By all accounts, the Australian film industry is under the pump.
Apparently, independent Aussie films are lucky to pull $3 million at the box office and usually cost between $3 million and $10 million to make.
Not difficult sums to work out.
Those films that do manage to get close to that $3 million mark are the relatively big ones like Romulus My Father that have actual marketing and publicity budgets.
This situation leaves the others to survive on word-of mouth. Only they don’t usually stay at cinemas long enough for word to get passed through enough mouths that are attached to bums which will end up on cinema seats.
People in all sections of the industry seem to agree that the business model is faulty.
Although it isn’t as faulty as the one Australian independent theatre makers are currently negotiating.
Independent films at least have budgets that include paying cast and crew, whereas it’s pretty rare to find an independent theatre production that manages to pay for its public liability insurance and time in the performance space, let alone its director, performers, and the myriad of highly skilled behind the scenes players it takes to put even the most humble of shows on the boards.
The comparison may not be that of apples with apples, but the two are related artforms: both tell stories through image and sound; both need collaboration between several people; and actors, directors and writers often cross over and back from one form to the other.
Film and theatre are two of the more expensive artforms because they take a lot of equipment and a group of people to create a piece.
To practice as an actor or director or lighting designer, you need a specific project to work on.
It’s not like being a writer, musician, dancer, painter, sculptor—those forms of expression you can practice on your own with a pen and paper, instrument, the right shoes, canvas and paint, clay or wood or a piece of rock and a chisel.
If you’re moved to express what’s in you through one of those mediums, you can do so by yourself, in your own time, outlaying no more than a couple of hundred dollars, and without needing to relay on convincing other people they want to consume what you produce.
Sure, you don’t make any money off it unless you convince someone that they want to swap it for your art, but you can still do it.
And doing it, in the end, is what allows an artist in any medium to hone their craft, get better at expressing themselves in a way that resonates with others.
