to know the real facts of the relationship between producer and consumer in cinema. Equally, having up to date and reliable data from the past year allows us all to engage with cinema as a medium that still matters.

It is vital that this data is open and available- and that interpretations are made by those that understand what it means and can present it to the world for others to query and assess. We are supposed to be living in an information age but too often data like this has become obscured under the auspices of commercial confidentiality. The public bought the tickets and should know how much a film made and how much it cost, for example – that doesn’t make it a good or a bad film but it is an integral part of its existence.”

 

Dr Nick Redfern, academic and author of the Research into Film blog

“I guess that what I would like to see are three things:

1. A continuing commitment by the newly constituted BFI to producing statistical summaries in line with the past efforts of the UKFC. As some of the activities of the new BFI will be publicly funded there will have to be some requirement for collecting data on the effectiveness of this spending, but the UKFC went beyond this to provide much more information on the film industry in general, and made it freely available. This needs to continue.

2. The quality of information provided by film industry bodies has historically been very poor - it is often limited in scope, out of date, and reflects a lack of attention to detail (perhaps even an abdication of a responsibility given the work of the UKFC in this area). The Film Distributors’ Association and the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association are the main culprits here - they just don't seem to want to make any effort at all and I don't think they can be taken as credible lobbyists for the industry until this is resolved. Every economics textbook will tell that information is the most important commodity in an industry, but no one at the CEA or FDA has noticed this. Perhaps the UKFC was too successful and the industry sees no need to reproduce what it gets from the taxpayer.

The British film industry needs a boot up its backside in general (the government is simply too nice to the industry), but it could do with an extra hard kick here. I would love to know how the FDA and the CEA see their role as providers of information to the industry.

There is an opportunity for a commercial company to steal a march on everyone here - if someone like Box Office Mojo or The Numbers would come in and give us the same depth of data for the UK that we get for Hollywood that would be great.

Daily box office reports for the UK would be a wonderful thing to play with. Why do the reports of box office data have to be limited to the top 15 or top 10? Why can't we have the box office reports for all films on release? We have this information for Hollywood from Box Office Mojo, The Numbers, Variety, etc. We don't have research on the British film industry to compare with that produced by (for example) Andy De Vany and WD Walls on Hollywood (save for John Sedgwick), and this is largely because good quality data is not as available at a reasonable, or no, cost.

3. I would like to see more thought given to what statistics are used to describe the industry. I have doubts about the use of the weekend box office gross as a means of ranking films - the weekend gross was never intended to fulfil this role, and the press generated by big numbers with the move to wide releases in the 1970s should not have been allowed dictate how the industry operates. This represents the triumph of marketing over good sense. I would love to see the daily number of tickets sold for a film rather than gross to see if people really do attend the cinema more during the week than the weekend in the UK. I think this would be more informative of the true state of the British film industry than hearing about X millions of pounds grossed.

Overall, I think the problem is one of accessing data (rather than statistical summaries) so that people who are interested in this area can tease out the important facts and tell everyone else. It needs to be determined what we want to know, who is going to provide this data, and how much it is going to cost - you know, the basics. The BFI needs to pick up the baton from the UKFC, but it cannot be left to public bodies alone.”

 

David Steele, former Head of Research & Statistics Unit, UK Film Council

“What type of information on UK film should be collected? Two points of reference: the Film Policy Review Group (1998) made a specific plea for information about the market performance of British films. They found this information hard to come by in the pre-UK Film Council days. How could they judge the success or challenges of the British film industry without it?

Second, the types of enquiries received from 2001-2011 by the Research and Statistics Unit of the UK Film Council, enquiries about the numbers of British films, their box office here and overseas, how they performed on video, their audiences on TV, their profitability, and all sorts of variants of these questions. Films by budget size and genre, whether they were co-productions or not, who the directors were. And so on.

Where do these enquiries come from? From producers, distributors, prospective film financiers, market researchers, academics, consultants. Mostly small and medium sized British companies or the UK subsidiaries of overseas independents handling British films. Not, by and large, the US studios, because they have their own information systems.

Often enquiries come from central government, from the DCMS itself, on behalf of various Secretaries of State. Statistics for press releases, ministerial speeches, policy papers, answers to Parliamentary Questions.

This makes it particularly odd that no provision has been made (at the time of writing) for research and statistics in the future UK film structure. How will the Secretary of State answer his (or her) PQs in the future? When he/she wants to know how well British films have done in Germany or South America or the USA, how will he/she find out? When DCMS wants to evaluate UK film policy, from where will it get its basic data? To say “the BFI” misses the point, because the gathering of information requires funding and funding is key.

There are two matters of policy here. One relates to the fragmentation of the UK industry. If the UK had one or two dominant studio-scale companies, they would address many of the industry’s information needs. They would have the volume and resources to do so. But the UK industry is a SME industry. It could conceivably band together to fund some sort of central statistical service, but who would care to try to organise that? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of relevant companies, covering several sub-sectors (production, facilities, VFX, distribution, exhibition) organised in their own trade associations, some of which are challenged to fund their own activities. Yet, if the sector is to know how it is performing as an industry, it needs collective data. If there is to be any sort of strategic planning as an industry (and surely we need this, given the UK’s present dire economic state) there has to be information on which to plan.

Second, there is the public interest in information about British film. Not only so that school and university students can answer their essay questions, but so there can be a public discussion about film policy and the impact it has. One thing we know: policy changes. We’ve seen the rise and fall of the UK Film Council, the replacement of one sort of tax relief with another, the change in the definition of a British film, tighter European rules. If policy is to be assessed on the basis of results, we need data. And who is, or should be, the guardian of this public interest? We know the answer. Those who spend their days commuting between Cockspur Street and the Houses of Parliament. It is to be hoped they realise what they need to do before the day when they ask DCMS officials for the latest stats on xyz and are told “I’m sorry Minister, but we don’t collect that information any more.”

 

Eddie Dyja, Freelance writer; former editor of the BFI Film & TV Handbook

“What went missing post-Handbook was a list of all the UK titles and co-productions that made up the overall figures of film production (e.g. 115 films were produced in the UK). The Handbook also followed this through by tracking what happened to all these films over a period of time. I always thought that served as a useful gauge of the health of the UK film industry rather than concentrating on the top 20 films. The problem is about distribution and the fact that the majority of UK films are low budget and would do better on TV than on the cinema circuit.

There is an argument that stats don't actually give a full picture. For example, in the Noughties the top UK films at the UK Box Office didn't get a look in when it came to the Academy Award season and yet the press still somehow use those awards to celebrate British talent.

It raises another interesting question: who, if anyone, are the custodians of UK film culture? (Not film culture in the UK, but UK film culture?).

In the end I think the cinema experience is a matter of personal taste and preference. I'm not sure you can always quantify that experience.”

 

Cary Bazalgette, Chair of the Media Education Association and  former Head of Education, BFI. This contribution has been made in a private capacity

“What do we need to know about film education?

It is common in the world of arts and culture institutions for educational activity to be low status and poorly understood by managers. With some notable exceptions, especially in recent years, there is a natural default position amongst the senior management teams of cultural institutions that the benefits of their particular art form are obvious to all. They will therefore assume that the role of their education departments need only be to ensure that children and young people are exposed to the art form and it will start to work its magic.

There is of course some truth in this. Every practitioner and every enthusiast can point to the moment when they first encountered the art form they now love, and describe how it changed their life from then on. Many will also have horror stories of how their own or other people’s children have been put off that art form by bad teaching.

But in a culture where there will be increasingly bitter fights over every pound of public spending, we need to be sure that if any taxpayers’ money is to be spent on educational work by cultural institutions, it is spent to ensure that children and young people really are benefiting.

This is not new, of course. We have had more than a decade of New Labour’s target-setting and bean counting bureaucracy, which essentially meant spending as little as possible on gathering very simple data to provide “headline” results. To take a current example, the UKFC’s education strategy initiative is trying to gather evidence from teachers using low-cost tick-box questionnaires of this type:

In this project, did any of the young people utilise new skills or display aptitudes/abilities they hadn’t previously?
•    Yes
•    No
Please give details (e.g. teacher/educator/youth worker feedback).

