A partnership between Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand Film Commission
Innovation the key
Lawrence McDonald reflects on his time as the "continuity guy" on the assessment panel of the Screen Innovation Production Fund.
The image of a juggler or a tightrope walker often comes to mind when I think about the skills I need to guide me through a funding round of the Screen Innovation Production Fund.
It's important to keep a variety of options in play, maintain a balanced view and not lose sight of the Fund's goals. Each round brings forth applications from across the spectrum of film and video-making practices: short narrative films; documentaries; dance films; animation projects; non-narrative short films and moving-image based installation projects; and, more recently, new media projects and digital video features.
They all make their particular claims on a limited amount of money and must compete for the affections of the panel. In the latest funding round, for instance, there were 97 applications requesting more than $1.5 million. Of these, 21 projects were offered funding totalling $270,259.
Applicants are encouraged to work within the Fund's guidelines and make links between their projects and the Fund's criteria. Panel members must also invoke the criteria when they're assessing the applications.
But this can never be a straightforward measurement. One reason for this is that the Fund occupies a unique position within New Zealand's moving-image production. As a partnership between Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand Film Commission, it must contribute to both the wider New Zealand film industry and the development of that broad and multifarious terrain known as the visual arts. And given the large number of documentary applications it always receives, the Fund sometimes finds itself compensating for the deficiencies of our television service.
The key word in the Fund's name is innovation and it recurs throughout the list of criteria. Thankfully, the guidelines are sufficiently broad to allow various kinds and degrees of innovation, enabling the panel to negotiate the sometimes conflicting demands made on the Fund because of its unique role.
Established in 1997, the Screen Innovation Production Fund replaced the Creative Film and Video Fund. But despite the change in name, short narrative films still constitute the bulk of applications in each round. Animations, dance films, non-narrative films and video art (single channel and installation) usually feature but rarely, if ever, in any great quantity.
A new development since the advent of the twenty-first century is the low-budget, digital video feature film and a number of these projects have received either full production or post-production funding. Recently, however, these applications have levelled off to a handful per round.
The Fund is especially interested in fostering a range of emerging talent and it's great to see a growing number of applications that reflect the multicultural composition of New Zealand society.
I've also noticed a significant number of documentary projects involving New Zealanders operating in international contexts. Although the Fund has limited resources (approximately $250,000 per round) and the grants are relatively small for moving-image productions (on average, $15,000), a hallmark of the projects supported is that the filmmakers often achieve extraordinary results with modest amounts of money.
Over the years, there's been a considerable growth in the number of tertiary educational institutions offering film and video production courses. This has resulted in increased applications to the Fund because it's the logical place to go for graduates of these courses wanting to make their own projects.
One of the benefits of serving on the panel for a number of years is the opportunity I've had to witness the emergence and development of exciting new talents, some of them relatively recent graduates. Among those who have received funding for several projects are Florian Habicht, Tom Reilly, Briar March, Alex Monteith, Gregory King, Campbell Walker, Patrick Gillies and the Simmonds brothers.
It's heartening too that the Fund can play a part in sustaining or re-inventing the careers of established filmmakers such as Alistair Barry and Michael Heath; and established figures from other media such as the choreographers Daniel Belton and Shona McCullough who have received funding for several dance films.
The selection panel for the latest funding round consisted of Lydia Wevers (Chair of the panel and member of the Arts Board of Creative New Zealand), Fiona Bartlett, Claudette Hauiti, Lawrence McDonald and Sandy Gildea.