Podcast

Creators and writers of hit film Top End Wedding on expanding IP and switching formats for their new series, Top End Bub.

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Following the global success of their debut feature film of Sundance-favourite Top End Wedding, creators and writers Miranda Tapsell and Joshua Tyler found audiences clamouring for more tales from the top end – and they were happy to oblige with the Amazon Australia Original Series Top End Bub. 

As Tyler says, “If you’ve got an audience there, you’ve got a fan base, keep feeding them!” 

The response from Sundance, particularly from global First Nations communities, showed that authentically Australian stories connected with audiences internationally – as Tapsell says, “[We got] really specific with Tiwi culture, Tiwi knowledge and the community, but we still managed to have this mass appeal.” 

Tapsell and Tyler share how they leveraged the IP from the big screen to television, the joy in collaboration, and how creators can embrace family and community to reflect the breadth and diversity of First Nations experiences on screen. 

Tyler also credits the popularity of the film to the communal experience of movie-going and power of experiencing stories on the big screen, and recreating that moment in Top End Bub through the half-hour format – “it is a really special thing to be able to do with a group of people, that you’re all laughing together.” 

Shot between Adelaide and Alice Springs, the series follows Tapsell’s Lauren, and on-screen husband Gwilym Lee (The Great, Bohemian Rhapsody) as Ned, as they grapple with family tragedy and returning to familial chaos alongside Ursula Yovich (Troppo, The Royal Hotel) and Huw Higginson (Ladies in Black) as Lauren’s parents, and Gladys-May Kelly as the eponymous Bub. The eight-part series is available now on Prime Video.

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Stephanie Dower on the importance of building an accessible culture on set, engaging Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent crew, and her experiences working in the Australian screen industry.

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Years spent advocating for her own access needs inspired editor and producer Stephanie Dower to consider the potential of a dedicated on-set role specifically focused on supporting access for the Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent community – or DDN.

As a wheelchair user, Dower was limited in the types of roles open to her as a student when starting out in the screen industry.

“I fell into post-production a little bit because it was probably the most accessible space for me to work. Not all sets are very well-equipped for wheelchairs,” she says. “We’re always coordinating our own access, as someone with lived experience, that’s just your day-to-day life. And I’ve always thought wouldn’t it be cool if you could do that for everyone [on set]?”

Dower was inspired by similar roles in the US and UK, and following training with US-based DIsability Belongs and Screen Australia’s Access Coordinator program, Dower is now one of nine recognised access coordinators in Australia, and is already seeing industry interest and demand growing.

“Access coordinators are following the trajectory of intimacy coordinators like ten years ago,” she says. “And I hope that access coordinators can follow the same path and become the expectation [on set].”

In the latest episode of the Screen Australia Podcast, Dower talks about the emerging role of access coordinating; the philosophy and vision behind the role; the distinctions between access coordinators, safety officers, and support workers; and her experiences as a coordinator on upcoming feature films Australian indie (Spit) and international swashbuckler The Bluff – both due for release in 2025.

Dower sees the role of access coordinators as removing some of the barriers historically experienced by screen practitioners from the DDN community, allowing practitioners to be more forthright with their needs in a supportive and confidential environment.

Dower believes access support processes are an integral part of resourcing for crew – similar to intimacy coordinators or safety supervisors – with the access coordinator as an intermediary between individuals and production to ensure everyone is able to get what they need to complete the job. It allows individual cast and crew to focus on their role, and establishes a framework to minimise potential delays or future costs to production.

“I think of access coordination as risk mitigation,” she says. “You don’t want to have everything logistically set in place and then realise something isn’t going to work, and then have to rewrite or change something. …All of the relevant heads of department have that knowledge from the get-go, they can work that into their practice.”

She says developing an access inclusion mindset on projects supports all cast and crew beyond the DDN community.

“There’s always opportunity for [everyone] to require further access, whether it’s physically or cognitively,” she says. “By engaging [access coordinators] it tells the wider cast and crew that the production already has that mindset.

“And if people feel like they’re going to be supported and they’re going to have that access requirements or needs met, then they’re going to feel empowered in their role and they’re going to deliver a better result overall.”

For more information about the role of Access Coordinators, visit:

• Screen Success through Inclusion and Access webinar
• Access Coordinators Australia website

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Audrey screenwriter Lou Sanz and director Natalie Bailey on creating their debut feature film together.

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It was at a speed networking session for producers and writers that screenwriter Lou Sanz first introduced then-producer, now debut director, Natalie Bailey to the dysfunctional family at the heart of Audrey.

A shared love for irreverent comedy brought them together, and for Bailey, it was the strength of the script and Sanz’s vision that piqued her interest. “She’s a rare beast in that she has the ability to be able to write dialogue that sings,” she says.

“I always start with character,” Sanz says. “And then they just tend to tell me where they’re headed. And then once I get all that out on the page, I go back and really start to figure out the story.”

Both had extensive experience in television across sketch shows and comedy drama – Sanz in writer’s rooms for Life Support, The PM’s Daughter and How to Stay Married, Bailey on shows across the UK and Australia such as The Thick of It, Retrograde, and Bay of Fires, – so, Audrey would be their first feature film.

In Audrey, Jackie van Beek stars as the self-proclaimed mother of the year and forgotten soap star Ronnie, who, after golden child and emerging star Audrey falls into a coma, assumes her identity and the spotlight. The film features an ensemble cast including Jeremy Lindsay Taylor as her put-upon husband, Hannah Diviney as oft-ignored younger daughter and aspiring wheelchair fencer Norah, and Josephine Blazier as the obnoxious ingenue Audrey.

Throughout the latest episode of the Screen Australia podcast, Sanz and Bailey share their love for comedy and dislike for the term ‘unlikeable female characters’.

They also talk about getting the project to the big screen, creating compelling characters, the differences between writing for television and film, and the importance of finding the black comedy balance – or “balancing the sweet and sour”, as they call it.

“The role of dark comedy I would say is to have those conversations. The ones that we can’t have, the ones that we feel afraid of,” Sanz says. “I don’t ever think we approached it [as] it’s so dark. This is just a really fun human story.”

Audrey hits Australian cinemas in November. Find out Where to Watch Audrey by heading to The Screen Guide.

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Videoland director Jessica Smith and producer Scarlett Koehne reflect on queer representation and 90s nostalgia in the Series Mania Comedy Competition-winning series.

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When Pikelet Pictures creative team Jessica Smith and Scarlett Koehne were developing a release strategy for short series Videoland, there were two criteria: an international world premiere and releasing on an accessible platform for maximum reach.

Hosting their world premiere at the prestigious television conference Festival Series Mania was not a bad start. As the largest global series-focused festival and forum, Series Mania has a strong reputation for launching premium and award-winning television such as Succession, Hacks, and Australia’s own Fisk.

“It’s so tactical entering into festivals and doing the festival circuit and [Smith] had done so much research,” Koehne says. “Be really selective when entering into a film festival because if you want that global premiere, you want to save it up for someone who’s going to give you that street cred.”

Smith agrees, saying that the calibre of screenings and talent attending, coupled with the industry forum and marketplace that runs simultaneously, “if we could get ourselves into Series Mania with a show, we could capitalise on being there for the forum as well.”

And their strategic and selective approach to submissions paid off. Videoland was invited to have their World Premiere at the 2024 festival, held this March in Lille, France, and was ultimately selected for the coveted Comedy Competition. Only a handful of Australian titles had been selected for the category and only one series had won before, with Fisk taking the honours in 2021. Videoland would be the second.

“As a short form series, we weren’t sure what our chances were of getting into some of these really top tier festivals,” Koehne says. “And when we found out we got in, it was competing in a high level at the comedy competition category, […] we thought it was a mistake.”

Smith continues, “We were then thinking, are we going to be up against long form shows, true comedies, whereas Videoland to us feels a bit more like a dramedy. And when there are jokes, which there are, how are they going to sit with a French audience? We were a little bit worried that if we were being judged on the quality of our comedy as opposed to the quality of our show, that might not work in our favour, but we were wrong!”

On the latest episode of the Screen Australia podcast, we spoke with Smith and Koehne following their win at Series Mania about their festival strategy and experience premiering in a foreign market. They also reflect on the creation of the queer dramedy and challenges of retro-fitting (literally) a video rental store.

In Videoland, when 17-year-old video store clerk – and recently out – Hayley (played by Emmanuelle Mattana) meets the girl of her dreams at work, she turns to the movies for a crash course in queer relationships with the support of her overly supportive best friend Tanya, colleague Daniel, and beleaguered boss Mel. But this is 1998, and nuanced queer representation is hard to find.

Exploring identity, queer representation, and filled with 90s nostalgia, Smith claims the series is only partly autobiographical, but was inspired by her own experiences working in a video store and searching for queer role models.

“If you could find those lesbian characters or those queer characters, more often than not, they were evil or vampires. They were the bad guy. They were the monster. So, I think it was really important for me to tell that story at that time, to really help an audience that hasn’t been through this experience. Because what […] I thought was my lovely, unique little story, about working in a video store and trying to find representation, but every queer person I talk to who came of age in the 90s says that they did exactly the same thing, which is wonderful. Getting this story across to people who didn’t have to go through that, who could see themselves on TV and couldn’t see us on TV or on film, I think it really helps them understand how important representation is and always has been.”

And the team are excited to achieve the second point of their release objectives, with the series premiering on Netflix this September. Smith had this to say when we spoke to the team at release:

“To debut as a creator with a series on Netflix is incredibly surreal, that’s just not something I ever thought would happen. But the real win is having our show about queer representation on such an accessible platform with such a huge viewership. It was always so important for us to reach a big, broad audience, so Netflix coming on board has put us in a position to achieve that in a way we never imagined.”

Watch Videoland now on Netflix.

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Madman Entertainment CEO Paul Wiegard and Screen Australia Distribution Manager Anthony Grundy on the distribution landscape.

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How can Australian filmmakers cut through the competitive content landscape and be more discoverable?

Use your points of interest, says Madman Entertainment CEO Paul Wiegard. Whether it’s talent, topic, or creating an immersive experience, know the audience and have a plan to engage them where they are.

“It’s always about momentum and just nurturing that,” he says. And ask yourself “how do we feed that and how do we gauge that growth corridor? Because it’s far more efficient or effective to talk to an engaged audience, […] start with them and then build out from there.”

During the latest episode of the Screen Australia podcast, we explore the changing theatrical distribution landscape. Wiegard and Screen Australia Distribution Manager Anthony Grundy explain how audience behaviour has shifted since the COVID-19 pandemic and reflect on the challenges and opportunities this presents Australian filmmakers in an increasingly global marketplace. Wiegard shares Madman’s approach to audience engagement as an independent distributor, while Grundy discusses some of the research and tools available through Screen Australia to support discoverability, including the new Where to Watch function.

“Five to ten years ago, it was a very linear, long tail. […] Audiences are just so thinly stretched now. There’s content coming at us from more places than ever and demanding our time,” Grundy noted. “And this tool [Where to Watch] is going to be great to clearly create those links where we can drive people to where they can find and watch Australian content.”

Learn more about film marketing here or distribution here.

Find out where to watch the latest Australian titles, including some of those discussed, using The Screen Guide.

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Audio Transcript

[00:00:06] Aimée Lindorff Welcome to the Sreen Australia podcast. I’m Aimee Lindorff with Screen Australia’s online publication Screen News. I’d like to firstly acknowledge the various countries you’re all listening in from the Unceded lands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This podcast has been produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the larger Eora nation, the traditional custodians and first storytellers of this region always was, always will be. In today’s episode, we’re exploring the distribution landscape and discoverability of Australian film with Madman Entertainment’s Paul Wiegard and Screen Australia’s Anthony Grundy. First up is Anthony or Ant, as you may know him, distribution manager from Screen Australia to give us an update on the film distribution environment Since the last time he was on the podcast in 2022 and also shares some of the considerations facing Australian filmmakers and the latest resources available at Screen Australia. We’re also joined by Madman Entertainment’s CEO, Paul Wiegard, as he shares his insights on the changes in audience behaviour over the past few years and how Australian productions can break through a competitive theatrical market. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast at any time from places like iTunes and Spotify, where you can leave a rating and review. Any feedback can also be sent to podcast@screenaustralia.gov to review, and you can also subscribe to Screen Australia’s Industry News for the latest funding, announcements, opportunities and more. First up here’s Ant Grundy to talk to us about distribution. Ant, welcome back to the podcast.