Civil servants (equally ignorant of what educational research can and cannot deliver, and what it can cost to gather robust data) seem to be content to receive the kind of numeric information that can be spun out of responses to this kind of question. If just ten teachers answer it and eight of them tick “yes”, it can be claimed that thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been well spent because 80% of teachers say that their pupils are now using new skills or displaying different attitudes and abilities as a result of a film education initiative.

It is understandable that cultural institutions try to rely on this kind of thing to justify what they have funded, because proper educational research is extremely expensive. To address the question that the example given above is trying to get answers to, the following would be the minimum tasks we’d have to undertake in order to claim that we were even trying to provide realistic and reliable information about the differences that a film education initiative had made to pupils’ learning and abilities:

1. We’d have to establish what benefits we really wanted to look at. There is a big difference between claiming that film education simply supports other more traditional forms of learning, or improves things like behaviour and motivation, and claiming that it has intrinsic value in its own right.

The former tends to be slightly less difficult to prove – indeed, the latter is hardly subject to proof – but it runs the risk of maintaining the low cultural status of film in the education sector by keeping it marginal to the “proper” business of the curriculum. But this would have to be done before we could decide what skills, aptitudes and abilities we wanted to look at.

2. We’d have to gather baseline data on pupils’ skills, aptitudes and abilities before the project started. Skills, aptitudes and abilities are actually three quite different things and each covers an enormous spectrum. So it would make sense to identify some specific examples of each – perhaps including ones on which teachers might already be gathering data anyway – in order to get an idea of where these particular pupils were starting from.

We’d have to decide how to gather this data and whether it would be on all the pupils involved in the project, or on a sample. Educational researchers might ask for a minimum of six pupils to be selected as a focus group, to allow for a range of ability, social class, gender, ethnicity and so on. And the data might be gathered by interviews with teachers, questionnaires to teachers and/or pupils, or classroom observation. In an ideal world, researchers should use all three methods in order to triangulate their evidence.

3. We’d need to ensure that, if we were looking at the effects of more than one film education project, that the projects were comparable and the pedagogic processes used were also comparable. This is pretty much impossible to do in any scientific and objective way, so we’d have to fall back on impressionistic evidence and probably quite a lot of self-reporting: but again, if evidence can be gathered from pupils, teachers and perhaps a third party such as an external provider, some triangulation can be achieved and the addition of some classroom observation by the same researcher or research team visiting all the projects, and produce a richer picture of what went on.

4. Finally we’d have to gather follow-up data that related to the baseline evidence. But when is this best done? It is notoriously common for almost any school initiative (from repainting the corridors to reforming the curriculum) to have positive effects in the short term on pupil performance. But they are likely to fade after a few months, especially if the initiative is not sustained. So ideally we’d do both short term (immediately after the project) and long term (after six months) follow-ups in order to find out (a) whether there had been positive effects and (b) whether these were sustained in the longer term.

5. All of this work would have to be carried out by independent and experienced analysts with recent and relevant experience in educational research – not by consultants who do not necessarily have relevant expertise in film education, and certainly not by the teachers or project providers themselves. Celebratory self-evaluation is rife in the arts education world: it may have its uses (see below) but it doesn’t count as research.

It won’t be difficult to see how expensive this is and how unlikely it is that film education initiatives – for the most part, with one notable exception, under-funded in the first place – are ever going to get access to this kind of research evidence about their effectiveness unless it is built into the whole project from the start. And unless millions are spent on this type of research, so that large samples can be studied, it tends not to produce very headline-grabbing  - ie numerically impressive – results. FIFTEEN PUPILS IMPROVE GCSE RESULTS AFTER HAVING FILM EDUCATION is not going to sell papers.

So what is to be done? 

There are two reasons for trying to gather reliable data on film education initiatives: one is to provide accountability to the taxpayer, and the other is to make the case for the value of education about film.

In this respect, film education differs from education in other art forms. Even though all art forms struggle to argue for their own particular indispensability – witness the current cull of public libraries – film faces particular difficulties given its cultural status in the UK. Not only does a visit to your local multiplex not rate as highly in the cultural stakes as a visit to Tate Modern, the idea that film-viewing is merely entertainment and may indeed have dangerous effects on the young is still very much with us. We have a BBFC to guard us against the ill-effects of film and video viewing but our publishers, theatres and art galleries don’t have to get age-related certificates of suitability for their products. So it’s even harder to make the case for the value of film education in schools, than it is to argue for drama or poetry.

But would solid research evidence make any difference? An interesting case study here could be Film Club. Given £11.3 million over 3 years by the previous Government, they make spectacular claims for their success. They state that 187,000 children are now watching “quality films” every week in 6000 after-school clubs and that standards of pupil attainment are increasing as a result. Setting aside the question of how “quality films” are defined, or how the improvements in attainment have been measured, this would have to mean that all 6000 schools are achieving an average of 31 pupils every single week of the school year. Can this claim be believed?

If Film Club were following the education sector’s rule-of-thumb that 10% of the budget for any new initiative should be spent on research and evaluation, they would have spent over £1 million on backing up this claim with some serious data. That would be very exciting news for us all, and the publication of the data would represent an important coup for film education in the UK.

However, the real test of this claim will be whether Film Club receives further funding from Michael Gove’s new Department for Education to continue their work. If they do, and if their claims are neither substantiated nor challenged, we will have to acknowledge that it is pointless undertaking robust, credible and expensive research into film education: the money will be better spent on PR, because Government will respond to that more readily than they will to real evidence. Those of us who have struggled for many years to gather such evidence about the value of sustained, well-planned and well-taught film education within curriculum time in schools will just have to bite the bullet and recognise that we’re always going to be regarded as a rather sad and po-faced minority.

The inevitable result then must be some sort of compromise on how much research is done into film education, and on its nature. It could be very good news that the BFI can take back from the UKFC the remit for education about film and moving-image media, given that this remit has sat uneasily between the two institutions for the past decade. The current national strategy for film education lacks clarity of purpose and specificity of actions, and attempts awkwardly to draw together the activities of some very diverse institutions: First Light, Film Club, Film Education, the BFI and the Regional Screen Agencies. If a more sharply focused strategy could be created (which should not take long if experienced film educators could be involved), then it should include the following:

1. Simple but consistent numeric data-collection covering numbers of participants, basic demographics (most of which can be gathered from existing Ofsted data), time spent in project activity etc, and omitting any grandiose claims about “impact”. This can be done by project participants and should build a serviceable database over time which can also serve as a rule-of-thumb guide to basic value for money. At present we have no way of comparing the value of, say, a pound spent by First Light as against a pound spent by Film Education.

2. A modest programme of more intensive, qualitative research planned in partnership with a reputable university department and alongside plans for programmes of film education as part of the strategy. The BFI and the university could jointly seek research funding, a likely source being the European Commission. A selection of key initiatives or types of activity worth subjecting to this kind of research should be identified at the outset.

3. Clear and manageable plans for the dissemination of research. These have to range from simple summaries for non-specialists (such as civil servants and the media) to papers in peer-reviewed journals (including online journals) and at academic conferences, and the publication of academic books.  Stories for the media and popularising initiatives such as TV documentaries (cf The Choir) are also important but should not displace or downgrade the importance of traditional dissemination, which can automatically generate its own growth industry of film education-related websites, books, conferences and PhDs.”

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.

There was plenty of agreement among those I consulted about the types of information of greatest utility and, therefore, value. There were also understandable differences in the relative weight accorded to particular categories of knowledge, and in the reasoning behind individuals’ choices; a reminder that there is no simple answer to the question ‘what do we need to know?’ because it very much depends on where the respondent stands in relation to the industry, and the nature of their interest.

Answers to the question also depend on the direction and goals of public policy for film, as Karsten Grummitt (Dodona Research) points out in his contribution, and it may be premature to draw firm conclusions about what is needed until DCMS and the BFI have formally set out their stall (we can expect a public consultation on draft proposals in due course).

