Bigger than ‘Braindead’
By Jason Smith,
We’re good at Hollywood blockbusters. But who watches our own films?
[Metrics]
There are two parts to the story of New Zealand’s screen industry expansion of the last ten years. The first is about talent development, industry capability expansion and inward investment, driven by the Hollywood blockbusters such as the Lord of the Rings films, King Kong and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This is already so well told you must have been living in the Mines of Moria to have missed it.
The second thread in the New Zealand screen industry story is about the growth of New Zealand content in films: stories being told in our own way. This is the stuff the New Zealand Film Commission funds and measures, like Whale Rider, In My Father’s Den and The World’s Fastest Indian.
National film development agencies in almost every country work with one eye on local screen industry development and one eye on Hollywood which, it almost goes without saying, is bigger than Ben-Hur.
Revenue from paying audiences is the motor on which the industry runs. While the box office alone can’t tell us whether a film is a critical triumph or whether it made a profit, the key measure for what’s going on with screen successes is the box office figures for national content. Chart one shows the share of national content in cinema for New Zealand, Canada and Australia, countries which actively develop local screen industries.
Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Film Commission, Motion Picture Distributors Association (NZ), New Zealand Film Commission, Statistics New Zealand, Statistics Canada, Telefilm Canada
So how are we doing? Well, it varies wildly, reflecting the relatively small number of local content films made in this country each year (remember, this chart doesn’t include the Lord of the Rings trilogy, nor other Hollywood-produced movies released during the period from December 2001 to 2005). It shows we’re becoming increasingly keen to watch Kiwi stories being told on screen, while Australians are less interested in watching theirs—probably because they are too busy watching ours!
Chart two looks at the per-capita box office. It shows that in 2005 New Zealanders spent more of their money watching Kiwi stories than Canadians and Australians.
Reasons for our positive trends could be that:
- Increasingly sophisticated movie-going audiences like watching local movies
- Film producers understand the local market better
- Movie makers here are telling our stories better, more frequently
Perhaps there’s been a patriotic flush in audiences who like seeing New Zealand and our people portrayed on the silver screen—maybe even a glimpse of a neighbour as an extra or a local place as a film location.
One thing’s for sure: New Zealand film performance at the national box office is doing fine. It may be small, but it’s punching above its weight. Sounds like another Kiwi story.
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