[00:01:49] Anthony Grundy Hello.

[00:01:50] Aimée Lindorff For those who have not met you before, can you tell us what’s your role at Screen Australia?

[00:01:54] Anthony Grundy I sit in the content team. I’m in the production investment team and I look after distribution. So my title is Distribution Manager, and there’s some initiatives that we run to support the release of Australian films, but I also contribute to the process of the funding decision assessment process. And the main focus is looking at the supporting the production investment processes as applications come in. I work with the doco team and the scripted team and part of that assessment I guess is looking at who the distributor is attached and what their marketing plan is and what the audience plan is. And then working with the the team as they move into production and then down the track into release.

[00:02:28] Aimée Lindorff So we were talking to Rick in our last episode, and she was talking about marketplace and sales agents. Where do distributors sit?

[00:02:36] Anthony Grundy My focus is more geared towards ANZ. So I work with the local distribution landscape where I think its focus is a little more international and within that Australia and New Zealand landscape it’s it’s kind of really working with the distributor mainly in at the time that I guess they’re putting their marketing plans together and, and the film is, you know, on its journey to connect with audiences. But yeah, so it’s my focus, it’s mainly geared towards theatrical and Australia.

[00:03:09] Aimée Lindorff Fantastic. Now the last time you were on the podcast, we spoke about marketing in 2022. So really examining those post shutdown environments. At that time, we saw massive influx of video on demand models and changes in relationships between content and audiences. It’s been a while now. How has that distribution landscape changed?

[00:03:33] Anthony Grundy One of the main differences I think that’s happened in the last couple of years particularly, you know, we’ve moved through Covid. There’s been a lot of industrial action in the US last year. So this this period of inconsistent product, particularly coming from international into Australia. At the same time, when audiences and consumers in Australia are now they’re really understanding the way SVOD streaming services and even even transactional I guess, you know, at digital at home offering is there’s now an education for them that perhaps they didn’t have a couple of years earlier, for example. So they might know something’s on at the movies, but then they’re going to choose to watch it on a streaming service, you know, at a later date. So there’s this inherent kind of understanding of how quickly content can move into another way of watching. And so I think with that, really one of the key things, I guess is crystallising. Well, what is it about the cinema experience that means you must watch it at the movies versus I think I’ll wait. And yeah, there’s been a number of films that I think maybe 5 to 10 years earlier would have done a lot more business in in cinemas. But they fall into that this category of of well actually that one can wait.

[00:04:48] Aimée Lindorff And then also a lot of those big titles that would usually, as you said, go gangbusters at the theatre are now doing digital first. So they’re online as their first release rather than going to the cinema.

[00:04:59] Anthony Grundy Yeah, that’s right. I think they the way, you know, 5 to 10 years ago it was a very linear, clear long tail. And now there’s lots of different variations where, you know, those windows are being moved around and sometimes they’re working, sometimes they aren’t. So, you know, to my point earlier, I think that we are now in in an environment where we understand what those paths look like. And the good news is that there’s been a lot of experimentation. And we we have is I think we can safely say that the theatrical does add value and you can have these different windowing opportunities line up and still create value for each participant along the way. But there is still nothing like the awareness driving of the A cinema release for a film. The other thing I was going to say with audiences before is that and now we understand what the value of the streaming window looks like from a from a consumer’s point of view. And people are starting to realise, well, maybe I don’t need to have as many as I had before and, and people will start to chop and change and move around services because yeah, you can. And I think that that’s, you know, audiences are now really starting to understand what something is truly built for streaming versus what is designed for a theatrical release.

[00:06:18] Aimée Lindorff And how is that how have you seen that influenced the theatrical landscape?

[00:06:23] Anthony Grundy There’s been some interesting observations to make in cinemas in the last couple of years. There’s the key thing that I’ve noticed is and I’m calling it a product paradox where there is statistically more films being released in. Cinemas than ever before. But at the same time, the films that are actually carrying the weight and the load of of delivering the annual box office, there are less of those. So the films, let’s say, let’s call them the top five each year are making more money. So it’s cinemas kind of saying, we want there to be more films. But there are actually a lot of films and this has been quite good for some smaller independent distributors where and it’s a bit of a paradox going on there where there’s a lot of those smaller independent distributors coming into the marketplace. And this some of them are specialising in foreign language films or particularly Indian films and Asian cinema. So we’re starting to see a diversity of different types of distributors moving into the marketplace, which I think is really exciting. But when you look at the overall health for cinemas and just running the business, keeping the doors open, looking at the the films that kind of do the heavy lifting of driving their profit centres, there’s been a bit of a shift towards, I guess, smaller, a smaller number of films earning more.

[00:07:38] Aimée Lindorff And what does that mean, I guess, for Australian content and Australian producers?

[00:07:46] Anthony Grundy I think what it means for Australian producers is that the theatrical moment. We live and die by it quicker than ever and it was always pretty quick. You know, maybe ten years ago you’d think, okay, I’ve got 4 to 6 weeks in cinemas. That’s what the standard theatrical campaign would look like. Interestingly, Australian films tend to they don’t come out of the gate as quickly, and maybe that’s because there’s less marketing money put into an Australian film versus an American film. But the word of mouth would do a lot of the heavy lifting and then they would carry on a lot longer than, you know, generally speaking, some of the American product would. So there was this opportunity for us to play longer. But then with this new environment where cinemas are really they’re really tripling down on whatever the big film that weekend is going to be giving that, you know, the number one film is going to have the best sessions and lots of them. And I think that that has and obviously there’s a limited amount of obsessions that a cinema can program each week. And so there are a lot of films kind of vying for what’s left. And if you’re not going to perform well in the opening weekend, we’re seeing films come off in kind of, you know, week to week three and four, an Aussie film that can be really problematic.

[00:09:01] Aimée Lindorff And I guess where when it comes then to marketing and promotion, where does the bulk of that responsibility lie with film makers, or is it with distributors, broadcasters.

[00:09:12] Anthony Grundy I would say it is the distributors job for the most part. The reason why you have to have a distributor is because they have the experience that the connections they invest in, the PNA, the heavy lifting of setting, the tone for the campaign and understanding the competitive landscape is the job of the distributor. But what I’m saying is no longer can a film maker just make a film in a vacuum and then deliver it off to a distributor and cross your fingers and hope for the best. Hope for the best? Hope is not a strategy. As someone well wisely said, I love that line. And I think the definitely we’re saying filmmaking teams really understand what that looks like and how they can work better with their distributor. And there’s lots of examples of this. Talk to me. This obviously gets talked about a lot, but it’s a really good example of the production team. We gave it a little bit of a PNA support around an idea that was developed during production.

[00:10:13] Aimée Lindorff Just to clarify, you’ve mentioned it twice now, PNA.

[00:10:15] Anthony Grundy Prints and advertising. Thank you very much. So the marketing costs and the costs of getting the prints into the cinema.

[00:10:22] Aimée Lindorff Fantastic. Thank you.

[00:10:22] Anthony Grundy So an interesting way that the production worked with the distributor right from the beginning was with Talk to Me and yeah, you could say that and the other interesting thing about this journey together for a distributor and a filmmaking team is that the path will change. And Talk to Me is a classic example of this at investment stage, even at production stage. The A24 deal hadn’t been done at that stage, so to be along the journey and kind of navigate that whole global explosion was, yeah, I think that it’s really beneficial if the distributor and the filmmakers have a really close and trusted relationship with each other. So yeah, we’d like to encourage that as much as we can. And I think that it’s best to take the lead from the distributor, but absolutely get involved. And talking about the audience design work that we did recently was really fascinating and it was great to see filmmaking teams really hungry for that. Think like a distributor knowledge that they can apply to their projects at development stage. And the more that they can understand the journey of where the film is going to go and what it’s needed at each of those steps as it heads out into the world.

[00:11:38] Aimée Lindorff It’s a good segue to ask when is the optimum time for filmmakers to really be thinking about audience discoverability and how their projects are going to connect with people?

[00:11:47] Anthony Grundy There’s never too early a time. I think the best time to think about discoverability or for the recent audience design initiative that we did, We asked for projects at late stage development and that was great because they’re developed enough to really interrogate who the audience is, what the hooks are, what the themes are, And, you know, you can then start to adjust or turn things off or dull things down. If you’re a little earlier than that. It could be harder. But at the same time, the more that even writers understand, who am I writing this for? Like, where’s the likely home for this content? Who’s going to come and see it and why are they going to want to watch it? It’s just it’s fundamental. And the more that it’s baked in at the beginning, the clearer I think the journey is for the film.

[00:12:32] Aimée Lindorff So the marketplace we’ve already talked about at the marketplaces is quite crowded and it’s more crowded than it’s been in terms of the volume of high quality screen content available for people to watch across in theatres, across at home, even in-flight entertainment. How can we make sure local content cuts through?

00:12:51] Anthony Grundy There’s something about Australian films that when they work, it’s like there’s this secret sauce baked in. And I can speculate. My hunch is that there is some connection to its authentic Australian ness. That is the driver. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t. So it’s quite hard to pinpoint. But when it is there, it absolutely is. Part of, I think, the reason why people will search out Australian content. I do think that there is. Be it Australian, be it, you know, content from anywhere. What makes something theatrical needs to be really, really crystallised more than possibly it did before because consumers now have the chance to plan which which way they want to consume something. So the questions that I ask teams when we’re sitting down to interrogate the audience, you know, does your project have a crystal clear audience? And some do and some don’t. And even just at that top level, you can say it’s very obvious who the audience is and then you know where they likely to find and watch that content. And there’s definitely been projects that have come along where you can see that the subject matter might be a little bit challenging. The content excellent and the conceits are really great one, but it’s something that people will in the decision making process think, Actually, I’d rather watch this at home. Where I can pull is halfway through or it deals with issues that my 14 year old daughter might be thinking about. I’ll watch it with her. But in the comfort and security of at home. So what is it about your project that makes it absolutely clear that it must be seen in the cinema versus watching it at home? And then the other thing is, well, what are the elements of what makes things theatrical, such as, you know, Are they the function of what cinema can bring? So it’s something to do during the school holidays. It can be date night. It can be morning tea for an older audience. We saw that really successfully recently with a project ‘The Way My Way’. The Bill Bennett. Camino.

[00:14:57] Aimée Lindorff Camino Trek.

[00:14:58] Anthony Grundy Yeah. And it’s one that you go, I know who you like. It’s clear who that audience is. And it did really well in cinema. Is it? It has the opportunity to play like the heartland of that film. And the audience for that film is obviously an older audience and the occasion for them might be more morning tea programming. So you can say right from the beginning that, okay, that’s where that’s where the core is going to sit. Does your project lean into chicks at the flicks or girls night outs? That is something that cinemas tell us. You know, there’s a real shortage of films that kind of fit those slots. And then what is it about the big screen in the technology cinemas we have some of the best cinemas in the world, like our major chains and our independents invest so much money in making that experience the best it can be. Yeah, that that’s something that. Is there something intrinsic to your project that means it’s going to be that much better on the big screen? Is it the music or is there something visual that needs the big screen to bring it to life? And it’s hard to pick the zeitgeist moment, so it’s hard to kind of three years before something’s going to be released to go, this is going to be topical in the news. But then sometimes, you know, this is all just a plan and you can adjust accordingly as you go. But if you don’t have a plan, that’s the worst place you can be in.

[00:16:16] Aimée Lindorff And that’s where working with your distributor to kind of come up with their marketing plans and then the scope and knowing who your audience is so that you get the best out of the theatrical window that you end up having.