Nevertheless, the idea that some consideration of evidence is necessary for effective policymaking and implementation, as Adam Minns (Pact) argues, is surely true (a conclusion shared by the Film Policy Review Group, quoted above).

As Adam goes on to explain, the issue then becomes how best to harness and balance the respective roles of public and private sector data providers in meeting the demands of evidence-based policy. Steve Perrin (Digital Funding Partnership) is in no doubt of the benefits of public agencies working alongside commercial data providers in this regard.

Of course it’s not just public policy that needs to stay informed of the latest research findings, as the quote above from the introduction to the 1993 BFI Film and Television Handbook makes clear. Nic Wistreich (Netribution) points out that demand for hard data has always been high among diligent film professionals, particularly for business planning to attract investors. Nic introduces the idea that the wider dissemination of such information by public film agencies can serve a ‘common good’, a theme that runs through a number of other contributions.

Though not framed as such, Arvind Ethan David (Slingshot Studios) evokes the idea of the common good when he writes of the ‘informational asymmetry’ between the major Hollywood studios and just about everyone else. In this context, public agencies can perform a vital service by making market intelligence available to local industry players and policymakers- provided that all parties know how to use it.

Producer Stephen Follows (Catsnake) gives another example of the common good when he describes the value derived from research commissioned by the UK Film Council’s Distribution & Exhibition department. Stephen contends this would never have found such free expression by a private source. A number of contributors, including Paul Homer (Phoenix Cinema), Julia Vickers (BFFS) and Alison Small, point to other UK Film Council research publications (the Statistical Yearbook, UK production tracking etc.) as prime examples of service to the common good.

That’s not to suggest UK Film Council output escapes criticism. On the contrary, several contributors, including a number of those previously mentioned, suggest areas for improvement.

For example, Jon Barrenechea (Duke of York’s Picturehouse) detects certain biases in the Statistical Yearbook, and calls for greater emphasis on audience research in a striking parallel with the Film Policy Review Group’s proposal (dating back to 1998) to establish ‘a permanent audience research capability for use by the whole industry - a film industry equivalent of the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board’.

In many cases, gaps in the existing public data record fall into the category of what Donald Rumsfeld once quaintly termed ‘known unknowns’. That is, knowledge deficiencies of which we are aware. Thus, Stephen Follows cites the lamentable lack of data about first time producers and micro budget filmmaking. We understand these represent significant areas of activity (both in their likely scale and as a formative stage in career building), but they occur below the ‘industry radar’ (Nic Wistreich makes a related point when he notes the UK Film Council does not track productions budgeted under £500k).

Clive Davies-Frayne (Filmutopia) gives the lack of readily available data about return on investment (ROI) for British film projects as another example of a ‘known unknown’ that can seriously hamper investment decisions, yet there is no easy way to address this omission.

Emma Biggins (Multistory Films), speaking from direct experience, observes that first time producers are likely to encounter more ‘known unknowns’ than established players by virtue of limited access to privileged, insider data (and, given their relative inexperience, new entrants doubtless also encounter a good many ‘unknown unknowns’. Although they won’t know it, of course).

One way to tackle many of the most common ‘known unknowns’ cited by contributors is to find some way to mine the rich seams of data held by private companies, a point made most persuasively by Angus Finney. Angus argues the common good can be usefully served by more concerted data sharing by sales companies, and he claims measures can be taken to overcome objections to this on the grounds of commercial sensitivity.
 
So: the contributions reported below cover a very wide terrain. The most salient conclusion to draw is that the act of gathering, analysing and disseminating film research and statistics is too important to be ignored. If you think that sounds portentous, I can go further: the question of who does what and to what end needs urgent consideration in the next phase of film policy development.

The remainder of this post gives voice to the views of industry contributors name-checked above. A follow-up post will do likewise from the perspective of academia and the wider research community. And in a final post concluding this series I’ll attempt to draw the various threads together and offer some thoughts on future options.

My thanks to all the contributors, and please feel free to join the discussion through the comments box.


Karsten Grummitt, Managing Director, Dodona Research; author of the Black Dove blog
“The question of what types of data public agencies ought to be collecting and disseminating is really meaningless in the absence of an agreement as to the goals of the public agency. In the case of film this agreement is generally elusive because film is both a cultural product and a business, and the boundary between these two aspects is both fluid and fundamentally unclear. A cynic might suggest that the only time the two aspects truly come together is when the business asks for a cultural subsidy so that it can turn a profit.

Keeping them separate, and considering first the question of culture, it’s hard to see the need for any data collection at all. In pretty well every country worldwide, defending cultural patrimony in the film business means rigging statistics to claim every film you can as a national film. Co-productions are a well-established way to get the numbers up, and the UK Film Council got pretty inventive with the idea of culturally British or whatever it was. The market share of national films is important to film agencies, it’s their reason for being. But to the public, country of origin statistics are irrelevant: film is a responsive, not to say opportunistic, business with very short product life cycles. If audiences show a taste for films about, for example, the British monarchy, appropriate films will generally turn up to meet the demand.

Looking at the question from a business point of view, insofar as a great deal of data gathered about the film industry is gathered by private organisations (including mine), interventions by public agencies to disseminate it more widely are genuinely useful, as indeed are the data collection activities of film agencies. But it can be a rather negative kind of usefulness: one look at the numbers and it’s pretty clear that huge swathes of the film business are not a business. Investors would do well to study the data.

Whether it might be useful for public agencies to disseminate different types of data is another question. What film entrepreneurs or investors arguably most need to know (after how to judge a script) is how much money a project might make, with the favourite route to a guesstimate being the performance of comparable films. In this area, public agencies are inhibited by the blanket prohibition on revealing data relating to individual firms.

At present I would guess it is still effectively impossible to obtain, meaningfully estimate, or model data concerning the income from a single film that has enjoyed any appreciable life as a commercial entity. There are too many sources of income earned in, hopefully, too many territories. Some relevant data is available from established sources, most of it is not. Only those closely involved in the production and exploitation of the film are in a position to see the full picture and, given the state of accounting in parts of the motion picture industry, even this may be questionable. So this doesn’t seem to me an area where the state or its agencies could produce reliable data, or should tread.”


Adam Minns, director of policy, Pact
“There is absolutely a role for public agencies and/or Government to gather and publish market information – any policy or market intervention by Government should be based on a reliable evidence base, and in the film industry there are a lot of interventions! Without that evidence base, we run the risk of regulators or politicians being captured by the most powerful interest groups.
 
That doesn’t mean that bodies such as Pact don’t have an important role in this area either. Pact will commission many reports and studies over the year to inform our campaigning – on anything from exports, to the size of the production sector, through to our recent report on building a sustainable film industry. Obviously we want the data to stand up to scrutiny if we are going to persuade the regulator or Government to act on it. But equally, as a trade association, we serve the interests of independent film, television and digital media producers. We can be the first to identify trends or gaps in Government’s understanding, but our work is not a substitute for the Government or another independent body conducting its own research to establish the accuracy of our analysis, or at the very least employing someone who is comfortable with data to interrogate it.
 
What sort of data do we need in film? We thought the annual yearbook produced by the Film Council, some of it based on data from industry stakeholders, was very useful as a one-stop overview of the film sector and would welcome its continuation through an independent body or a Government department. We would have to be careful to preserve the granular understanding of the film business, though – ONS data is often too high level, for example.
 
What sort of data don’t we need? Pact does not think it is the role of the public sector to tell companies how to develop their businesses, so we would be nervous about a public body commissioning research into specific issues as part of an agenda. Nor should the public sector try to replace the industry – we don’t need public money to be spent on research that the market is providing already, particularly where that data is part of a business to business service already.”


Steve Perrin, Chief Executive, Digital Funding Partnership (UK); former Head of RSU, UK Film Council and Managing Director, Nielsen EDI
“The UK film industry may be deficient in a number of areas. However, statistics is not one of them. Web sites abound with box office data, production costs, profit estimates etc. Equally, the mainstream press have an apparent love affair with such data, using them to draw conclusions that are in the main spurious. Until now, the UK Film Council has filled the role of co-ordinating, quality controlling, commenting on and disseminating such data in a manner that is authoritative, insightful and universally accepted as a veridical picture of the industry.
 
