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Guidelines
Assessing balance: Australian points

Once the financial contributions of each co-producer are identified, you need to demonstrate to Screen Australia that your creative contribution is reasonably equivalent to your financial contribution.

Australian points is one of the ways Screen Australia assesses the creative contribution of the Australian co-producer (the other way is Australian spend – testing the proportion of expenditure on Australian element).

The 'points test' assesses the proportion of key creatives who are Australian. Key creative roles are allocated a points value in the tables below. If the person filling that role is an Australian national or permanent resident, an Australian point is ‘scored’ for that role. Note that:

  • producers do not attract points because there must be, by definition, one producer from each of the co-producing countries;
  • an individual cannot be treated as two nationalities in one application;
  • splitting of points may be approved on a case-by-case basis (for example, where each co-producing country has one writer each engaged on a television series);
  • re-voicing or narrating in the language of each co-production country will result in the points being split, ie for an animation, voice cast is allocated 3 points, so if one voice track is undertaken in Australia and one track in the co-producing country, then the project scores 1.5 in the points test; and
  • for feature films and television drama, if the film is a majority Australian co-production (ie Australian financial contribution is greater than 50 per cent), at least one of the four lead roles must be filled by an Australian national or permanent resident (ie there must be at least one point for key cast).

Different points tests apply for drama (the same test applies to both feature films and TV drama), documentaries (feature or TV) and animation (feature or TV), reflecting the differences in the key creatives or technical personnel for these different types of project. For clarity, if your film is a feature documentary, you complete the documentary points test and if your film is a feature animation, you complete the animation points test.

The tests aim to provide you with a degree of flexibility by allowing you some discretion in how the points test is structured, as follows:

  • Each test has a set number of roles that are always counted (top-line key creative roles) in Section A. You must allocate all these roles.
  • You must then select roles in Section B to make up the level of points required for the film. 
  • Section B also includes a potential point for ‘Other creative role’. If you wish to include the ‘other point’, you must demonstrate that the role in question is particularly important for the film. For example, if your film is a martial arts feature, it may be possible for you to allocate a point to the fight choreographer; or for a musical, to the musical director or choreographer. You will need to add a brief justification statement in support of your allocation of ‘Other’ in your provisional application.
  • Where you select a role for a discretionary point and we do not consider it to be a key creative role, we’ll discuss this with you but we ultimately reserve the right not to accept the allocated point.

Please note that while all the points have to be allocated to one party or the other, you do not have to fill up the test with Australians; what you are trying to do is match the percentage of Australian points with the percentage of Australian-contributed finance.

For example, if you are contributing 70% of the finance to a feature film, the Australian share of points would need to be at least 65%, or 10 points out of 15 (if you only had 9 Australian points out of 15, it would equate to 60%, which is outside the allowed 5% margin). 

We’ve created an interactive Co-production Eligibility Tool in Excel to assist with the calculation of your spend and points.

FEATURE FILMS and TV DRAMA

15 points
Section A

Writer

2

Director

2

DoP

1

Editor/Picture Editor

1

Cast (four principal roles) – NB if majority Australian co-production, at least 1 role must be filled by an Australian actor

4

Section B (select 5 of the below)

Composer

1

Costume Designer

1

Production Designer

1

Script Editor

1

Sound Designer

1

Underlying work

1

VFX Supervisor

1

Other senior key role specific to the film such as choreographer, special make-up design etc. (You will need to justify this role)

1

Total points

15

DOCUMENTARY

10 points
Section A

Writer

2

Director

2

DoP

1

Editor/Picture Editor

1

Section B (select 4 of the below)

Composer

1

Researcher

1

Narrator

1

Sound Designer, Recordist, Sound Editor or Mixer

1

Underlying work/subject matter

1

Other senior key role specific to the film such as underwater DoP, art director, VFX supervisor etc. (You will need to justify this role)

1

Total points

10

ANIMATION 3D/ 2D

13 points
Section A

Writer

2

Director/Animation Director

2

Cast

3

Key Animator

1

Storyboard Artist

1

Section B (select 4 of the below)

Editor/Picture Editor

1

Key Background Artist

1

Composer

1

Sound Designer

1

Underlying work

1

Key Model Designer

1

Voice/actors director

1

Other senior key role specific to the film such as 3D modeller, digital compositor, previs animator etc. (You will need to justify this role)

1

Total point

13

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