[00:16:28] Anthony Grundy Absolutely, yeah. And distributors do this day in, day out. So, you know, it’s not an exact science. We wouldn’t need to be here if it was. People would just be everything would work. And there are surprises along the way. It’s funny that some things will work, other things won’t work and you can kind of post analyse it the difference between awareness and interest. There’s definitely films that fall into this category that, you know, the awareness was high. Everyone knew that it was on the campaign didn’t fail. They just didn’t want to say it at the movies. And that’s not new either. So that’s always happened. But yeah, like I said, I think the bar for what makes things theatrical is has never been higher. And there’s been yeah, there’s been quite a lot of media coverage around this idea. And sure, there’s absolutely challenges in the theatrical space, but at the same time I think that there’s room for us all to, you know, live together harmoniously when things are truly theatrical. Audiences flock to cinema. So that hasn’t changed. And the business is cyclical and it always has been. That hasn’t changed either. So this idea that there’s just a, you know, a very static pool of people and we’ve stolen them over to streaming, I think is I don’t think that’s right. The streaming environment has matured to a place where people understand what the streaming offering is. And at the same time, we now have a clear understanding of what the theatrical offering is as well. And the thing and maybe it’s just within the business or within some of the industry reports, but I feel like. One film will live or die. That cinema is over because one film didn’t work. Or we’re hoping for that other film which is going to save cinema. And that’s not I don’t think that’s the future. We should all be aiming for a really diverse range of product in the marketplace because there are so many audience clusters and some are currently underserved. And the more that we can really identify who those audience clusters are and make content that is theatrical cinematic, then I think we grow the pie and sure the audience is smarter and they’re going to choose where they’re going to want to watch. But I definitely don’t think cinema is over. I just think it needs a bit of a recalibration about the kinds of things we make for it.

[00:18:31] Aimée Lindorff And that’s where I guess marketing and distribution and exhibitors are all need to be on the same page in terms of what the story is and who the audience is and how to connect with them.

[00:18:40] Anthony Grundy Absolutely.

[00:18:42] Aimée Lindorff How does that fit into the work that’s going to Australia’s doing to support discoverability of Australian content?

[00:18:48] Anthony Grundy The there were kind of five takeaways that I took from the audience design piece that I was it was great because, you know, it was a new initiative for us. We brought our audience designer Sheila Colley from Ireland who has, you know, a huge amount of experience working in this space. We picked five teams that had to each of them did a two day workshop. And the thing that was great was you could see that there was a real hunger for filmmakers to understand more and have more knowledge around audience and audience design. The first day of the workshop was very much around understanding the themes. And then the second day is really the audience persona who’s going to be connected to those themes, you know, in a very, very broadly speaking. But having the producer who is usually thinking with the commercial lens, who has the understanding of where the sale in the marketplace and, you know, with where it becomes a product, I guess. And then the writer who is obviously coming from a pure story perspective. And yeah, and that creates tension. Sometimes you can say the creative vision might be a little bit different or might be a little bit at odds with what the commercial potential could be. And so I loved really interrogating that. It was really it was really great. And sometimes you’d hit the hard like it might be understanding who the core, what the core theme is in a film, and you hit a barrier where you go, this is really hard because it’s not clear yet. And that’s the problem. And that’s something Well, let’s let’s drill into that a little bit more. And then the big thing is assumption busting where it’s like, my films four quadrant. And even there was a family film selected. And there’s such a difference between the pre-teen, not like a younger teen family film, a family film that can still be exciting for a teen audience because when kids hit 12, they start to develop their own purchasing power and they want to go with their friends and they often don’t want to go with their families. So really understanding the difference between an eight year old, a 12 year old and a 16 year old is fascinating. And looking at it from a story point to say, well, what are the barriers here for any of those? Or where is the viewing occasion? Is it grandparents who are going to take young kids or is it a family day out on a wet Sunday?

[00:21:12] Aimée Lindorff Or are they going with their school friends?

[00:21:14] Anthony Grundy Exactly. Exactly. And are they making does the marketing campaign need to hit them first and not necessarily the parents? So have we hit that kind of point? So, yeah, they were kind of the top takeaways. The Sheila does a lot of comping and benchmarking as well, which I love. So working out where the comparative titles are and those titles might be, there’s so many different ways of comping and a lot of people think that it’s only a box office analysis, which it is and it should be. But also it might follow the journey the filmmaking team is taking. It might be you can look at the Talk to Me example and go, okay, what were the steps along the way? What happened? What festivals did it go to? Where did its international significant sale come? And that will often yeah, just set the trend of a project that you can compare your project to, to say, well, you know, do I have the right ingredients to perhaps follow that that model?

[00:22:09] Aimée Lindorff So what are the similarities, what are the points of difference.

[00:22:12] Anthony Grundy Yeah. And getting into classification or getting into understanding on the spectrum of arthouse to mainstream what you fit and it’s fine to fit wherever you want. So kind of finding out where and what, there may be some creative compromises that need to be made to then understand where you’re going to fit that.

[00:22:32] Aimée Lindorff to feed that audience Yeah.

[00:22:33] Anthony Grundy So that’s yeah, that was the audience design initiative. The other thing that we’re really excited about is a new tool that we’re adding to our website called Where to Watch. And it’s basically a discoverability tool where people will and if people don’t know, our website has so much information. And the best thing is that there’s the screen guide, which is like the IMDb of Australian films. And it goes back for a long time and it, you know, you can find information about a lot of Australian films and onto each page I think we’re starting with about 2500 titles at launch. We’re going to give everyone the opportunity to find streaming links and session times for scripted drama documentaries and TV titles. And yeah, it’s it’s going to be a really important way for us to promote Australian titles. Like we were saying earlier, discoverability is it’s a massive problem and particularly in a fast moving theatrical environment where if people don’t know about you in the first week, you’re going to have a problem. So this, you know, obviously the distributor does a lot of work, the cinemas do a lot of work. But what I love is that this is our chance to compliment some of that work and just provide direct streaming links and direct ticket sales links, live cinema links for our projects.

[00:23:56] Aimée Lindorff So the Screen Guide, as you already mentioned, it’s kind of a central point for Australian titles, not just the one screen Australia have funded, but anything that that has the Australian flag attached to it. And then the way to watch functionality means that you can find it literally anywhere in the world, from what I understand.

[00:24:12] Anthony Grundy Well, the global part will be really interesting because we, we want our films to travel, that the, the global marketplace is so much smaller than it used to be and having visibility about where collectively a slate of films or individually, you know, individual titles may be resonating in a certain territory or in a certain region within the world. And it’s down to a cinema programming level. So we’ll be able to say, you know, what sessions they’re getting and what cinemas they’re in, as well as streaming links. And there’s a number of reasons why I think that that’s exciting. We’ll be able to develop some benchmarks of where our content goes. And again, back to that assumption busting, you know, you’ll see anecdotally, you’ll hear people say certain things about how certain films perform in particular territories, and this will really give us that cold, hard data and that can help inform the investment process as well. But hopefully as the project goes, we’ll be able to find ways of aggregating, probably in aggregate, that kind of giving that information back to producers and letting them, you know, get access to seeing where some of those trends and statistics lie.

[00:25:22] Aimée Lindorff That’s exciting. And I guess, you know, from what we were talking to Raquel about last week with the marketplace data that we that screen Australia already curates, it’s really going to be able to flesh out some of those details.

[00:25:34] Anthony Grundy Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And even from a local cinema perspective, getting some data on the performance of the sessions. So this is going to give us a really interesting look under the hood just to say, and it might we’re talking about morning tea sessions before we can see, okay, this film actually peaked in the morning, so you can actually start to close the loop out from that audience behaviour piece. And that is just going to, you know, greatly improve our ability of the funding decisions at the beginning to actually have a data source to test some of those assumptions at the end. So kind of closing the audience slow down I think is exciting. One of the things that hasn’t changed and in fact could possibly be getting worse is the fragmentation for audiences of our time and where things are available. So it seems that we are more thinly spread than ever. And that’s why the way to watch function is a really important tool because it helps consumers. You know, hopefully we can educate them about a project that’s coming up. And then the the functionality is built in a way that it’s really easy to use. You can just find out where that session is. It takes you to the website directly for the cinema and you can buy the tickets straight away. So we want to kind of capture the moment of when someone discovers they’re interested and and then drive them to making that purchase. You know, audiences are just so thinly stretched. There’s there’s, you know, content coming at us from more places than ever and demanding our time. And yeah, this tool is going to be great to just clearly create those links where we can just drive people to where they can find and watch.

[00:27:16] Aimée Lindorff Joining us now is Paul Wiegard from independent distributor Madman Entertainment. You might recognise Madman from previous episodes of the podcast, including film marketing back in 2022. For over 25 years, the team at Madman have been working to showcase Australian films and are responsible for a range of feature films and documentaries, including High Ground, Shada Nytrom, Girls Can’t Surf and The Giants, as well as upcoming documentaries Future Castle with Damon Gameau and Anna Kaplan and Justin Castles first feature documentary Ellis Park about Warren Ellis as well as the adaptation, Magic Beach, and Adam Elliot’s latest claymation title Memoir of a Snail. Both of which screened at the recent Melbourne International Film Festival. Paul, thank you so much for joining us on the Screen Australia podcast.

[00:28:04] Paul Wiegard Very nice to be back on this podcast. Two years on.

[00:28:09] Aimée Lindorff Yes. So tell us a little bit for those who haven’t met you before about your background in the industry.

[00:28:15] Paul Wiegard My background is basically Madman. Straight out of university, did a couple of degrees, at Melbourne uni and then worked at a small, I guess, music company. And then it sort of led into sort of into founding a business, business now known as Madman with a mate of mine over 25 years ago. So over that journey. Sort of. You know, the business has evolved with the myriad of new distribution channels and and with that was sort of leant a little bit on the job about how to engage audiences and and just accumulated experience. It’s also been led into these days of actively participating. So there is an EP on a number of films, you know, endeavour to work personally across 2 to 4 films a year to sort of supplement our distribution business and on a more macro industry level these days, I chair the Australian International Documentary Conference and the Australian Independent Distributors Association. Lots of A’s in what I do these days, and I’m still on the Board of Screen Rights and ACMI.

[00:29:29] Aimée Lindorff Fantastic. And you mentioned Madman works in both distribution and also EP.

[00:29:36] Paul Wiegard We’re an all rights distributor. And I guess what does the word EP man? It means helping to bring money to the table. It also helps bringing in other partners with international. It also means a lot actually in terms of just our experience, particularly on the dock front with, you know, the latter stages of the edit to really meaningfully contribute to, you know, with more objective eyes and, you know, seeing a lot of what’s happening in the market at large. On the scripted front, we spend a lot of time on the scripts and then hand it over to the producers to get on with it. So that’s the participation producing. So I’m rooting for the Australian and New Zealand films and we wish them well. We think a lot of film do it as a distributor. We would think of Australia and New Zealand because we have offices both in Melbourne and in Auckland in the films that we are representing. All rights on where they are at script stage across the board, so, so films that we try and work on anywhere between sort of five upwards films across Australia and New Zealand each year. But over the last five years we have released high ground. Steven Johnson’s film Girls Cant Surf the Australian Dream, Yatram Scheider Road to Patagonia, which is still on screens and doing really interesting bespoke journey up and down the East Coast in that old fashioned sort of surf film way. That’s also tipped over half a million. How to Please a Woman, The Giants, The Bob Brown film. I mean, all these films have been released in the last yeah, probably four, maybe five years at most, and all grossed over 500k up to 3.5 million. Yeah, we would say the diverse, but we would say what’s in common. They’re all director lead auteur films. We like to think that we gravitate to know remarkable stories that are well told that will really engage audiences in a way that they’ll feed a national conversation, ideally.

[00:31:38] Aimée Lindorff So when we talk about engage with audiences, what does that mean for you? What does that mean for Madman?

[00:31:47] Paul Wiegard Clearly one, they buy a cinema ticket. To gauge is it just a degree of is it relevant? Why’s it being made? Do I have a sense of what the key themes are? Is it material that potentially will help possibly bring about either social change or, frankly, just straight out now entertain? And so it’s like there’s all different levels of engagement. This engagement clearly is engagement, at least word of mouth. And one of the things which we’re excited about from the screening of Memoir of a Snail last Thursday at the Melbourne International Film Festival was the what we think will be extraordinary word of mouth that has come from just that, that one premiere, not its distinctive. We’ve certainly drawn Madman to stories that sort of help push cinema forward, like play with form. It’s really bold and it’s distinctive and it’s all of the things that you want in cinema.