With the imminent closure of the UKFC, it is as yet unclear where this function will reside, if indeed anywhere at all. It is thus imperative that all relevant parties, both commercial and public, seek to determine the future direction of statistical analysis and data dissemination if the UK, the third largest box office generator in the world, is not to become the only major country in the modern world without such a facility. Such a state of affairs would be highly detrimental to an industry that is worth billions to the UK economy.” 

 

Nic Wistreich, Director, Netribution; editor of The Film Finance Handbook
“Netribution has always had a steady flow of questions from people wanting to find good film data - indeed one of our most successful sections when we launched was the statistics sections as there was very little online other than the MPA yearbook. Mostly the data is for preparing business plans for films or sometimes investors trying to judge the value of a business plan. But good data also informs general understanding of the market for all sorts of people - technology providers, platforms, academics - even kids trying to convince their parents that a career in filmmaking isn't a dead-end option.

But most importantly, I think, it's a 'common good' - i.e. it's public investment into something that makes life easier for many people inside and outside the industry without prejudice. This kind of universal service not only benefits the film community, it comes with no barriers to access and is non-discriminatory. It's like the free press lists that the Scottish Arts Council used to make available to anyone via their website - by saving small arts organisations the trouble of compiling this themselves it's a kind of universal in-kind grant.

Of course it could be significantly improved. One big shortfall is failure to track production activity below £500k, not to mention short films, indie-documentary, community video and the broad range of professional production in the UK outside film and TV.

And then there's the web. Aside from any data from iTunes and the VoD services, how many British filmmakers have their work on YouTube and similar sites? How many collective views have they had? I know of British filmmakers posting work to YouTube with over 4 million views, who make a living from this, yet are completely unknown and disconnected from conventional film circles.

It would also be interesting to see more data offered raw as a CSV/XML so third parties could build apps around it.  For instance - cross referencing box office records in the UK for the last decade or more against FindAnyFilm.com or IMDB would be incredibly useful for those putting investment plans together to be able to pull together a list of the top ten grossing foreign language documentaries, or gangster films not starring Ray Winstone, or films longer than 4 hours, for instance.”


Arvind Ethan David, CEO, Slingshot Studios
“I think my starting point is that the informational asymmetry between the bulk of producers (and policy makers) on the one hand, and the Studios, is a serious impediment to both sound business strategy or policy making.   A longer post on this subject can be found here.
 
As that post starts to suggest, the problem is not just in what data is available, it’s also in what data the press, the public and the policy makers tend to fixate on – though the second is in part a function of the former. When even the minister in charge feels free to talk about BO [box office] as the key indicator of profitability without reference to costs or other revenue streams, you start to realize how bad the problem is.
 
I think the UKFC’s soon to be defunct policy unit did valuable work in collecting data, but a less good job in making it available in usable forms to the industry.  The Statistical Yearbook was fine, but what would have been more useful is raw data, available online, and searchable, sliceable, and capable of manipulation and republishing in an open govt. model.   It’s worrying that this function has been more or less lost, and whilst the industry has it in separate pots (BVA, [Rentrak] EDI, Screen, etc etc) it’s not clear who – outside the Studios – has the motivation to collate it and use it for the broader good.
 
Perhaps the BFI or PACT could negotiate a low cost ‘cottage industry’ discount to [Rentrak]’s full Flash service and the BVA lobbied to make their data more available...?
 
Even then, though, I fear a little that comparative innumeracy amongst our producers would make it of limited use to them, but at least distributors, sales agents, financiers, consultants and (hope against hope) policy framers could have access to better data.”


Stephen Follows, Producer, Catsnake
“What do we need to know?  Two things – who are we, and what do we need to improve?
 
Who Are We?
It’s easy to measure the number of large to mid-level productions as they are ‘on the radar’ of the industry.  However this ignores a huge number of small to micro budget productions in the UK.  To my knowledge the best measure of UK films is the UKFC’s annual report and the British Council’s annual Cannes book.  But these are very surface level and don’t give us the full picture.
 
It also counts productions, not personnel.  I have been asked on a number of occasions how many producers there are in the UK and I honestly have no idea!  I know how many members the New Producers’ Alliance had, how many on the Raindance lists, etc but these are sporadic, anecdotal pieces of data picked up in the course of conversations.  
 
I recognise that the problem is far from simple as defining who is a producer isn’t an easy task but we should at least have someone/some body trying.  Without a union or any qualifications needed to do the job we have no way of knowing even on what order of magnitude the number is.  The more success a producer has the easier it is to measure them (published numbers include the number of UK producers at the Cannes Producer’s Network, the number of producers supported by regional screen agencies, etc) but this only counts the producers after they’ve had some success.  How can we help producers at the start of their careers if we don’t know who they are or even how many of them there are?!
 
And if we’re going to have a system that only provides support when the producers come forward themselves then we need a much clearer system and aim to help a broader number of people.  At the moment early-stage producers create their own informal support networks by getting to know people randomly and floundering for a while.
 
The current system only tracks and helps producers who have done ‘something’ and ignores the ones that need help the most.
 
What Do We Need to Work On?
I have found Peter Buckingham’s research and analysis on film audiences fascinating and extremely helpful in my job as a producer.  An institution like the UKFC is the only place that such a body of work could have amassed and it’s very sad to think that it will stop.  I can’t see any private organisation being so supportive of such work and also so free with the findings.
 
The thing that always seemed strange to me was why his work isn’t more widely known.  Peter and the UKFC are hardly secretive about their results but still there is widespread ignorance on the issue in the independent film sector.  I’m not sure what was failing here but there exists a gap between the creation of the data / analysis and the very professionals that need to know.  It could be a problem of the UKFC not having the resources to promote it, a poor promotion strategy or producers’ unwillingness to seek out such data – I don’t know.  But I’m sure that a wider understanding of Peter Buckingham’s audience research would help improve UK films commercially.”


Paul Homer, Chief Executive, Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley
“Industry statistics, when accurate, collated and properly analysed are vital to any business in the industry.  They enable us to make informed decisions about how and where to grow our business.  How much to spend on advertising, how to best serve our customers and how we compare with industry averages.
 
The role of the Film Council in this area has, over the last few years, become indispensable.  Previously there was no one-stop shop to find the information one needed.  With the advent of the Film Council suddenly there was loads of useful data, well presented and well analysed.
 
Not only that, but crucially for an organisation of our size, this data was publicly available.  We didn’t have to rely on headline information from the far-too-expensive Screen Digest – which whilst great are an unjustifiable expense for our organisation.
 
The demise of the Film Council has been interesting, as it appears that almost all of its functions, and thus spending, have been transferred to other organisation.  The argument about saving money then is not valid here.  However what is as yet unclear is whether the vital work carried out by the stats unit will also continue.  It seems like madness for such a mature sector to suddenly rid itself of such important information.  Information without which the sector will be poorer, figuratively and literally.
 
The industry needs this data to continue to be gathered and analysed and it needs to be freely available to the industry.”


Julia Vickers, Partnerships and Development Consultant, British Federation of Film Societies
"I believe it's vital that we keep track of what's happening across all parts of the industry - with resources becoming ever more limited it's the only way to ensure there is evidenced best value for money (be it public, corporate or personal).

The inclusion of BFFS-originated data in the UKFC Statistical Yearbook's Exhibition chapter has helped to raise the profile of the UK's thriving community cinema movement. Provided we have the means to do so, we will continue to collect data about film societies and other community cinema providers through our annual survey and updates to our Community Cinema Database, to complement whatever future arrangements are made for UK film research more generally."


Alison Small, Consultant; former Senior Executive International Production, Office of the British Film Commissioner, UK Film Council
“I sometimes feel like a lone voice banging on about the importance of the information coming out of the research that UKFC puts together. The information on levels of production is the tip of the iceberg, and the ability to look at where production takes place in the UK, the companies producing those films, the budget levels and the backers is essential information to anyone looking to develop business, from regional post production facilities to well established studios in the South of England.”

