CHECK THIS OUT: ( From the guy who's running the London Screenwriter's Festival, you know, the one that costs more than a return ticket to Morocco... that guy...
The best thing about this is that it made an article. Low Budget film-making I thought was reality... tell you what Mr Screenwriter Festival, make me a promise that 25% of your profits from ticket sales to your event WILL be RE-INVESTED in British film before I WILL BELIEVE YOU....
UK film-makers 'frittering away millions'British producers warned they must learn to make movies on the cheap if the domestic industry is to survive
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The British film industry is haemorrhaging so much money that it will not survive unless it changes its ways. Vast sums are being frittered away on needless production costs and most films recoup only a fraction of their multimillion-pound budgets.
This warning comes from Chris Jones, film-maker and head of the London Screenwriters' Festival, Europe's biggest gathering of writers, at which the issue will be debated later this month.
Speaking to the Observer, Jones gave the example of drivers who are paid to sit in Mercedes cars all day, waiting to take stars home. A single driver costs hundreds of pounds a day. "Can we really afford that?" said Jones.
Rushing half-baked scripts into production, then fixing problems during the shoot or at the editing stage, also took its toll on production costs, Jones warned. So did agents who demanded that their actors got first-class travel, their own makeup artist and a special diet.
Film companies are cautious about releasing profit figures, insisting that DVDs and other "platforms" boost box-office figures, but Jones noted that, according to the 2010 Box Office Mojo charts, Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me was produced at a cost of $8m (£5.05m) and only made $2.6m, while Andrea Arnold's $3m Fish Tank recouped $1.99m worldwide.
"For every cinema ticket sold, 75% goes to the cinema, so what goes back to the film-makers is usually a quarter of the box-office figure," said Jones. "If you're running a business, making multimillion-pound productions, you cannot afford routinely to lose money."
He added that the British film industry could not continue to spend millions of pounds making films that, with the latest technology, should no longer cost more than £500,000. "In 2010 there's been a tidal wave of new technology – particularly the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, a camera that costs £1,500 and yields images like 35mm film [used in cinemas]. The digital equivalent would have cost £100,000 only a year ago. You don't need expensive cameras any more."
Monsters, a film about aliens, looks like a big-budget movie, but it was shot on a small budget – believed to be less than $100,000 – with a team of five rather than hundreds. The producer of Monsters, Allan Niblo, said: "People are not inventive enough."
There was an assumption in Britain that films could not be made for less than £4m, he added, noting that 2008 US indie hit In Search of a Midnight Kiss cost very little but made £260,000 in the UK alone. Jones said: "Monsters shows that you don't need big stars or big cameras… [to make] a commercial film."
He believes the culture of excessive spending has been encouraged by the UK Film Council, the grant body that now faces the axe, since it does not support films costing less than £500,000.
David Wilkinson, a leading film distributor, believes that overspending is built into films, with producers' salaries tending to be based on a percentage of the budget as well as a percentage of the profits. "The larger the budget, the larger their salary," he said.
He recalled two actors complaining to him about the "measly" £75,000 they had each received for a six-week shoot. "The film industry is out of control… Unless we cut our cloth accordingly, we're not going to have a film industry."
Wilkinson cited The Bridge of San Luis Rey, starring Kathy Bates and Robert de Niro. "It got British tax money and was a British production made for $24m." Mojo figures show that it made only $1.8m worldwide.
Others disagreed. Producer Nik Powell, whose films include Ladies in Lavender, said British producers were working to incredibly tight budgets "and not a penny is wasted".
The UK Film Council said that of the £15m it invested in film last year it had recouped £4.9m, a "good return", it said, considering that it was investing in up-and-coming talent.
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