[00:32:50] Aimée Lindorff Fantastic. So the last time Madman was on the podcast was in 2022 to talk about film marketing. How would you say the marketing or distribution landscape has changed just in those few short years?

[00:33:05] Paul Wiegard I wouldn’t say there’s been any absolute fundamental changes in it’s and that’s a big question because we can talk about so many of the different distribution channels. I think the easiest one is always to talk about exhibition, I think because. The cinema figures are probably the most transparent and visible and people can sort of get a sense of what has happened and for how long and where it worked and comparing year to year. The number of films being released is pretty much been consistent the last 3 or 4 years. That sort of 750, a year, really, I mean we’re talking, I guess the post-pandemic era, but the big change from pre-pandemic to where we are now is probably the number of blockbuster films that have been released by the studios. It’s probably their 20% down. So I would say that on the box office level its been pretty flat since 2022. You know, it’s sitting at 25, 28% down. This is the box office compared to where it was in 2019. Streaming numbers continue to to grow. That doesn’t completely get lost out of the ecosystem. It transfers to somewhere else. So is that all gone into streaming? I mean arguably it has and into other media because, you know, we got a lot of screen time now. So I don’t know whether there’s been any straight out fundamental changes. I mean, a few of the things. It’s been a few little quirks I would probably pick up on changes in audience behaviour.

[00:34:45] Aimée Lindorff Yeah.

[00:34:46] Paul Wiegard Yep. It’s probably specifically called out the rise of the social networks, the film lovers. And this is I’m borrowing straight from Letter Box here and there, log line. It’s fascinating to see the growth of that almost democratised film criticism. Anyone can be a film critic to a point. People inserting themselves into the content, providing a view on it, some sort of commentary, uploading it to Tik tok. That’s certainly picked up over the last few years. And it’s sort of, you know, it’s an acceptable it’s not like a shouty, angry, noisy, ugly space. It’s it’s interesting. It’s a bit far more sophisticated than that. So it seems interesting challenge that now poses to the likes of producers and distributors. How do we feed that and how do we gauge that growth corridor? Because, you know, it’s far more efficient, more effective to talk to an engaged audience who is into cinema or screen culture and then start with there and then build out from there in terms of the demographics that you’re talking to.

[00:36:04] Aimée Lindorff That’s such an interesting point about the content creation that isn’t necessarily marketing material. It’s actually coming from the audience as opposed to coming from the distributors or coming from the production itself.

[00:36:16] Paul Wiegard Yeah, it’s like it’s what’s the balance, right?

[00:36:21] Aimée Lindorff So what I guess coming from that Australian New Zealand lens, what does that then mean for Australian projects and Australian productions?

[00:36:31] Paul Wiegard Well, clearly you need a huge suite of media assets and you need a plan. You can do it to a degree on the fly, respond to opportunities and activate them and evolve them. But I think it needs to have a very considered long lead campaign. I think in every Australian project you need at least six months run up to get all those sort of assets in place. And it’s not to say that they will, that means it will necessarily work. But it’s always about momentum, just nurturing that momentum. I don’t think there’s one sort of massive takeaway. It’s just these are just evolving trends. I mean, it’s always the challenges and it will always be the case. Australian films are up against the world and we’re not the only English language territory, and there’s a lot that comes out from other territories feeding into this marketplace. So you’ve got to have a she wider population and noise and activity internationally that you competing with. So how do you create your own energy and attention? So in all these discussions, Amy, you know there’s the scripted features and then there’s, you know, the feature documentaries, which they’re not the same that both got their own nuances.

[00:37:49] Aimée Lindorff Well, that comes back to, I guess, what you were saying before about knowing who your audience is. But it sounds also like knowing what the medium is and what exactly your story and who’s going to be watching it at the end.

[00:38:01] Paul Wiegard Correct. You know, quite a good question, because I got I sometimes sit down and go, what is an Australian scripted feature now? I think that’s a much harder question to answer because I just think more broadly, does it reflect to our societies and the makeup of our communities? I find it’s a tougher question. Then the same question of feature documentaries, because feature documentaries launch by their very nature are very much anchored in a local topic, particular personality. Usually something some event that’s happened in Australia. So it’s very anchored to who we are and what we are about and all those sorts of themes. Whereas with scripted features, I sort of hesitate to say, what is an Australian film now? What will we like to see even across? What genres should we welcome? That no doubt that we love seeing Alaska on screen and no doubt that it’s very egocentric, but the Australian humour, when it nails who we are and we feel and see and experience that on screen, incredible experience. You know, like I’ll never forget the first screenings of Kenny back in the day. Same sort of capturing it. Turner Frames.

[00:39:20] Aimée Lindorff Yep.

[00:39:20] Paul Wiegard But outside those sorts of two sort of areas. I wonder, you know, what is an Australian film these days? Films like Scheider, for example. I think that’s a really important part of our of the mix of films that we participate in, the films that we make in this territory. Frankly, to finance Australian scripted features, they need to be able to play in other territories versus feature documentaries. You know, if you look at what feature documentaries have been doing. Even though it’s been tough for the box office over the last 12 months for feature documentaries and more for the internationally, we looked at where feature docs are. Over the last 3 or 4 years to where they were ten, 15 years ago. It’s extraordinary how much that area of its great content has grown and the regularity with which these films are finding audiences since the pandemic, I think we’ve only had about. Ghee. I think at most 15. Feature films that have grossed more than $1 million. That’s a pretty modest output over the past four or five years. And in that list, there’s several docs.

[00:40:43] Aimée Lindorff So moving away, I guess, from theatrical and talking about that online space and streaming a little bit more. What have you observed in terms of the changes to the theatrical landscape and how do you see Australian productions or Australian projects pivoting to those changes?

[00:41:00] Paul Wiegard Its interesting. I would say you can’t uncouple the pandemic and streaming. The same time the pandemic hit. The streamers were there, established it was working and basically educated. The 50 plus audience how to stream at home and how to get comfortable doing it. And the convenience of streaming, that’s been the most challenging audience to get back into the groove of going to the cinema for the independent space. There’s a long tradition of, you know, talking to 40, 50 plus female audience, and we knew exactly how to talk to that audience. And now that’s a lot tougher now to speak to that audience consistently to get them out. That impact the pandemic and streaming has been significant on the box office. And if the box office is in Australia, this year will be about circa 1 billion, down from its peak of 1.2 1.25 billion in 2019. So you could say, well, maybe just in simple terms, the impacts being $250 million or so and all that, that cash, I don’t think it leaks out of the system. I think it ends up going into the streaming channels, particularly with so many little economies within the economy. And it’s fascinating seeing the performance of the IMAX sites, which has been Stellar, events, people desperate to get out of their homes. And they do love events and they do so. So it’s been refreshing to see that bounce back at the film festivals this year. But again, it’s like all these questions, the quite complicated, right, because of like the impact the stream is on the landscape. I would say not all streamers are the same. You know, there’s still a degree of experimentation. Films are very expensive, and if the thinking is there are these films that really ultimately they only ever want to be explored at all, on streaming platforms, I think that’s not a That’s not a healthy risk management position, you know, because it’s a bit of a one trick pony. There are films that do deserve to be on the big screen and do do very well. And there are streamers that are leaning into that too, because how else can I fund these budgets? There’s been a huge investment from a number of the streamers into getting audiences into cinema, not completely black or white. So one area that is and this is just modern distribution and convenience, it’s confusing at the moment, a case of film in release, how many days have to wait until some streaming? And there was a world ten years ago. It was quite an established science film going to cinema 3 or 4 months with Pathe, depending on then you knew it was going to be on pay TV or at least on physical media, and then it would step out from there. Now its this haze of premium VOD, 30 days, 14 days, event releases. This is truly everything’s all happening all over the place all at once, which means it’s confusing. I think it’s confusing to the industry, let alone others, let alone the audiences.

[00:44:21] Aimée Lindorff So then I guess, what are some of the things Madman are thinking about to enhance the discoverability of Australian content in that space when you’ve got so much on streaming, as we’ve mentioned, so much English language, foreign language on streaming. You’ve also got that competition at the box office as well. What should we be thinking about or what is Madman thinking about to enhance the discoverability of Australian content?

[00:44:47] Paul Wiegard We always think we’re going to have lots of runway and lots of testing, observing, evolving, whatever the strategy is and being as bespoke as possible. And this is, again, I’m talking more specifically around independent cinema. So with Australian films, it really is all about enough runway getting enough and enough momentum on the project and just awareness that we can step out the realease and then escalate it. The problem with going out wide day one and you’re constantly being pressured to do so because that fear of missing out that exhibitors have and it’s all at once you can fail and fail very quickly and you can’t evolve. When you go out to to wide and all at once. So what we’re trying to do is just be bespoke without campaigns and just trying to event ties wherever we possibly can and frankly, just giving our selves enough runway to bring on as many partners as we can to participate in the film’s release. So, like Magic reached the local publishers of the book to be involved. And they need time and bookshops and lots of things. So like Memoir Of A Snail that means setting up a major exhibition within the permanent exhibition within ACMI. There’s a site there. We know there will be tens of thousands of putters walking through that free exhibition just to see it and dig in to see that particular film. And sometimes it also helps. Like there are times for some films you just by giving ourselves enough runway, we can also tell where the film is not going to work. So there’s no point putting foot after bat too so, How do we risk manage that if we just can’t gather any momentum? Gives us enough time to frankly pivot into other channels as well on a premium to then ultimately we’re representing the interests of the filmmakers and the investors. How do we try to find a return on their investment?

[00:46:55] Aimée Lindorff And where does after the films come out, after it’s had its exhibition window, Where does its Second life kind of sit in that long term? Because obviously, you know, Madman has been running for over 25 years now. You’ve got an extensive back catalogue.

[00:47:11] Paul Wiegard Yeah its interesting, probably in really simple terms, every film sits somewhere in each of these distribution channels and are weighted differently. So, I mean, ideally we sit here for three hours and go through a whole myriad of different case studies and say, well, this is the why that landed its this time of the year, it’s collectable and landed there because we could get a major premium VOD release. That one had talent out there pushing the film around. You know, it’s interesting in watching the film like the Giants, Bob Brown and his foundation end up using it as part of, as a way of reactivating those who have been dormant on the areas of activism, what have you. So he used that in a political sense, actually it was facinating to see that in another market. So back to the initial question about core of the revenue that we see comes from the box office quarter from streaming, maybe upwards of a quarter from the transactional space quarter comes from still physical media and the education sector.

[00:48:16] Aimée Lindorff Fascinating. So it doesn’t.. a films life. And I mean, we talk about this a lot on the pod, but a film’s life doesn’t end at the theatre. It can have second, third, fourth life.

[00:48:28] Paul Wiegard Exactly. I mean, it’s interesting. Too often critics ready to call a film a flop or a failure. And I just think that sort of undermine or basically doesn’t show much understanding of the longer tale. I mean, there are films, of course, that they just found no audience. And there and there in ends of the story. But there are many films that have several iterations. We like to think still about a film’s life in 3 to 4 year terms. So it was a world where probably many distributors used to think of films in a sort of 6 to 7 year cycle because of the free to air windows now think it’s a bit more accelerated, but in that sort of 3 to 4 year window, which is a heck of a lot more time than the opening week of a box office, I’m talking I’m contemplating called 150 to 200 weeks versus one week at the box office.

[00:49:33] Aimée Lindorff But that level of, I guess, investment in the marketing or in those assets that you were talking about earlier, that definitely changes when we’re looking at that four year window instead of that six month window.

[00:49:46] Paul Wiegard Yeah, I mean, that’s. That’s a big part of it, you know? What are we creating now on release that will continue to be used and then have dividends yielded from that activity downstream because those assets that were created can continue to be used in the education system be it on a transactional platform?