[This contribution originally appeared as a comment in response to an earlier post. I’ve reproduced it, with permission, because of its relevance here]


Jon Barrenechea, General Manager, Duke of York's Picturehouse; author of the Splendor Cinema blog
“For years, the UKFC’s annual yearbook was a fascinating (if somewhat biased) insight into the UK’s film industry which went beyond the usual production-focused numbers and delved deep into the guts of what the business is made of: movies, the people who make, distribute and ultimately show them.

With the demise of the UKFC and the ‘bonfire of the quangos’, where will we get this information? How do decision makers get their information without paying exorbitant market research fees? What will the new and ‘improved’ BFI do to let us know how it’s spending lottery money?

I’ve worked as an exhibitor for the last seven years and I recently completed a Master’s degree where I researched the UK film industry for my dissertation. I have read every report, yearbook, white paper and research around the film business that has been published in the past decade. I’ve also attended quite a few international events, conferences and training courses on the continent where the UKFC Yearbook was praised for its thoroughness. The CNC in France are the only other body to produce such a comprehensive document.

There are two sides to the question- what did we need to know during the UKFC’s time, and what do we need to know now, post-UKFC? One frustration I always have had with the Yearbook is the way it merges the amount of public funding for distribution and exhibition into one category, making it almost impossible to accurately quantify the amount of money given to support either of these (very) different fields. My suspicion is that the reason was that the support for exhibition was so paltry so as to be an embarrassing figure on its own, and the combined number gave the Council a better, rounder statistic to throw around.

So, post-UKFC, what do we need? For me, understanding audiences is the beginning, middle and end. The numbers are important, of course, but they exist in a vacuum unless we understand what is the audience experience and opinion of what happens on the ground. More focus groups, surveys, polls and opinion is needed (and this can help shape public policy). Most of the research done in this area is commercial, proprietary and therefore inaccessible to most. The Arts Council published a couple of reports which delve deep into the participation and engagement of audiences in the arts, but sadly, there is no film-specific information.

So, to conclude, we need numbers, yes, but we need them to be objective and specific, and to link to what is happening on the ground, in cinemas, and some thorough analysis that links the two in a cause-effect way, so that we can both allocate public funds responsibly and so that those in decision-making positions can make informed choices.”


Clive Davies-Frayne, Managing Director, Filmutopia; author of Filmutopia's Sunday Morning Movie Blog
“I'm not sure that the kind of data that would be useful is possible to get. I remember discussing film financing with a guy in the City of London. He told me that films could get plenty of investment if they could get the return/risk figures right. So, offering a high ROI, with a less than 30% risk of failure.

One of the biggest problems in presenting a coherent business plan to investors is providing reliable data on ROI on similar projects. From my perspective: accurate figures of what returns to the producers can be expected for British movies, for the various sales opportunities and territories. So, what are the actual economics of a limited print UK theatrical distribution, in a particular genre? I have no idea at all about how that could be achieved, but I do know that the lack of open and accurate data is a hurdle that doesn't help the industry.”


Emma Biggins, Producer, Multistory Films
“The UKFC research pages were a starting point for me, and certainly gives a very broad idea of the bigger picture (excuse the pun) i.e. number of films being made each year, how many are indies, etc, (although I think the definition of an independent film is skewed). But it also spurred me on to try and find other sources of information - mostly these were actual production companies and other producers, hence why I gave the UKFC as a research reference in my blog post.

But in truth, in terms of statistics and how they and the UK Film Council website affected my decisions, their influence was minimal. As a micro-budget first-time producer the information I really wanted and needed was near impossible to find - how all these films get financed, budget information (real budgets!), sales information - (and how much revenue actually goes to the producer/production company). Statistics on indie production companies and their growth and viability based on their slates of films and the amount of equity they are maintaining in each film (if any). All this information is always well guarded, I often find myself exploring with envy, a lot of Australian film web sites. Their film industry, it's upkeep and incentives are so much more attractive and accessible.”

Angus Finney, author of The International Film Business: A Market Guide Beyond Hollywood
“I think we need some basic research done beyond just the key stats and analysis thrown up by the production sector. That said, I'd like to see what happened re the dwindling co-productions (specifically UK-EU partners), and to track that landscape in detail going forwards. For example, a change in UK-spend laws let alone a visionary move into Eurimages would throw up a plethora of interesting data if decent benchmarking exists.

The areas that need more data are in the sales, international distribution and export arena. Real figures, not just guff. Cost of reaching the market (AFM, Cannes, Berlin), cost of festival launches (from Cannes to Toronto to Rotterdam, etc), sales commission spreads, price ranges, etc. Sales companies love to say that this information is commercially sensitive (I know, I ran one), but pooling this information could be done in a productive manner without any one company being exposed or damaged.  

We need more data on what happens to vertically integrated companies who are operating and re-structuring to the new content value chain. Especially those with one foot in TV and digital content (plus music etc - think Warp), and the other in feature film.

What this would throw up is more business model data and analysis, which would attract further academic as well as practitioner insights. None of the UKFC data dug into this area in depth. We need this to understand how content production, distribution and, ultimately, revenue streams are adapting to the new user-driven, multi-platform world that arrived earlier than just yesterday.”

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.

Data collected by Nevafilm Research shows that the country has:

• More than 860 modern cinemas (about 2,430 screens, 930 of which are digital) in 330 cities, serving 76 million people. The film distribution market consists of 30 distribution companies and about 500 exhibitors;

[click to enlarge]

• Eighty two million Russians own DVD players. Six hundred thousand own Blu-ray players. One out of two residents of the country buys at least one licensed disc a year, though sales of pirated content remain four times higher. Still, Russia has 60 video distribution companies and more than 40 major video retail chains;

• 140.5 million residents whose homes are equipped for free terrestrial television. Terrestrial TV offers around 30,000 hours of programming a year—that’s 80 hours a day! Films are regularly shown on 20 national terrestrial TV channels, and popular film segments draw between 500,000 to 5 million viewers;

• 72 million non-terrestrial television subscribers. At least 30 cable and satellite television channels specialize in cinema, and are watched at least once per month by between 100,000 and 7 million viewers;

• 35 million people with broadband Internet access and 11 million cable, telecom, and satellite services subscribers with more than 30 paid or free VoD services to choose from.

Our new study, The Film Distribution Market in Russia, goes beyond simply collecting these numbers, and represents an effort to make sense of this diverse market and to help navigate its legislative and socio-economic peculiarities.

This report is no run-of-the-mill year-in-review: it’s a comprehensive collection of information you will need to know to make an educated decision about your film’s future in Russia. What type of film rights should you choose? To whom should you transfer these rights? And how much should you charge? The Film Distribution Market in Russia has the answers to all these questions.

The report will tell you, for example, the USD-RUB exchange rates for 1993, 1998, and 2008. By comparing national currency exchange rate fluctuations with the rate of inflation for the same period, you can see just how hard Russians were hit by the recent world financial crisis.

[click to enlarge]

The report will also give you an accurate picture of population dispersal across Russia’s seemingly endless territories.  You can see just how economically stratified Russia’s society really is and learn the actual effects of the demographic collapse of the 1990s.

We’ve also included detailed information about school breaks and holidays, and a list of more than 30 dates with special significance in Russians’ social life. You’ll learn the crucial differences between the New Year and “Old New Year”, Russia’s extensive winter and spring breaks, National Unity Day and the Day of Accord and Reconciliation.

We provide our own analysis of more than 20 laws regulating the audiovisual sector. We go beyond defining these laws, to describe limitations and preferential conditions placed on the sector’s players, as well as their responsibilities and privileges. We also analyze recent legislative changes and offer a sampling of professional opinions about these changes, selected from the current Russian press.

Finally, we are the only ones offering a definitive list of all major Russian film distribution market players, along with a description of each player. This list includes cinema chains; film, video, television, and Internet distribution companies; content aggregators; terrestrial and non-terrestrial television channels; video manufacturing facilities; retail chains; cable and IP television operators; websites offering VoD services, and more.

