# 2 Have ageing Baby Boomer Bureaucrats lost the plot?

Have ageing Baby Boomer Bureaucrats lost the plot?

As an ageing Baby Boomer myself I can ask this question without seeming ageist.

Are Baby Boomer Bureaucrats, holding the reins of power, the proverbial Albatross around the necks of younger generation screen story-tellers who grew up not with celluloid, Steenbecks and Moviolas but with digital cameras, home edit suites, My Space and YouTube?

Readers younger than 30 may need to ask Dr Google what a ‘Steenbeck’ and a ‘Moviola’ is (was!) and acquaint themselves with quaint terms like ‘splice’ and ‘trim bin.’ The times they are a changing. Fast. Are the bureaucratic structures within which young filmmakers must work keeping up?

Ageing Baby Boomer Bureaucrats will not willingly relinquish their white-knuckle grip on the reins of power. Younger generation filmmakers (and bureaucrats) will have to wrest the reins of power from them/us. We will put up one hell of a fight but if you think strategically, Gen X-ers and Y-ers,  you can beat us at our own game – as younger generations confronted by recalcitrant old men (though these days just as likely to be women!) have since time immemorial.

So, what do we ageing Baby Boomers have anything to offer? Experience?

A quick personal detour:

After 44 years of making films I was informed by Screen NSW last year that I was not qualified, in accordance with ‘the guidelines’ to make an application for first draft screenplay funding. I had not made a feature film in the past ten years. Time to put me out to pasture!

My attempts to argue, using common sense and logic, that this omission on my part had no bearing on my ability (or lack thereof) to write a first draft screenplay, got me nowhere. Guidelines are not a ‘guide’ to Screen NSW bureaucrats. They are, like the Ten Commandments, written in stone.

Six months later I received from Screen NSW a letter that included this:

“Recently, the guidelines were updated and a change was made to the eligibility requirements to enable filmmakers to demonstrate up to date market knowledge and relationships other than contemporary credits. Should you wish to make applications in future, you may be able to demonstrate up to date market knowledge and relationships to support your application.”

My questions for Screen NSW were these:

“What  has ‘up to date market knowledge and relationships’ got to do with the development of a first draft screenplay?”

and

“Is the assumption that the ‘market’ will recognize a brilliant idea at conceptual stage, before a first draft has been written borne out by history?”

I have not yet received an answer to these questions.

OK, so maybe its time for me to be put out to pasture but questions arise.

With some rare exceptions (usually in the case of a best-selling book or a sequel to a previous box office hit) the ‘market’ play no role at all in the process of script development prior to the completion of a first draft.

If anyone reading this can think of an exception to this can you please let me know of one instance, this past 20 years, in which the ‘market’ played a significant role in the development of a first draft Australian screenplay – be it written by an experienced screenwriter or a novice?

No, the ‘market’ is waiting for, longing for, high quality screenplays to come its way – the kind of screenplays it is, in part, Screen NSW’s role to develop.

The question of how high quality screenplays come into being is a complex one (to be dealt with in another post) but if it knew what it wanted, ‘the market’ would simply come up with brilliant script ideas, employ the best screenwriters/directors/producers available, and make film after film that were either box office or ‘art house’ successes.

“Did ‘the market’ let Warwick Thornton know, before he had a first draft screenplay, that it wanted ‘Samson and Delilah’?”

 No.

There is a long list of Australian films that ‘the market’ expressed no interest in, but which were made because filmmakers (screenwriters, directors and producers) kept writing draft after draft, banging on doors, refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer.

The development of high quality films is not driven by what ‘the market’ thinks it wants but by passionate filmmakers with a bee in their bonnet about a particular film/TV/screen project which, in the fullness of time, when the planets align, ‘the market’ thinks it may want.  

‘Thinks’ is the operative word. ‘The market’ doesn’t know. It is making the best  and most informed guess it can. And so too are we screenwriters, other filmmakers and senior bureaucrats whose job it is to greenlight these projects. We are all in this guessing game together.

The modus operandi of our profession, the craft and art form in which we have chosen to work, is more akin to buying a ticket in the lottery than deciding, on the basis of market research, that the story born of our passion is guaranteed to puts bums on seats and/or  garner awards.

The development process, particularly before there is even a first draft, is hit and miss. Many a promising concept results in a lackluster screenplay and many a concept or idea that does not look all that promising at the outset results in either a box office hit or a film that Australia can be proud of, and one which becomes part of our cultural heritage.

Would a pre-first draft synopsis of ‘Samson and Delilah’, by a filmmaker who had never made a feature film before, have passed Screen NSW’s “up to date market knowledge and relationships” test?

Thinking in terms of ‘the market’ at the conceptual stage of script development is not only a bad idea because it is based on the erroneous presumption that  ‘the market’ knows what it wants; it is also a bad idea because it encourages novice screenwriters to develop what they think ‘the market’ wants or, even worse, what they think Screen NSW thinks ‘the market’ wants.

Consider ‘viral videos’, seen by 10s of millions of viewers on You Tube. ‘The market’ doesn’t declare a need for any of these videos. The makers of them have an idea and most often execute it with a minimal budget and wait to see how it fares in the You Tube marketplace.

Does this not provide some clue as to how to develop the talents of young filmmakers with heads full of ideas they want to experiment with? Not with boxes that require ticks (constraints on the4imagination for the most part) but with an application process the subtext of which is:

“Impress us. Blow our minds. If you can get us to respond to your ideas with ‘wow’ we want to help you realize your screen dreams.”

Implicit in this approach would be:

“We don’t expect you to team up with ‘experienced’ filmmakers. We recognize that for the most part their experience relates to a world of filmmaking that no longer exists. However, if you can see value in teaming up with them, please feel free to do so.”

Freedom, not constraints, is what drives innovation. Rigid guidelines, as with rigid Baby Boomer Bureaucrats, stifle both the imagination and the will to innovate.

Great drama, regardless of the platform on which it is broadcast, the screen on which it is viewed, requires a great screenplay. What is required, it seems to me, is screenwriters  with projects that are risky (as a result of their originality) and that, perhaps, ‘the market’ will not want at conceptual or even first or second draft stage. If these stories for the screen are startlingly original, ‘the market’ may well want them two years down the track - when ‘the market’ has changed as a result of audiences/viewers wanting something different from whatever the latest fad is.

I remember well, when I was a film school student back in the early 70s, being told, by ‘film gurus’ of the day, that there were two kinds of films that ‘the market’ did not want – science fiction and sports films. Within a couple of years both ROCKY and STAR WARS came out and were huge box office successes.

The market does not know what it wants until a filmmaker presents it with an idea that induces a ‘wow’ response:

“Wow, this is ‘news’. I have never read a screenplay like this before.”

This requires not just film bureaucrats who can see the potential of a screenplay at its conceptual stage but who are not constrained by guidelines that insist the filmmaker team up with someone who has “up to date market knowledge and relationships”.

Screen NSW’s development policy should be encouraging screenwriters (both novice and experienced) not to look to ‘the market’ today for validation, but encouraging in them the attitude:

“The market doesn’t know that it needs my screenplay just now but the market is in for a surprise. “

Australian screen stories should aspire to being ahead of the market, not following it. Film funding body guidelines should place as few impediments as possible in the way of filmmakers positioning themselves at least on the crest of the broadcast story-telling wave; though preferably in front of the wave, leading the way.