[00:50:09] Aimée Lindorff Yeah. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time today Paul. I really appreciate you talking with us.

[00:50:15] Paul Wiegard My pleasure.

[00:50:17] Aimée Lindorff That was Paul Wiegard, CEO of Madman Entertainment. Thanks to Paul and my colleague at Screen Australia, Ant Grundy, for sharing their expertise and insights. To stay up to date with the latest episodes of Screen Australia’s podcast. Remember to subscribe through places like Spotify and iTunes, and for the latest news from the local screen industry, subscribe to the Screen Australia newsletter. Thanks for listening.

Screen Australia Marketplace Manager Rakel Tansley shares the latest marketplace intel and advice to get the best deals on your projects.

Find this episode of the Screen Australia Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Pocket Casts

Taking your project to market? 

Then research is the key to a successful marketplace experience, says Screen Australia’s Marketplace Manager Rakel Tansley. Know the audience, find the right sales agent or distributor, and negotiate the best deal terms for the best possible chance of return on recoupment, Tansley advises – and “come and talk to us [the Marketplace team]”. 

In the latest episode of the Screen Australia podcast, Tansley walks us through the key findings of the most recent Post-Financing International distribution of projects between 2020–2023. Collated every three years, the data shows a continued interest globally in Australian content across film, television and kids’ content. And while budgets and the distribution landscape may have changed over that period, the most significant change for Tansley is the way distributors and sales agents are buying – it’s all in the deal terms. 

“We’re seeing a much larger number of pre-sales coming in attached to finance plans, especially when comparing it to previous years, […] and we’re also seeing sales agents not necessarily contributing into the finance plan.” Tansley says. So, knowing your audience and researching the market is key. 

Throughout the episode, Tansley breaks down the key terms of finance plans and the market, and explains the role of the Marketplace team in supporting Australian producers navigate domestic and global deals, as well as the resources publicly available on the Screen Australia website. She also talks to the current trend of rights, how to make IP and secondary rights work for you, the hidden costs to watch out for when building a finance plan, and shares the top five key territories and regions buying Australian film and television, both in terms of volume of sales and highest spendings. 

“There’s still a really insatiable appetite for Australian content,” Tansley reveals. “It’s really important that our producers have that global lens when they’re creating content, […] because we have a much wider audience and our stories travel exceptionally well.” 

To contact Marketplace, email marketplace@screenaustralia.gov.au or find out more about the resources and research available through Marketplace here.

Further Reading and Resources

• Sales and Distribution Support
• Checklist when negotiating film and TV distribution deals (PDF)
• Podcast: Finance plans explained
• Podcast: Distribution 101
• Recoupment vs Profit
• Festivals and Markets

Subscribe to the Screen Australia Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Pocket Casts

Audio transcript

[00:00:06] Aimée Lindorff Welcome to this Screen Australia podcast. I’m Aimée Lindorff with Screen Australia’s online publication Screen News. I’d like to firstly acknowledge the various countries you are listening in from the Unceded lands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This podcast has been produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the larger Eora nation, the traditional custodians and first storytellers of this region. Always was. Always will be. We’ve got a huge episode for you today as we talk with Screen Australia’s Marketplace Manager, Rakel Tansley, about the latest insights in domestic and international sales markets. You might remember Rakel from her last appearance on the podcast in 2021 where she introduced us to the marketplace. What it is, what they do and how best to use the data and resources available. It’s been a few years, so we’ve invited Rakel back to provide insight in the current trends in the market and advice for producers considering deal terms, IP and license rights. The Marketplace team have also just released the three-year international post contracting sales outcomes for 2020 to 2023. And Rakel walks us through some of the key takeaways from that data and the changes in the distribution and sales landscape since the last round of reportables. There is a bit of assumed knowledge about the industry, so if there’s any terms you’re unfamiliar with, check out the show notes for links to previous podcast episodes on marketplace finance plans and distribution, as well as a range of resources available from the Screen Australia website about finance plans and agreements. Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast through places like Spotify and iTunes, where you can leave a rating and review. Any feedback can be sent to podcast@screenaustralia.gov.au and don’t miss the latest funding announcements, opportunities, videos and more by subscribing to Screen Australia’s industry news now. Here’s Rakel Tansley from Screen Australia. Rakel, welcome back to the Screen Australia podcast.

[00:02:01] Rakel Tansley Thanks for having me.

[00:02:02] Aimée Lindorff For those you haven’t met before, what is your role at Screen Australia and what do you do?

[00:02:07] Rakel Tansley I’m the Marketplace manager at the Screen Australia and we work with producers across from late development right through to post financing sales in the marketplace. So we look at their deal terms, their post financing sales, their finance plans and who they are attached to in the marketplace.

[00:02:25] Aimée Lindorff Awesome. So what is Marketplace and how does it fit into Screen Australia?

[00:02:29] Rakel Tansley Marketplace is ultimately the project who you attach to in your project. So in your finance plan, you have the marketplace that sits at the top of your finance plan, and it’s normally your rest of world distributor, your ANZ distributor, your commissioning broadcaster and your sales agent, depending on whether you’re doing film or TV. And it’s those people that then take your project out to the marketplace to sell domestically and internationally to find an audience.

[00:02:59] Aimée Lindorff And you mentioned distributors, you mentioned, sales agents. What’s the difference there?

[00:03:03] Rakel Tansley We normally refer to a sales agent when it comes to film and a distributor we normally refer to from an international distributor for TV. However, when we refer to an ANZ distributor here domestically, we’re talking about film and ANZ.

[00:03:20] Aimée Lindorff That’s Australia-New Zealand, correct? So ANZ and rest of world, how different are the domestic and international markets?

[00:03:28] Rakel Tansley Very different. So ANZ obviously is a very is a smaller market. There’s only so many distributors here and so many commissioning broadcasters. However, we especially when you’re coming into great Australia funding, you have to have one of those attached. Rest of world, obviously way bigger market, bigger population, way more distributors and broadcasters to sell to. Whether individually or globally like a buyout. So yes, it is very different. The rights all remain the same, how they split up, but just the selling capacity. It’s a much smaller market here.

[00:04:02] Aimée Lindorff Sure. Now, Marketplace, we’ve talked about rights already. We’ve talked about distributors, we’ve talked about sales agents, we’ve talked about domestic, we’ve talked about international. And we’re two minutes in.

[00:04:14] Rakel Tansley We’ve got heaps to talk about. Heaps!

[00:04:16] Aimée Lindorff It sounds like the scope of marketplace is really quite large in terms of what it encompasses.

[00:04:22] Rakel Tansley Yes. so I said, we will work with producers mainly very late development when they’re about to go into an attach their marketplace. So we will do that. We will then work with them on their post financing sales. We will work with them on their deal terms for their sales agent or their distributor. And then we work with those sales agents and distributors as well, like when the deals are selling. And then right at the back end, we also track the recruitment of all Screen Australia equity investment funding projects, and we report back to the producers and work with them around the cams and the dasses, which we can talk about later. But yes, so it is, it’s, it’s pretty much from a sales and distribution marketing. And then obviously recruitment and business affairs is what the Marketplace team tries to cover.

[00:05:13] Aimée Lindorff So it’s not just about where the money’s coming from. It’s also who gets rights to what and where it’s going and then collecting that data at the end so that we can kind of compare it to the rest of the industry.

[00:05:22] Rakel Tansley Absolutely. And we also producers, obviously, the data that we receive. So reporting is a big thing for us and should be for producers. We are in a really privileged position because we get to see globally what is happening with all Screen Australia funded projects. So we get to see who’s attached to the marketplace, what type of deal terms are being done in the marketplace, what rights are being sold across the globe, what they’re paying for those rights, and then obviously the reporting that comes through and the recruitment that comes through. So the biggest thing for us is confidentiality. So any data that we do put up on the website or we talk about today will always be treated in confidence. I’ll never mention a project by name, but yeah, and that’s why it’s one thing is really important for producers to also get on top of their own reporting because it helps them for this project and their other slate that’s coming in and about relationships and who’s buying and acquiring their content, because that’s what this industry is about, building relationships and taking your next project out to market. And especially if you’ve already got a relationship with someone, it’s easier to contact them directly instead of going around and trying to find, who should I talk to?

[00:06:37] Aimée Lindorff So why does Screen Australia track this kind of data?

[00:06:41] Rakel Tansley We track it because one, it’s government funded money. So it’s really important that we can report back to government what we’re seeing. It’s also really important. The biggest thing is in marketplace. Most of the time we are advocating for the producer. If we are at the table with a sales agent or a distributor or a broadcaster, we’re trying to ensure that the marketplace is fair and reasonable across the board for everyone. Because without you distributors, without your broadcasters, without your sales agents, there is no audience for your project. So we collect that data. To us, that is where the gold comes from. So as much as we like to see really big MG’s or license fees paid on things, that’s all great. But it’s also the deal terms because it informs trends, it informs what is happening with our industry and for us, we want to make sure that all of our production companies are as sustainable as possible for their next project and long term projects.

[00:07:39] Aimée Lindorff And MG, just to confirm, that’s minimum guarantee?

[00:07:43] Rakel Tansley Correct.

[00:07:43] Aimée Lindorff And really, then that helps you then track the trends in the buying market?

[00:07:47] Rakel Tansley Yeah.

[00:07:48] Aimée Lindorff Okay. So let’s take a step back. Producers are coming to the marketplace. They’re sharing this data with with you guys. What would you expect to see and what kind of advice would you have for producers?

[00:08:00] Rakel Tansley So when they coming to us in the marketplace or talking to their investment managers in late development, we want them to either, for TV have their pitch deck ready. And for film they first look because we find that sales agents, they don’t want the pitch deck with these can be up to 12 or however many pages long as long as tonely it’s telling what the. Or the TV project is about. But with the first look 1 or 2 pages, one of the biggest thing is that. We want producers to research their sales agents and distributors before they go out to the marketplace so they can come and talk to us and we can say, Well, I want to see their pitch deck or their first look so I can totally see what the project is. I don’t have to read the script and then we can look and say, Well, we think you should probably reach out to these distributor, all these sales agents, because that’s the type of content they’re taking, or they don’t actually have anything like that on their slate because there’s no point talking to a sales agent that has the same story genre that already on their books and they’re taking it out to the marketplace at the same time. So it’s really important that the the pitch deck, the first look, knowing the audience. So when people are writing, they really they know who they’re writing for. So aligning you a writer with a producer, it’s really important that everyone is on the same page of knowing their audience and knowing the pathway to audience. So whether it is going to a streamer, whether it should have a cinematic release, is this going to find more eyeballs because of the demographics for free to air, or is this something that is probably better served on pay TV or is it a streamer? So it’s really knowing the pathway to audience. And we found recently, like Lionsgate has actually partnered with Nielsen’s, which is a ratings data analysis and for their fast channel movies because they’re looking at the audience engagement, who is, what channels they’re watching, because that is then determining what content they’re acquiring. But it’s really important that our producers have that global lens when they’re creating content, not just the ANZ bubble for Australian stories here, because we have a much wider audience and our stories travel exceptionally well. So research a sales agent and an ANZ distributor, see what’s on their existing slate. And we also have a thing on our website under support and funding across features, television and First Nations, where because we were getting so many inquiries of who should I be talking to? from film to TV so producers can now go, all right, anyone can go in and have a look and search on whether it’s an ANZ distributor, North American sales agent or distributor in a rest of world sales agent, they can search by TV, film, documentary and they can search by genre. And all of a sudden it’ll give you a drop list of the sales agents. They contact details and what is already on their slate. And the data goes back seven years. So from today’s date to seven years. So you can actually then go, okay, well, I’ve got a spider movie. They’ve got three spider movies. I’m not going to talk to them because it’s wasting their time and it’s wasting the sales agents time. So that is available to everyone for them to have a look at. But we also really encourage that when they’re looking that they are aligning themselves with the right producer or the right sales agent or distributor because ultimately we want those people to elevate the project and get it out to a strong marketplace so no matter what. Come and talk to us early and you can talk to Screen Australia Marketplace whether you’ve received Screen Australia funding or not. However, the disclaimer is that our SA funded projects do take priority, but we also really encourage producers to talk to the marketplace early because they want you talking and they are sales agents and distibutors are very aware of Australian creatives and they’re actively looking at the talent that we have and they tracking those writers, directors and producers as well, because they want to be, they want to know about their projects early.