The report is written by Russian film industry specialists, based on first-hand data, so you can always be confident that the information is accurate and up-to-date. Since the report was translated into English by native English speakers, you won’t have to claw your way through every sentence.

Unfortunately, Jim was only too right to note in his blog that this kind of market information can’t be had for free. You can find out how to purchase this report at our website. However, we are always happy to talk to you about your personal needs and resources, and we can help significantly reduce your expenses by offering you specific chapters (in digital or print format). Please don’t hesitate to contact us at research@nevafilm.ru.

 

 

 

Xenia Leontyeva
Senior Analyst, Nevafilm Research
www.digitalcinema.ru

 

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.

Let’s leave aside the merits (or otherwise) of this argument for the time being. I’m more interested to know upon what basis the Minister made this judgement. Unless I missed it, the analysis didn’t appear in Maud Mansfield’s paper on the British film industry, prepared for the (then) Shadow DCMS team last year. That gave UKFC a reasonably warm pat on the back.

I’m not disputing the idea that independent filmmaking has declined in the UK. I’d simply like to know what data, models and assumptions were used to arrive at this conclusion, because (arguably) these same numbers could also tell us something useful about ‘sustainability’- which would make them ideal candidates for judging the success of film policy under the BFI. We should be told.

There’s a wider issue here, and it concerns what research and market intelligence is needed in the public domain, both to judge the success of public policy and to help tackle the ‘information asymmetry’ underlying market failure within UK film (see Angus Finney’s The International Film Business: A Market Guide Beyond Hollywood for more on this subject). Many SMEs are disadvantaged by limited access to good quality market data and analysis for business planning, so there’s scope for the public sector to add considerable value by making such information available at little or no cost.

The opportunity to ask this question afresh comes with UKFC’s imminent closure, and uncertainty over the future of its research function. There’s been no specific mention of funding to continue the work of the Research & Statistics Unit, so 2011 could be the last year we see a Statistical Yearbook. And unless Film London (for example) takes on the role of tracking UK production activity and reporting the numbers, the type of release issued yesterday by UKFC will also cease.

So while the practical decisions about public funding for film are still being taken (and while we have a chance to influence that decision making), let’s put together a wish list of the most useful and relevant information for gauging the present state and future prospects of our national industry. What do we need to know?

Over the next few weeks I’ll be soliciting the views of well-regarded industry commentators and well-placed insiders (as well as some noteworthy outsiders), with the aim of posting the widest range of views on what research and market intelligence we’d like to see freely available post-UKFC. I hope you’ll join the debate.

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):

Figure 1: Number of UK feature film productions, 2003 to 2010

Source: UK Film Council

• The relative proportions of features comprising inward investment, domestic and co-productions have remained remarkably consistent over the last few years (as Figure 2 demonstrates), with domestic features constituting six out of every ten films made in the UK.

Figure 2: Number of UK feature film productions by type, as a percentage of the total

Source: UK Film Council

• These 119 productions had a combined UK spend of £1.155bn, up from £1.071bn in 2009.
• The growth was driven by another rise in inward investment activity, while the total spend on domestic features fell from £224.4m in 2009 to £174.1m in 2010 (see Figure 3).
• For the first time since 2006, the total spend on co-productions rose, albeit from a historic low of £35.9m in 2009 to £52.0m in 2010.

Figure 3: UK spend on UK feature films (£bn), 2003 to 2010

Source: UK Film Council

• The dominance of inward investment feature spend within the UK total is illustrated in Figure 4, and 2010 saw the highest proportion of spend attributable to this category since comparable records began in 2003.

Figure 4: UK spend on UK feature film productions by type, as a percentage of the total

Source: UK Film Council

On to box office numbers, which held their own in 2010, rising 2% to £1.076 billion for the UK and Republic of Ireland. British films’ market share stood at 22.6%, including 5.5% contributed by independent British films, up from 2009's market share of 16.7% (when indie films, including Slumdog Millionaire, contributed 8.2%, a fact not mentioned in the press release).

Among other details, the press release includes the fact that 28 3D titles were released in 2010, grossing £237.4 million (a 24% market share, up from 16% in 2009).

The premium charged for 3D tickets, and ticket inflation more generally, explains why box office rose in 2010, for in truth admissions were down (although we can only compare tickets sold in the UK, as opposed to the territory total for UK and Republic of Ireland used to measure box office gross). In 2010, there were 169,249,839 admissions to UK cinemas, down 2.5% on 2009 (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Annual UK cinema admissions, 2002 to 2010

Source: CAA/Rentrak EDI/CEA

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

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).

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

Montage: French film in 2009; MPAA theatrical market statistics; FDA Yearbook; digital cinema; UK facilities sector

What a week it’s been for film business research. I'm struggling to keep up.

On Tuesday the Centre national de la cinématographie (CNC) published an overview of French film production in 2009, followed on Wednesday with news of the 2009 worldwide box office from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). 

And only yesterday the Film Distributors Association (FDA), a UK trade body, published its statistical Yearbook at a launch hosted by FDA President Lord Puttnam.

This joyous bestowal of manna from heaven is not just confined to the last seven days. The previous week saw a digital cinema update from Screen Digest, and the UK Screen Association released its study of the UK facilities sector.

A surfeit of statistics indeed, but it'd be churlish to complain. Let's loosen our belts and get stuck in, starting with the CNC report (Bilan de la production cinématographique en 2009).

The press release paints a sobering picture: production investment fell by over one quarter (26.3%) to stand at €1.1 billion in 2009, compared with €1.5 billion in 2008. And fewer films were made during the last year, declining from 240 in 2008 to 230.

Of these, fewer were big budget features, and there was a consequent decrease in average budget size, which stood at €5.1 million in 2009 compared with €5.6 million in 2008 (adjusted to counter the distorting effect of the very highest budget films in 2008). For the first time since 2002, no French majority production was budgeted over €40 million. The full report also goes into detail about investment by French broadcasters and the CNC itself, and provides an overview of co-production activity plus plenty of other telling insights.

Over the pond, the MPAA’s Theatrical Market Statistics 2009 report serves up an equally hearty portion of market intelligence, ranging across worldwide box office and admissions trends, audience demographics, screen numbers and US production levels.

Briefly:

• Global box office gross totalled $29.9 billion, an increase of 7.6% over 2008;
• The US/Canada box office hit $10.6 billion, up more than 10% year on year;
• 3D releases accounted for 11% of the US/Canada total, compared with 2% in 2008 (and this from only 20 3D releases in 2009, up from eight the year before);
• 1.4 billion cinema tickets were sold in US/Canada, rising 5.5% over 2008- the first such increase in two years. Admissions per capita also increased to 4.3 in 2009. According to the press release, ‘sales were fuelled by repeated visits to the cinema by frequent moviegoers – those who go to the movies once a month or more and who make up only 10% of the population – who bought half of all tickets sold in 2009’;
• Worldwide there were around 150,000 screens, and 11% of these (16,000) are digital (more on this later);
• There were 6,039 cinema sites in the US, and Megaplexes (with 16 or more screens), which account for 29% of all screens, saw strongest growth in 2009. Almost half (46%) of all screens are now located in Multiplexes (8-15 screens), and single screen venues represent just 4% of the total.
• The production of US films has declined over the last three years, and in 2009 the number released in the US decreased 12%, the first such decline since 2003. The press release attributes this to all manner of recent trials and tribulations including, ‘labor issues affecting the industry in 2007-08, the recession and the challenges to investment recovery due to rampant content theft, and the decline in DVD sales.’

Check out the full report (a free PDF download) for further detail and some eye-catching time series charts.

Lord Puttnam’s address at the launch of the FDA’s Yearbook made much of the opportunities for new distribution models afforded by digital media and social networking. The Yearbook itself is available on request from the FDA, and according to Stuart Kemp, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, it contains some ‘mouth watering stats’, including the fact that ‘one in every five pounds spent at the UK box office was forked out on comedies last year’, and ‘one in every eight pounds was spent […] on 3D movies’.

