We're under the Arts Council under the Minister for the Arts. The Minister for the Arts and the Minister for Industrial Development have great difficulty in agreeing over who should fund what in terms of film.
We probably do not have a large enough industry here to ably support the independent filmmaker to move in and out. Much of the industry is based on full-time jobs here, institutionalised jobs.
We discovered that there was a great deal of keen interest in America for the kinds of products that we thought could be produced here. Also there was an interest in Britain for Australian material generally.
We are not yet at the point where our size, our being the drama industry, is sufficient to support full time professional crews, and that is very very important.
We are here predominantly to support independent filmmakers and their needs. We are also here to assist people actually in their production, non-commercial people in their production.
They will open up to what I would call corporate broadcastings where the non-commercial material will have air time. There's no possibility of that here right now, none.
The worst thing that you can do in terms of bringing a product up to the market is to be two days after someone else has brought a similar product to the international market-It's dead.
The more commercial work that is happening, the more people are operating cameras and are setting up studio lights, the greater the opportunity for drama production to happen.
Most independent filmmakers in Britain and North America work for commercial crews and then have their own projects when they've got enough money saved up to do so.
It will never be Hollywood, the same way people think it should be. I think it will grow and it will be healthy and it will expand into more than one production house.
You have always had individual directors who begin in the advertising or commercial world, but they are probably exceptions rather than the traditional pattern.
The tensions are always based on financial resources. Something like film is very problematic because it is viewed as an art form and also as an industry with a pure commercial base.
The State Film Authority will be there for film as industry only, as is the case in all the other states, except Victoria. Victoria is moving more now into supporting non-commercial films.
The existing documentary makers still believe that it is impossible to produce drama material in this State, otherwise they would be doing it, they say.
I think the long-term effect of video on cinema is good in that what we are now getting up there on the screen is of superior quality. Videos are just so much more sensitive to the world.