[00:12:18] Aimée Lindorff It’s interesting, I think you said those key elements, including research, your sales agents and distributors and knowing who your audience is because you can’t really do one without the other. If you know who your audiences and you’re going to a sales agent or distributor who doesn’t serve that audience well, then you’ve wasted their time. You’ve wasted your own time when you could be looking somewhere else. So that’s where Marketplace comes in. Yeah.

[00:12:38] Rakel Tansley And you don’t want to burn the bridge. You don’t want to burn the relationship. You don’t want to waste your time. You don’t want to waste their time. Not because getting back through that door for the next project will be harder.

[00:12:47] Aimée Lindorff So for producers who are moving on to the next step of financing or developing a finance plan, what has changed in the market and what should they be thinking about when it comes to financing?

[00:12:58] Rakel Tansley When it comes to financing the project? We are for film. We’re seeing a much larger number of pre-sales coming in attached to finance plans, especially when comparing it to previous years. We also seeing advances in MGs, but we also when it comes to film, we’re seeing sales agents not necessarily contributing MGs into the finance plan. And as much as a producer wants the money, you know, they need to meet their budget. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing to not be recouping behind an MG or advance because then you can negotiate a lower commission what your expenses are and you’re not, all of a sudden that first dollar of money that comes in once the commission is taken out, is coming in to you and your investors or you know, or it’s paying out you gap or things like that. So it’s really important that when those things do come in and it’s not filling the finance plan, that they are really mindful of the gap and but also reducing the commission. We know that budgets are increasing box office and back end is contracting. So we all need to be also looking at what other avenues there are and especially around private investment for domestic and international. What are the possibilities available? We are seeing more and more private equity investment coming in on Australian projects, but this is also something that takes time and nurture because it’s not coming to a federal or state agency and putting in the application and asking for money. It’s a different skill set to have when you’re dealing with private equity investments and especially with corporations. So we encourage producers to be having really early discussions to try and find rest of world money and not be scrambling two weeks before they’re coming in to us with their application because that’s not going to serve anyone and it’s just going to create more stress for producers.

[00:14:53] Aimée Lindorff So with that, so when you’ve got private equity, obviously their concept of returns is going to influence, then you’re back and once that money comes in as well. So their expectations are going to be different to a state or federal funding agent.

[00:15:05] Rakel Tansley Yeah, absolutely. And it’s one of those things where, like I said, it’s it is a different skill set because producers are all about financing the project, making the project and getting it out to market. But when you do have private equity investment or you have any investors in, you need to also be taking them along the path and keeping them up to speed and communicating with them. You can’t just leave them in the back room and say, okay, we might see some money on this project, See you in three years. Yeah, that’s right. So yeah, it’s it’s really important that one you lock in your deal terms, especially when it comes to equity investment, because at the end of the day, if you can get the deal terms done right upfront then it’s better for everyone. Everyone knows where they stand. But I think it all comes back to if you can have a relationship with your sales agents, distributor or your investors and you have sold to them that you have the confidence of the project and knowing the audience and how that’s going out, then it does set the scene because at the end of the day, everyone is risk averse. People are wanting to see great scripts that resonate across the globe with, you know, ideally recognisable cast. However, they’re always the exception to the rule and we’ve all recently seen that. But I think people need to understand that it’s not a global story. It’s more how the story’s being told and is is an Australian story being told that, you know, someone in Spain or in another territory around the globe can resonate at some level with that project that you’re telling. And when we look at the daughter of the type of projects that were being discussed last year, it was around comedy. This year it’s around horror. And internationally all we hear about because people are risk adverse is about genre and also existing IP. So if there’s already existing IP that is worked in one format, then it’s definitely something we’re seeing internationally that distributors and sales agents are leaning into because they know what they’re going to get with that.

[00:17:17] Aimée Lindorff And they’ve got a built in audience there as well.

[00:17:19] Rakel Tansley Exactly. And we are seeing, based on the data, the US is definitely not buying the same way in international markets. What used to be like a sales flurry, like you go to Kano, Berlin or Toronto, Sundance, it’s taking multiple markets now to generate those sales, which is not a bad thing. Everyone is a little bit more cautious because everyone’s got a budget, you know, budget to make your project budget to for sales agents and distributors. But I think producers really need to understand that what doesn’t work in ANZ we find works extremely well internationally. And this past year the Marketplace team captured. So we do a review every 12 months of all post financing sales. So what that means is any sales that they’re not pre-sales, they’re not sales that are in the finance plan, it’s the budget has been logged off, it’s gone out to market and your sales agents and your distributors start selling your project. And we captured 969 post financing sales, which was a 47% increase on the previous year’s sales. It’s amazing. And that’s what I mean, our stories do travel. And the highest number of sales this year came in May when the previous year it was June. I don’t know why there’s a month difference, but that was the highest peak in the market. And the last two financial years, adults TV had the highest number and the volume of sales when compared to features and kids TV drama. However, the value of sales, meaning the price being paid when comparing it to the previous financial year. There wasn’t much difference though we did see it was a 5.7% increase.

[00:19:02] Aimée Lindorff That’s so interesting. Just in 12 months, that market difference in how the market has moved.

[00:19:07] Rakel Tansley Yeah. Well, if you look at the networks and streamers they’re reducing the number of acquisitions. And as previously mentioned, costs are going up. And they too, have to manage their budgets. They look at how expensive the project is, who’s their audience and how they’re going to package it out to. Market stream is seem to be shifting. What we’re seeing is from growing subscribers to increasing audience engagement, hence the whole Lionsgate, movies fear nielsen because it’s about retention and audience.

[00:19:38] Aimée Lindorff Particularly because there’s so much in the market now in terms of streamers and as well that it’s more about the engagement than it is about acquisition of subscribers. How do we interpret that change and what have you seen in terms of the impact on sales of Australian content?

[00:19:55] Rakel Tansley There’s still a really insatiable appetite for Australian content, especially in Europe. Before everyone would go to the US. You know, try and get that big US sale that would then give market confidence to the European market. It’s really different now. Like we’re seeing that Europe is not buying content the way they used to, but they offer Australian content. So on the Screen Australia website, we actually have just also updated our post financing sales listing. So the data now captures from 2020 to the 31st of December 2023. So producers can use that as an area for reference for various types of deals and fees they could expect across territories. But it’s post financing, sales, not pre-sales. And overall, when we compare, this is a lot of data. I’m going to go through, but it’s really interesting. If it still excites me, I’m excited and everyone else should be excited. So overall, when we compared the sales from the previous dataset, which is 2016 to 2020, we’ve seen a 54% increase in the number of sales from adults TV 16% increase across features and a 50% increase on kids TV. So if that does not tell you that people resonate with our stories across the globe and this is just international. I’m not even talking about domestic.

[00:21:18] Aimée Lindorff And thats foreign language markets, that’s the US and UK. So it’s not just English speaking regions.

[00:21:24] Rakel Tansley Well, exactly. So when we compared the data there was previously there was no sales for kids TV into China or Japan. Yet the past three years we’re now seeing sales from those territories. And overall with kids TV, we’ve seen an increase in all sales into major territories, especially around Canada, North America. Middle East, Poland, Spain and Scandinavia. But we did see a small decrease in Africa and Benelux, but that’s what I mean. We do record. All the sales information at a really granular level because we want to see where our stories are travelling.

[00:21:59] Aimée Lindorff Can I just clarify too, with when you talk about territories, you’ve mentioned Canada, Spain, Germany, but then you mentioned Africa as as a bigger territory.

[00:22:08] Rakel Tansley It’s more we would determine that as a region, but it falls under the category of territory because. Most of the times they’ll be they’ll buy it for all of Africa or they’ll buy it for South Africa. But for this conversation, I’m just going to bundle it all together and say Africa. So I hope no one’s offended. Okay. So, like, North America is made up of Canada and USA and Peru. Scandinavia is a region made up of four different territories. Right. So yeah, region is more an area mess area made up of individual territories where if I refer to territories, it’s mainly like that individual territory, which could be just Ireland or Canada or Spain.

[00:22:49] Aimée Lindorff Yeah, great.

[00:22:49] Rakel Tansley But going back to kids, there has been increasing prices being paid for kids across major territories, with the exception of Africa and France and Italy, where we did see a slight decline in the prices that the fees that they’re the images and license fees that they’re willing to pay. But features we actually across all major territories, we did see a slight decrease. So even though we saw when we look at the last three years, we’ve seen an increase of 16% of sales features. We did see a decrease in the fees being paid for feature films. However, there was an increase for France in the U.K., both Germany and considering Germany’s in a recession, Germany, North America have remained consistent in their fee structure. The license fees being paid. We did see a slight decrease in the number of sales in both of those territories. But unlike kids, we’ve seen a larger increase in sales to Africa and Spain that have remained consistent. And we’ve also seen an increase in the number of sales and acquisitions of film into Italy, Japan, Latin America, Middle East, North America, Poland, Portugal and the UK. So that’s what I mean. Like if you’re looking for presales, here’s a whole heap of data. These territories are acquiring our content. And there’s an increase in them acquiring our content. So work with your, sales agents and distributors, or even if you need to go out beforehand and contact a broadcast or distributor within one of those specific territories, you might have them to form part of a pre-sale into your finance plan. So you might plug a hole, if you don’t get necessarily an advance or an MG from your rest of world sales agent, then you might be able to fill it with the presale.

[00:24:32] Aimée Lindorff And be a bit more targeted in terms of who you’re approaching. Based on that data that’s being collated.

[00:24:38] Rakel Tansley That’s right. So we’ve broken it down into kids TV, features and adults TV drama and for adults TV, we’ve seen a slight decrease in the number of sales into the USA, Middle East, India and Africa. Yet Europe, like when I was talking earlier about how they’ve really got this insatiable appetite for our content remains strong, like Poland, Portugal, Scandinavia and Spain, other territories. We’ve also seen an increase for adults TV across Latin America, China and Canada. We have seen stronger license fees being paid from Africa, Benelux, France and Latin America, North America and Scandinavia when compared to the previous years. So that’s what we try and do. We’re trying to look at where are the trends? What rights are being taken, what territories are acquiring it. So when we do, Hassel producers and under the terms of the PIA, they need to report.

[00:25:29] Aimée Lindorff Sorry, the PIA?.

[00:25:30] Rakel Tansley Production investment agreement.

[00:25:32] Aimée Lindorff Fabulous. Carry on.

[00:25:33] Rakel Tansley It’s really important to get these reports because we can then aggregate the data to then inform people and the industry. This is where our projects are selling. This is what they’re acquiring. This is the type of fees that you can expect to be paid from those territories. And it’s like again, constantly having that global lens because what necessarily may or may not work, here does work internationally and our stories do travel exceptionally well. And I think it’s one of those things that when there is a market and even if the first market, there weren’t a lot of sales, I think it’s really important that producers contact their sales agents and their distributors and go, Hey, send me a sales listing. Who did it go out to? Who passed? Why did they pass? Because it might not help this project, but it will help you next project.

[00:26:23] Aimée Lindorff And you mention it features TV and kids. Where does online and documentary fit into them?

[00:26:29] Rakel Tansley Well, because online and documentaries are predominantly given as grants at screen Australia. We don’t actively track those projects because there is no recoupment to come back in. We have a small data set of what happens and when. When we say online, I’m talking the online fund. I’m not talking online as in streamers. But yeah, because they are predominantly given as grants. The producers obligations to report back to us are a little bit different.

[00:26:58] Aimée Lindorff Does lead me to my next question about sourcing that data. It’s through producers reporting as part of their  recoupment process.

[00:27:07] Rakel Tansley Yeah, it is. And my sales agents and distributors, when we’re negotiating the contracts, there will always be a reporting clause. It’s a. Global thing. They all do it. And ideally it’s around quarterly, semi-annual and annual. If you’ve got a CAM people.