This latter point echoes data about the growth of 3D presented by Screen Digest as part of its Cinema Intelligence service. 55% of the 16,405 digital screens worldwide are 3D capable. A Screen Digest press release describes the growth of 3D screens in 2009 as ‘nothing short of explosive, with a global growth rate of 254.5%, but this average is dwarfed by the growth rate of 614% in Western Europe’.

The release also notes tests are being conducted with 3D alternative content (e.g. 3D sports broadcasts), a subject previously covered in a Screen Digest report dedicated to alternative content (which was also addressed by Beyond Live: digital innovation in the performing arts, a study of live theatre screenings in cinemas by Hasan Bakhshi and Juan Mateos-Garcia of NESTA and Professor David Throsby).

Anyway, here’s what David Hancock, Screen Digest’s Head of Film and Cinema, had to say about the revitalising potential of digital roll out:

“The release of Avatar was the BC/AD moment for digital cinema, taking us from the prehistory of the first 10 years, characterized by research, false commercial starts, standards development and early pioneers, to the modern world of commercial cinema as it will be in the decades to come. Digital 3D, opera, theatre, music and comedy in cinemas, live 3D sport, and interactive adverts are all a part of cinema in the future; not just a place to watch movies but a multi-arts venue which can be the heart of small and large communities alike. The refreshment of cinema is firmly underway and it is now taking its place as an integral part of the digital media landscape on the one hand, and as a revitalised leisure venue on the other.”

The UK Facilities Sector: a key contributor to the film and television industries and to the UK’s creative economy, a study undertaken by Olsberg SPI and Trends Business Research on behalf of UK Screen Association, Ascent Media and the UK Film Council, shines a light on an oft overlooked part of the business- the all important facilities sector, which includes post-production, equipment hire, visual effects, graphics, transmission services, studios, outside broadcast and physical effects companies.

According to the press release, the study estimates the UK sector had an annual turnover of £2.2 billion in 2008.

Other key findings to note:

• The sector comprises 1,300 companies, employing more than 25,000 people.
• Despite this large number of companies, ‘only a very few have achieved scale in their operations’.  The sector is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises, with 99% of firms employing fewer than 250 people, and 78% employing fewer than 10.

The report also contains an obligatory ‘economic impact’ assessment for 2008, with an estimate of jobs generated by the sector (50,850), the sector's Gross Value Added (totalling £1.6 billion) and contribution to the Exchequer (£262 million, excluding VAT).

There, we made it. Here's hoping for a quiet weekend.

UK cinema admissions, January 2010

I’m guessing at this very moment there’s a pair of black tuxedo trousers awaiting service in a dry cleaners somewhere in southern California.

Inside one of the trouser pockets is a single sheet of crumpled paper, an unread acceptance speech that begins in the spirit of, ‘I’d like to thank so many people, starting with my blah blah…’, and ends something like:  ‘I'VE CONQUERED THE THIRD DIMENSION...I AM THE EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE! etc.’

Of course, James Cameron wasn’t the only runner-up at last Sunday’s Oscar® ceremony. But he’s certainly become the most talked (and written) about. Still, there’s surely consolation in knowing that Avatar has generated revenues that would bring an embarrassed flush even to the cheeks of the Goldman Sachs board (worldwide box office gross total currently stands at around $2.6 billion according to The Numbers).

By last weekend (5-7 March), Avatar had shifted nearly £89 million worth of cinema tickets in the UK. It is by far and away the largest haul in recent box office history, and a quite staggering achievement. But that doesn’t mean there’s been a bonanza in cinema admissions during the twelve weeks since the film was first released, as the latest UK admissions numbers released by the Cinema Advertising Association show. That’s because Avatar’s commercial success has been boosted by the higher ticket prices charged for digital 3D screenings.

According to the CAA figures, January saw 14,583,485 admissions, a mere 0.5% rise over the same month in 2009. The inclement weather played its part: ice and snow brought what headline writers describe as ‘travel chaos’ to much of the country. Even so, January 2010 narrowly recorded the highest admissions for the month since 2004, and Avatar generated the lion share.

Figure 1: January cinema admissions, 2002 to 2010

Source: Cinema Advertising Association/ Rentrak

By the way, it’s all change over on the Digital Cinema Media (DCM) web site. DCM (Carlton Screen Advertising, as was) is one half of the Cinema Advertising Association (along with Pearl & Dean), and they’ve recently revamped their online shop window.

Fortunately DCM has retained the bit of most interest here, UK monthly admissions data, although the section is no longer labelled as such. DCM now describes admissions as ‘impacts’, which is marketing speak for eyeballs on screen, as opposed to bums on seats in old parlance. It's a purely semantic difference because the underlying data are exactly the same.

New data: film on UK TV

On the day the BBC Trust published the BBC Executive's strategic proposals for the corporation (which represent either a radical shake-up or mere window dressing, depending on who you believe), the UK Film Council published its annual overview of film on UK television.

To be strictly accurate, the stats cover only the five terrestrial channels and not those available for free or by subscription via cable, satellite or digital platforms.

Nonetheless, the picture is an interesting one - especially given its impeccable timing.

The UK Film Council report reveals a total of 2,218 films were shown on the five main network channels in 2009, much the same figure as in 2008. Channel 4 scheduled the most (561) and BBC1 brought up the rear with 338 (see Table 1 and Figure 1, courtesy of the UK Film Council).

Just over one fifth (22%) of the total were British films (the proportion stood at 23% in 2008), and BBC 2 led the way with almost one in three films (32%) originating in the UK. That at least squares with the BBC Executive's proposal for BBC Two to 'cement its role as the principal showcase for UK films in which BBC Films has invested.'

Recent UK titles (those released theatrically in the 8 years prior to TV broadcast) accounted for 7% of all films broadcast. The proportion of recent UK films shown on the main networks has increased over the last eight years, rising from 3% in 2002. According to the UK Film Council, this

'reflects the increase in the total number of films produced in the UK over the last decade and the shortened window between theatrical and free-to-air TV broadcast for films funded by BBC Films and Film Four.'

Curiously I couldn't find any substantive reference to BBC Films in the corporation's strategy proposals (other than that previously mentioned), so I assume funding for feature production will continue at the present level (£12 million per annum). But the proposals announced today do make other references to the BBC's approach to film in future.

For one thing, the Beeb intends to reduce spending on imported programmes and films 'by 20%, capping it thereafter at no more than 2.5p in every licence fee pound.' Does that mean studio-backed and distributed UK/US inward investment features (which qualify as culturally British for the tax credit) will be exempt? I guess it depends on the definition of an import.

The BBC is planning to spend the money thus saved by investing in 'new original British content to replace the acquired programmes and films from abroad which will be significantly cut back as part of this strategy.' So perhaps BBC Films will get a boost to its budget, after all...

The strategy proposals don't just apply to programming. Under these plans, the BBC web site is facing some judicious pruning. In fact whole branches will be lopped off, including the /filmfestival page which has not been updated since 2007. And the main /film page will be shorn of 'generic content', to include instead only content 'which has featured on BBC programmes or content to which the BBC has added distinctive editorial value.'

Quite what that means in practice is anybody's guess. But if you feel moved to plead the case for more (or less) of Mark Kermode et al on the box/radio/web you have until 25 May to submit a response to the BBC Trust's consultation.

2009 box office and admissions round up: Australia, Denmark, Hungary, Romania

Screen Australia recently released its analysis of Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia data, with news that the Australian box office totalled AUS$1.09 billion in 2009, the highest on record and an increase of 16% on 2008’s haul. (The press release doesn’t give an annual admissions total).

Of the 418 films released in Australia during the year, 50 were local productions which shared 5% of the market (AUS$54.8 million). Bruce Beresford’s Mao’s Last Dancer was the top performing Australian title, grossing $15 million.

Screen Australia reports that the 34 British films on release secured 9% of the market in 2009 (AUS$98.2 million), and US films shared 83% (AUS$899.4 million).

