Producers Aren’t Supported While Developing New Ideas – Screen Producers Australia (SPA) is calling for industry-wide reform for development funding and IP rights arrangements after a member survey revealed unsustainable financial pressures during the development phase of film and television projects.
The new SPA survey shows that screen producers are increasingly being asked to bear the financial and creative burden of project development without adequate compensation for their work, resulting in a growing strain across the entire sector. The survey’s findings also point to a stark inequity in the current funding model, which fails to recognise and recompense producers adequately for their work.
To address these issues, SPA is calling for an increase to the amount of development funding available, and a restructure of development funding models to ensure adequate producer fees, corporate overheads, and essential staffing costs are accounted for. Importantly, producers must share in the success of their projects through a “rights reversion” framework for the IP they create to be sustainable businesses and help fund their next project.
“There’s no doubt that Australia’s screen producers are under significant financial pressure, something we have been hearing anecdotally for a while now. If nothing changes and producers remain under this pressure, then the whole screen ecology will be damaged with new entrants and smaller operations squeezed out and unable to sustain an ongoing screen business operation,”
– SPA CEO Matthew Deaner said.
On most projects in development, there’s a mix of producer money and external funding, however, the SPA survey found:
- Only 10% of projects that proceed to production receive sufficient external funding to cover all the development costs; and
- On 26% of projects that proceed to production, the producer themselves fully or almost fully (80-100%) funded the development costs.
In addition, when producers do receive development funding:
- 62% say that funding is not sufficient to cover producer costs nor the rising third-party costs of development, including writers’ fees, script editors, note takers, legal fees, office hire, option fees, catering costs; and
- 57% say they have not received any amount to cover their own fees (Producer Fee) or to cover corporate overheads in the last 3 years.
Producer members also agreed that there was an explicit expectation on them to defer their producer fees during the development phase, often working unpaid for months, if not years, on projects that may never reach production.
“When producers play such a crucial role in the development phase of a screen project, there is currently a clear imbalance between producers and other creative professionals engaged in a project that needs to be addressed. The reality is that producers are usually at the end of the queue for receiving any financial recompense,”
– Mr Deaner said.
“These pressures are in part due to the extremely difficult business conditions in the Australian screen industry. Unregulated streaming platforms have been writing their own commissioning rules for a long time now, changing the nature of commissioning for everyone. The lack of a ‘rights reversion’ framework as exists in other countries exacerbates this problem for producers.
“Unfortunately, this phenomenon has also coincided with other important commissioners such as the ABC, SBS and different screen agencies operating within restricted budgets for this work which has inevitably flowed on to producers and their screen businesses.
“There’s no doubt that the Australian screen industry is rapidly approaching a development crisis point and that action is needed to address these issues. It is untenable for screen producers to not be paid something reasonable for their work.
“If we don’t have sustainable producers and screen businesses, our spirit of creative entrepreneurship will wither, and Australian audiences will find it harder and harder to see and hear their own screen stories. It is long past time for some structural reform to our industry, or we will continue to face the prospect of a bleak future in which very few will survive,”
– Mr Deaner said.
SPA will continue to address issues surrounding development funding with government, stakeholders and members over the coming months. Download the Fact Sheet here.
Media Release – SPA
Link to SPA HERE
TV Central Screen Australia content HERE
Producers Aren’t Supported While Developing New Ideas