[00:27:23] Aimée Lindorff Sorry, now CAM, second time you’ve mentioned CAM.

[00:27:25] Rakel Tansley Sorry, collection account management. So under the terms of trade at screen Australia when it’s for film, you have to engage with the CAM so all investors and beneficiaries of any recoupment. So the waterfall, the CAM looks after that. So first dollar will go into the CAM and then the CAM will report to everyone of what money’s coming in from these all these sales across the globe and who’s getting their commission and their expenses and then what investors are sharing, you know what? Gap’s being paid down.

[00:27:55] Aimée Lindorff And that’s the waterfall then as to who gets paid what and when.

[00:27:58] Rakel Tansley Correct. Yeah. So once all the sales agency agreements and all the distributors of ANZ distributor agreements are all finalised, the CAM takes all of those agreements and then creates the waterfall to make sure that all the contracting obligations are being met. So ultimately the CAM will also override all those other agreements. So it’s really important though that just because there’s a CAM or there’s a DAS, which is a disbursement account service for TV, which is any net proceeds, so that international distributor will take off their commission and their expenses recoup their advance. And then any money that’s then left over as net proceeds then goes to the DAS and then the DAS then disperses as per the waterfall. But it’s really important that they don’t just rely on the CAM reporting that they actually reach out to their sales agent or their distributor and says, Hey, what’s happening with my project?

[00:28:50] Aimée Lindorff They’re actively involved.

[00:28:51] Rakel Tansley You have to be actively involved. You can’t just hand it over. And I know it’s really hard because most producers have a slate that they’re working with, so they’ve already moved on to the next project. But if we talk about the Long Tail, so Marketplace always bangs on about the long tail, how long it’s been in the marketplace, because the longer it’s in the marketplace, the more return of investment to the producer and to us. I’ve mentioned before, like for film and TV, we predominantly see territory by territory sales rather than a global sale or a stream and doing a buyout. And we are seeing more and more streamers coming in as post financing sales. So they’re not part of the finance plan and we see individual rights sold as secondary, right? So if you have a TV project and it goes to your first commissioning platform, then once that license period is up, then it can go somewhere else, it can go to pay TV or it can go to a stream or it can go to video. So they have the secondary rights. But when we looked at the review of these financial year, those 969 sales this financial year, broadcast licenses represent around 70% of sales when compared to 62% from the previous year. So again, another uplift. This is the interesting thing and that’s why we say keep an eye on your project and when you license periods are ending and things like that because they were 137 re licenses this financial year and for the same period last year, they were only 75 relicenses. And this financial year we saw 137.

[00:30:25] Aimée Lindorff That’s interesting is that because people are licensing for shorter terms or it just happens that we’ve hit that period in the market where people’s licenses have run up.

[00:30:33] Rakel Tansley And also audience engagement. So people are now looking more and more like it’s about retaining audience. So if something is working, they want to keep it on there or if there’s another sequel coming in for TV. They don’t want the first series going elsewhere. So it’s about “oh we want to re license this” and you know and depending on the right you know when we’re looking at the individual rights this past financial year we saw a shift and the free to air rights compared to the previous year so free to air is sitting at the top of our table of the rights being sold where the privacy previous year S VOD streamers was sitting at the top. So we are definitely seeing secondary sales as well, like to free VOD. So like here Iview or broadcast video on demand and we even had another project that had its first broadcast on another commissioning platform and then got picked up on another platform for free VOD as a non-exclusive. So it’s really important as well that when you are negotiating your rights and you’re looking at the platforms to try and push those non-exclusive secondary rights, So it’s already been somewhere and then it’s going somewhere else because the more platforms you can get your project on to, the bigger your audience is.

[00:31:53] Aimée Lindorff It sounds like certainly compared to the last year or even the last three year reporting period. There’s been some big changes. What would you say is the most significant change?

[00:32:04] Rakel Tansley The most significant change is just the way people are buying. That would be the difference. And the increase of sales that we are seeing. That’s very clear across all of our content for scripted drama. Predominantly, we have seen an uplift in sales. When we talk about the rights being sold and the granting of those rights, the long tail, I think as well. This financial year we had a film that’s been in the marketplace for over 40 years and it’s still bringing in gross receipts. As of last month, 40 years.

[00:32:40] Aimée Lindorff So in 1984 and it’s still still bringing in the dollars.

[00:32:44] Rakel Tansley Still bringing in the dollars. I think that’s the biggest thing. Whether your film released ten years ago or two years ago, you got to keep an eye on it. Check how it’s performing in the various territories, not just here. You know, have those license periods expired? Could there be re licenses? What are the opportunities for your project? And I think that’s the biggest thing that when Screen Australia did revert our share of gross receipts. It was because we wanted producers to take their projects and run with them and see what other opportunities there were . Last month as well, we had a TV adults program that been in the marketplace for just shy of ten years and in the month it sold the free to air rights, the pay-TV rights, the S vod rights and the B vid rights across Cyprus, UK, Slovakia, Latin America and Ukraine.

[00:33:32] Aimée Lindorff Those are some very interesting territories.

[00:33:35] Rakel Tansley That’s what I mean. There is plenty of opportunity for producers to be looking at the long tail. More and more need to be looking at the long tail because there is recoupment to be made. There are more platforms, there are more fast channels coming online, and they’re looking at content and they’re looking at audience engagement. So if you’ve already got any existing IP that either well at box office here domestically or it did really good audience ratings. If you’ve already got half your marketplace information to then take somewhere and go, “Hey, it did this, are you interested in my project for your platform?” And I think the thing is, when it comes to film, we are still seeing the ANZ market still doing the theatrical release, like in traditional windowing sense and obviously how that film performs in that first week’s performance then determines how long it is on screens. Previously it used to be 90 to 120 days, but now the kind of that unspoken rule is about 45 days. But it’s not just the post financing sales and what’s happening after you projects in market, people and producers really need to be looking at the marketing assets because they play a large part word of mouth campaigns and depending on your demographic. Again, going back to knowing your audience and pathway to audience. Considering the creation of those assets in pre, it should all be part of your pre-production and talk to your distributors and your sales agents and work with them. Because without them there is no audience. But it’s also the downstream, right? So from film, when we talk about the re licenses for broadcasters, same for film. Once it has its theatrical window or it goes to a streamer, there’s other downstream rights. It’s knowing the value of those rights, and you need those rights to possibly see a return as well on your investors. It’s the same as anything. S VOD Rights. 11 years ago, we didn’t even know what the value was. Everyone was like, What is this streaming platform and how much is it? Should I be paying for a licence fee or charging for a licence fee? And now that we know what those values are, it’s like looking at the splits. The devil’s in the detail with your deal terms as well. There’s a checklist that we do actually have under sales and distribution in your funding support area that producers can reference on what we’ve been seeing across the globe and domestically around commissions and expenses and backend splits.

[00:36:01] Aimée Lindorff And that checklist is available on the Screen Australia website and I’ll include that also in the show notes. So make sure you read the article attached because there’ll be some extra linkage and a lot more resources available to talk about some of those things.

[00:36:14] Rakel Tansley Yeah. And the post financing sales would be up there as well.

[00:36:17]Aimée Lindorff  Absolutely. Coming back to those global sales, what are some of the changes you’ve seen in the new three year reportings?

[00:36:24] Rakel Tansley We quite often get asked like, do our stories get the theatrical release internationally? And absolutely. One of the things that we look at, other than the trend of rights and who’s buying what is we do. You’ve heard before the territories where there’s been an uplift or an increase or decrease in the fees or who’s acquiring what. But we break our territories down because it’s really hard to like someone else. To me. What’s the best performing territory? Or the top ten territories? But we look at it as two things the volume of sales going into that territory that may not necessarily pay the best license fee or MG, and then the top performing territories that are paying the dollars, it’s the top three for the volume is United Kingdom, Canada and USA and Germany, I’m saying Germany and also Israel.

[00:37:21] Aimée Lindorff Top for you, rephrase that. So our top five. US, UK, Canada. Germany Israel.

[00:37:28] Rakel Tansley Yeah, UK, Canada, USA, Germany and Israel. They’re our top five. That’s in the volume of sales. And then the ones that had the biggest bang in the budget was again the UK, North America, USA Germany again and Canada. So our top five. But then when we looked as well at I’ll talk to, nine and ten, Italy and Japan came in at nine and ten where the previous financial year they weren’t even on the Richter of what we were saying. But they had the biggest they were paying the bigger license fees as well.

[00:38:03] Aimée Lindorff And that’s where talking to the marketplace team is really helpful in terms of identifying the regions and territories that might be interested in the content that you are delivering.

[00:38:12] Rakel Tansley Yeah, absolutely. But it all comes down once you’ve got your marketplace attached, it comes down to the deal terms and knowing what the deal terms are, what you are signing up to. And it’s for any producer, it’s all about getting those deal terms right.

[00:38:28] Aimée Lindorff What do you recommend that they look for in those terms?

[00:38:31] Rakel Tansley If you look at the advance or MG, just a couple of little points is. When you’re dealing with internationals and advanced MG The first question you ask is that net withholding tax? Because they might just say, we’re going to give you $200,000. And if there’s no other language in there that could be grossed up. So depending on the withholding tax, depending on the country or instantly, you could have a shortfall in your production budget. So always ask for net of withholding tax and the advances of how much is being cash flow into your production budget, What are the payment milestones and what then needs to be covered by gap financing until you receive those milestone payments because you’re paying high interest on your gap as well and around the payment terms, especially around TB, not for payment terms to be dependent on the release. The number of screens that it has to go out on or cost availability because you might have yours cast attached early and then you got your distributor that comes in and says, actually I need that cast available for PR for 3 to 5 days. But it’s not in your cast agreement. So instantly if there’s a 5% payment that’s due on that milestone, you’ve already got a 5% shortfall. So it’s things like that because ultimately we don’t want there to be shortfalls in production budgets. But I think no matter what, try and hold on to your IP, don’t give it away in the backend or upfront in your finance plan. Rights What rights are being granted? Look at what to withhold possibly like if you were doing kids content, how would you merch rights? Because ultimately you’d want to probably give it to a company that specialises in merchandising and it’s another revenue stream for you and your investors. Formats, clip rights and games. You know, we’re seeing more and more expansion into games in the TV market and international shows. We’re seeing that IP going into games. Look at Netflix. You can play and interact on Netflix now with like Emily in Paris and selling sunsets. And so those existing strong IPS and now they’re turning them into games. You know, we’re all very good at head down bum up, blinkers on because we want to get it funded and made but it’s what possible rights are down the line for your project. So if something does work really well, could you possibly turn it into a game later down the track? And I think the other thing is definitions. Most people will engage a lawyer. You can come and talk to us and we will look at those deal terms and advise and suggest as much as possible. But, you know, you don’t want your TV and your S vod sitting under your video rights when the distributers taking possibly 80% royalty on the video rights when it’s a TV. Yep. So they should be taking a smaller commission and more ideally in favour of the producer and understanding those backend split. So when your project is starting to work, what are the commission and royalties against those rights? Are they inclusive of any sub agent, especially expenses? Are they… who’s share the expenses coming from? Or are they coming off the top? All of that information, as much as it seems trivial and you just go, who cares? I just want to sign the agreement. I just want the money in my finance plan. Ultimately, it’s going to hurt you later down the line. And we’ve seen that recently with producers where we actually successfully either unpicked contracts or we’ve negotiated upfront to make better deal terms for producers, because again, we’re in a very privileged position where we get to see globally what people are paying for across the board.

[00:42:22] Aimée Lindorff And what the trends and expectations of the other areas of the industry are.