The press release also sheds some interesting light on the way Screen Australia is developing its approach to measuring and reporting audiences for Australian film.

“Our Research Unit has been analysing case studies of films over their entire first-release life cycle”, notes Dr Ruth Harley, Screen Australia CEO.

“Kokoda, for example, which took $3.2 million at the box office in 2006, recorded approximately 316,000 admissions. The film went on to achieve in excess of 1.3 million viewings in the two and a half years from cinema release to first free-to-air television broadcast. Cinema admissions accounted for just 24 per cent of these viewings […] It’s a high priority for Screen Australia in 2010 to better understand downstream viewings as we refine a new range of measures to reflect audience engagement with Australian screen production.”

Hopefully these new measures will also factor in audiences for Australian films viewed on digital platforms, including online and mobile devices. (An aside: just imagine if a public agency had the courage to publish data about the incidence of file sharing of its national films, not as an indicator of illegal or unethical activity but as another metric for audience engagement...)

Back to reality, and over in Denmark cinema admissions increased slightly in 2009, rising from 13.1 million in 2008 to 13.9 million. Disappointingly, Danish films achieved a market share of 17% (2.4 million admissions), the lowest level since 2000 and a fall from 33% in 2008 (when local blockbuster Flame and Citron performed strongly). The top performing Danish title, Anders Matthesen’s What Goes Around, garnered 402,000 admissions, while Lars von Trier’s Antichrist mustered only 83,000 (was it something the fox said?).

Hungary saw cinema admissions total 9.3 million in 2009, pretty much on a par with 2008, and Hungarian films shared around 10% of ticket sales. Meanwhile box office gross for the year rose by just over 10%, although no total is given in the report carried by Film New Europe.

Another report by Film New Europe puts Romanian admissions at 4.6 million in 2009, a rise of 43% on the previous year. Box office gross totalled 78.2 million RON, up by 60% on 2008’s total. No market share for local films is given.

All these numbers, and those of previous posts, are summarised in the table below.

Table 1: Selected 2009 admissions, box office gross and national market shares

Numbers above 1 have been rounded to nearest whole integer
* UK and Republic of Ireland box office gross = £1.05 billion.
** This total is for all UK-qualifying films, including inward investment features made with US studio involvement. UK films produced independently of US studios shared 8.5% of the home market.

'-' data unavailable

Sources:
Screen Australia, China Film Group, CNC, Cinetel, Cineuropa.org, Film New Europe, Nielsen EDI, UK Film Council, Adams Media Research.

UK film production in 2009, and US tax incentives in passing

In addition to publication last week of the UK’s annual box office and admissions totals, the UK Film Council released a slew of production data for 2009.

The press release accompanying the report (Film production in the UK – Full Year 2009 Report) carries the words ‘mixed’ and ‘fortunes’ in the title, which seems about right.

For while the UK benefited from £752.7 million of inward investment feature spend in 2009, pushing total spend for the year to £956.9 million (up 56% on 2008’s total), domestic feature and co-production activity was far less impressive.

The production of domestic features contributed £169.2 million to the total spend for the year, down from £207.2 million in 2008 (Figure 1). Meanwhile spend on UK co-productions amounted to a miserly £35 million, barely enough to pay for half an hour of Avatar’s runtime. UK 'co-producers', a species under threat, must surely know how the Na’vi feel.

Figure 1: UK spend of features produced in the UK, 2003 - 2009, £ millions

Source: UK Film Council

The overall number of UK productions has been remarkably consistent over the last three years. 125 features with budgets over £500k were made in 2009, compared with 126 in 2008 and 127 in 2007. But it’s a far cry from the heady days on 2003, when cameras rolled on 196 productions, over half of which were co-productions (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Number of features produced in the UK, 2003 - 2009

Source: UK Film Council

Although the number of co-productions held steady at 22 in 2009, the level remains at a historic low, ‘a function of the one flaw in the otherwise excellent film tax credit’, according to the UK Film Council, ‘which disincentivises UK participation in co-productions by focusing tax relief on production spend made on the ground in the UK.’

This idea of the unintended (and unwelcome) consequences of fiscal policy also surfaces in a ‘Special Report’ on US movie production incentives (MPIs) issued earlier this month by the Tax Foundation, a US-based ‘nonpartisan educational organization’.

The Foundation favours broad-based, low level taxation and is firmly opposed to tax credits and incentives for particular industries. So the report’s indictment of MPIs (described in the title as ‘Blockbuster Support for Lackluster Policy’) is hardly surprising. ‘While broad-based tax competition often benefits consumers and spurs economic growth and development’, writes report author William Luther, ‘industry-specific tax competition transfers wealth from the many to the few. Movie production incentives are costly and fail to live up to their promises’.

For me, the more startling realisation is that MPIs are now so widespread in the US. In Europe, and in many other parts of the world where home markets are dominated by US studio product, we’re quite used to public money supporting the local industry. But I had no idea of the number of US states offering tax and other incentives for feature production. Back in 2002 only five states offered MPIs. Since then, 39 other states have joined the party (in what Luther terms the ‘arms race of incentives’), including Hollywood’s home state of California.

Interestingly enough, FilmLA has recently credited the California Film and Television Tax Credit with easing the annual rate of decline in location shoots in the state. According to numbers released last week, on-location feature film production in Los Angeles fell by 29.9% in 2009, ‘the steepest year- over-year decline since tracking began in 1993’, although production activity rose in the final quarter of the year thanks to ‘incentive-driven production’ (the film incentive scheme came on stream in July 2009). In light of data such as these, the scrabble for production dollars is only likely to intensify and MPIs are bound to figure prominently for some time to come.

2009 box office and admissions round up: Estonia, Finland, Greece and UK update

Here’s another batch of 2009 box office and admissions data reported in recent days by Cineuropa.org and Film New Europe.

The 161 titles released theatrically in Estonia clocked up 1.78 million admissions, a rise of 11% on 2008 (Ice Age 3, the top placed film of the year, sold 186,000 tickets). Local films fared less well, sharing only 2% of the market, and no Estonian picture made it into the top ten performers for the first time in seven years.

Finland saw annual admissions fall by 2.4% to 6.7 million, and Finnish films shared 15% of the local market (down from 23% in 2008). Four local titles surpassed 100,000 ticket sales:  Aleksi Mäkelä's Hellsinki (256,000 admissions), Dome Karukoski’s Forbidden Fruit (115,147 admissions) and Timo Koivusalo’s Under the North Star (101,152 admissions).

Greece followed a similar pattern to Estonia in 2009, with annual admissions rising 30% to 13.5 million, while local films’ market share fell to 12.6% (down from 19.2% the previous year). 2012 was the biggest selling film (477,500 admissions), followed by Angels and Demons (414,000) and Quantum of Solace (391,000). Bang Bang was the highest placed Greek film, pulling in 382,000 admissions.

Figures released by the UK Film Council earlier this week confirm the annual box office and admissions totals reported previously. The new report (The UK box office in 2009) also reveals UK films achieved a market share of 16.5% in 2009, down from 31.1% in 2008 (when The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! led the rankings) and the lowest share figure since 2003 (when it stood at 15.9%).

On the plus side, the UK Film Council has been good to its word by drawing a clearer distinction between the market performance of all UK-qualifying films (including those backed by US studios, like the Harry Potter franchise) and those UK films produced independently of the studios. This latter category actually saw a rise in market share in 2009, increasing from 5.7% in 2008 to 8.5% in 2009 (the average for the period 2000 to 2009 is 5.4%).

Table 1: Selected 2009 admissions, box office revenues and national market shares

Numbers above 1 have been rounded to nearest whole integer.
* UK and Republic of Ireland box office gross = £1.05 billion.
** This total is for all UK-qualifying films, including inward investment features made with US studio involvement. UK films produced independently of US studios shared 8.5% of the home market.

'-' = data unavailable

Sources:
China Film Group, CNC, Cinetel, Cineuropa.org, Film New Europe, Nielsen EDI, UK Film Council, Adams Media Research.