[00:42:25] Rakel Tansley Yeah. And you know, you don’t want to be signed into a distributor or a sales agent. Like what’s the term? Is it 15 plus years? Is there a good termination clause to get you out of it if they’re not performing well terms not to be automatically extended or rolled or definitely not in perpetuity, limiting first and last matching rights as well. So you’re not going back and forth constantly negotiating. And I think the biggest thing for Screen Australia’s perspective, we do not like to see interest on MG’s or advances or expenses and especially when, again, knowing the language and you hope your lawyers on to it. But when anyone says, “oh it’s the prime rate plus a percentage”, currently the prime rate is 8.5%, so if that’s that plus prime rate plus 1% or 2%, you’re paying over 10% in interest. You’re never going to see a cent come back to you, and especially if it’s taken on expenses. So the US is the exception. We would accept expense on an advance, but we will not accept any expense on the expenses. However, we’re very mindful here that that’s not always the case and Screen Australia is not at the table. So it’s. Really up to the producer and the lawyer to push back as much as possible, because ultimately you want those back end splits. You want them coming to you. We want you to be sustainable to keep making projects.

[00:43:50] Aimée Lindorff Screen Australia, if you receive funding from Screen Australia is effectively an investor, so they will work with you to make sure that you get the optimum rights. But that’s not to say you shouldn’t have a lawyer engaged.

[00:44:02] Rakel Tansley Absolutely. In an ideal scenario, this is how I’d like it to play out. So you would come to Marketplace early and you’re already got marketplace that you’re in discussions with and you want to go, “Hey, what about these guys? What are they like attached to anything? How do they perform? What Intel does the marketplace have?” And we can help with that. We can help you with relationships or possibly who you could talk to. Or you’ve already got the deal terms and we’re negotiating the deal terms with you and with your lawyer prior to you coming in for funding, because then it just speeds up the process of contracting between the producers, lawyer and the Screen Australia’s lawyer and any other investor who’s a beneficiary, who’s a party to all of that in the waterfall, in the recoupment, but yet always have a lawyer. But we can look at that level of detail and assist producers who haven’t received Sreen Australia funding.

[00:45:03] Aimée Lindorff Even if you do apply for Screen Australia funding, but you’re unsuccessful, you still then have that knowledge, you still then have that brokerage at the beginning where you’ve set up for success regardless of which direction you go for funding.

[00:45:15] Rakel Tansley And even if you were to come in for funding and we’re working out deal terms early in the piece prior to application because I don’t want to see producers with their backs against the wall negotiating because you’re in for funding and the decisions being done and we’re going back and forth and you know, I just, I just need the money or I just need this and can you just agree to these? That’s a really bad position for everyone. No one wants to do that, and it doesn’t do well for ongoing relationships. But if you are unsuccessful for funding, then at least we’ve advocated on your behalf with the deal terms for you to then move forward.

[00:45:54] Aimée Lindorff Before we wrap up, if a producer is going out to market, say, tomorrow, what should they be thinking about?

[00:46:00] Rakel Tansley Firstly, they should already know who they’re meeting with. Don’t just rock up to a market and not have any meetings organised. If it’s TV, have your pitch deck, film, have your first look and just go in knowing with that one key project, don’t try and sell your whole slate.

[00:46:17] Aimée Lindorff Okay, so not having a slate ready, just one project.

[00:46:20] Rakel Tansley If that’s your key focus and that’s what you’re trying to get off the ground there and then that’s absolutely your focus. Because it can get confusing. The sales agent will then, you know, your slate, the sales agent or distributer, will say, “hey, what else have you got?” And then you can rattle off or I can send you materials later, but you focus on the project you want funded there and then to take into production.

[00:46:43] Aimée Lindorff And that ties back into knowing who your audience is doing your research about the sales agent, targeting your pitch to that person or to that company.

00:46:51] Rakel Tansley Absolutely. And knowing which market that you’re going to as well, like you’re not going to can if you have got kids content and TV, you should be going to meet Junior. You know, it’s you know, it’s one of those things. It’s yeah, you need to do the research. It’s just as important as anything else.

[00:47:10] Aimée Lindorff Excellent. And you can find those resources in the show notes and on the Screen Australia website.

[00:47:15] Rakel Tansley Fantastic.

[00:47:16] Aimée Lindorff Thank you so much Rakel. I really appreciate your time.

[00:47:18] Rakel Tansley Thanks for having me.

[00:47:21] Aimée Lindorff A big thanks to Screen Australia’s Marketplace Manager, Rakel Tansley, for joining us this episode. Head to the Screen Australia website for more information about the resources available through Marketplace. Or get in touch with Rakel and the team at marketplace@screenaustralia.gov.au don’t forget to subscribe to Screen Australia’s industry news for the latest funding, announcements, opportunities and more. Thanks for listening.

Director Devina Saberi shares the inspiration for new documentary series Growing Pains, as well as the challenges and opportunities of documentary storytelling for online platforms, and advice for early career filmmakers.

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For early career filmmakers, social media offers a path from development to audience says Devina Saberi, director of new online documentary series Growing Pains. The episodic structure of TikTok and immediacy of community response has opened up the series beyond the story and engaged audiences in unexpected ways.

“We’re able to immediately respond, even while it’s being released, to people’s questions about the series,“ she says. “And it’s been nice to have conversation with people on that platform […] as it comes out in real time.”

Focussed on the experiences of three young people from culturally diverse backgrounds – and close friends of the director – as they navigate career, love, and family, the 20-part series reflected the personal and professional choices Saberi was facing as she made what would be her first longer form screen project.

“I knew I wanted to tell these stories, and I knew that I wanted to do it in a certain way, and I didn’t know how yet, but I saw [TikTok] as an opportunity,” she says. “Online funding has been an entryway for me into the industry.”

But it wasn’t without its challenges. With each episode up to one minute, building an algorithm-friendly narrative was an ongoing process of filming enough to capture the nuance of these very intimate stories, while adhering to the platform format and audience expectation – and as Saberi shares, that balance can be tricky. “Trying to capture that nuance can be hard, [and] there are lots of different formats you can do it in, but it takes a lot of consideration.”

Throughout the episode, Saberi talks about structuring stories for social media platforms, supporting community storytelling, and the challenges of observational documentary – especially while filming your friends.

“When you’re filming real life, it never goes exactly how you would have anticipated. And in some of these storylines, it did not go at all how we anticipated it.”

Growing Pains is available now on TikTok.

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Director Paul Clarke breaks down the elements of a music documentary, and the inspiration and process behind his latest feature Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line.

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For award-winning documentarian, and director of entertainment media company BlinkTV, Paul Clarke, developing a documentary is like creating an album. And he would know.

Writer of the Award-winning John Farnham: Finding The Voice, Clarke’s extensive experience in music and entertainment for the screen has found him working with some of the biggest names in entertainment like David Bowie, Metallica, Kylie Minogue, and the Wiggles, as well as creating Australia’s presence at Eurovision, and producing Australian music entertainment shows like Recovery and Spicks and Specks.

Clarke’s latest feature Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line celebrates the 50-year career of the unconventional rock band.

The different elements of factual storytelling – researching story, sourcing footage, interviewing talent, and licensing music – parallel the alchemy of creating a great album. “You’re recording a whole lot of different indices, a whole lot of different drum patterns, guitar patterns, keyboard pieces,” Clarke says. “You’re just putting it all down there and you’re thinking, that feels good. There’s an odometer in your head. And it’s the same {process} when you’re doing interviews.”

As Clarke shares on the latest episode of the Screen Australia podcast, whether sourcing archive from fans, negotiating music licenses, or getting the best out of your interview subject, a partnership based on trust is central to the success of the story.

Clarke worked closely with the band and their fans to bring the story to life, and showcasing a 50-year career of one of Australia’s most prolific – and contrary – bands was not without its challenges, particularly when it came to finding footage and images from their early career.

And while story is the foundation on which to curate footage and approach interviews, he recommends leaving room in the development for the unexpected.

“You’re pressing yourself […] to surprise people and to listen because people throw you hooks. If you’re listening and you grab on to those hooks, they open up and it becomes much more of an engagement,” he says.

“You can’t push down too much on what you want. You have to let it play out like a recording session. You have to let the process unfold and then work with your editor to build it into be something that people will believe in.”

Throughout the episode, Clarke shares his approach to music documentary format, navigating the complexities of footage and music licensing, and celebrating the legacy of the Oils.

Distributed by Roadshow Films, Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line is in Australian cinemas on 4 July 2024.

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Writer and director Tig Terera on the inspiration for new series Swift Street, and his journey to the small screen.

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From pictures on a secondhand 35mm to his acclaimed short films, Tig Terera’s work has always borrowed heavily from life, and that was equally important in the development and creation of new series Swift Street.

Described as Afro-punk heist drama, the Zimbabwe born-Melbourne raised Terera is keen to stress the series isn’t biographical, but Swift Street is close to home…literally. Growing up on the eponymous Swift Street in inner Melbourne, Terera was also keen to ensure any longform project reflected the community, the culture, the people of the area.

“My narrative work is sort of a border between narrative and documentary,” he says. “If all my footsteps throughout my life could just glow on the streets [of Swift Street], every location we saw would have my footsteps around it.”

The series sees 21 year old Elsie (Tanzyn Crawford) compelled to help her hapless hustler father Robert (Cliff Curtis) repay $26,000 to local crime boss or suffer the loss of a limb or two. They’re helped and hindered by a motley crew of locals in Keiynan Lonsdale, Bernie van Tiel, Alfred Chuol and Eliza Matengu amongst others.

As his first longform project, Terera had a clear vision for the series, and to help maintain that vision surrounded himself with a creative team, cast and crew that understood the area and characters intimately – director Nicholas Verso, cinematographer and other HODs were locals, and intimately knew the world, lending their own experiences to the tone and aesthetic of the series.

But as creator, Terera was central to the balance of comedic and tragic that shapes the drama. “I really do think it’s just got to do with speaking to me for hours and hours. You know, I think that’s what it is. I’m one of those people, you know if we’re not laughing, we’re crying. So let’s laugh,” he says about the pitching the crime-family drama and crewing the series.

“We started quite small with [a] video I made, just talking about everything apart from the story of Swift. This is a sort of five minute video I’m talking about everything apart from the story, and I intercut it with the different films and clips that I’ve resonated with throughout the years, and that also feels very Swift. And that really was a major asset. It gave investors something more than just words on a page. […] – whether to investors or the other writers, and then plenty of different types of Bibles and lookbooks had that specific tone. And luckily it came out on screen.”

Throughout the podcast, Terera shares his experiences creating Swift Street with Magpie Pictures, his hands-on approach to skills development, how to authentically reflect community through storytelling, and advice for early career storytellers.

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Learn more about the new below-the-line training and professional development initiative Screen Careers.

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There are hundreds of potential roles in below-the-line production, says Denise Eriksen, Head of Training and Programmes of the newly launched Screen Careers industry development initiative. As the possibilities and opportunities continue to grow in an expanding screen sector, it’s critical that below-the-line – or BTL – crews are able to grow alongside it. And for Eriksen, that lies in career development and professional training.

“You’ve got to think about yourself as a multi-faceted business and you’re a small business. […] There’s not a culture in the below-the-line people thinking like lawyers or something [in regards to career progression],” she says. “We have to train ourselves and we have to inculcate that culture of wanting to learn more as you progress through your career.”

In the latest episode of the Screen Australia podcast, she’s joined by Ken Crouch, Screen Australia’s Head of Industry Development.

Throughout the podcast, Denise and Ken share their insight into the below-the-line sector, and discuss the challenges facing below-the-line workers, the role of training in developing the screen industry, and the resources and opportunities available to BTL crew to build responsive and sustainable careers. Eriksen shares the philosophy and development of Screen Careers, alongside details of their industry-led programming, while Crouch identifies the challenges for BTL practitioners and insight into the role of professional development within the industry.

“Because they’re going from gig to gig, there’s not really anyone looking out for their lifelong or continuing professional development. People are moving in and out of different roles and even across different industries as well, so because of that, we are seeing the workforce kind of expanding. As it expands, it needs to respond to what is happening in the industry and across the sector, but also, we need to respond to where we’re seeing the gaps and where local producers are experiencing challenges when it comes to filling roles as well,” Crouch says. “For our sector to be successful, it’s really important that we are investing in the workforce for the continued growth of our industry. And the workforce that drives our industry is our below-the-line crew.”

For more information about the programs and initiatives on offer through Screen Careers, head to their website.

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