1 July 2015
ATTN: Mr Malcolm Roberts,
Chairman
Queensland Competition Authority
GPO BOX 2257
Brisbane QLD 4001
By Email:
Issue Paper – Industry Assistance in Queensland – Public Submission
In 2006 Carbon Media started with a simple remit - to give a positive voice to
Indigenous Australians through screen, delivering entertaining and engaging
story telling that shares the cultural, tradition and heritage of our first peoples.
Nearly ten years on Carbon Media has produced over 100 hours of quality
television from children’s shows to documentaries for free to air broadcasters
ABC and NITV. While Carbon’s business model applies income from the
commercial business arm to subsidise our television arm it in part its
sustainability to the support we have received from Screen Queensland and
other screen agencies along the way.
Over the best part of a decade Carbon has received various levels of
development funding, production investment and market travel grants from
Screen Queensland. To give context and as a guide these projects include:
•
•
•
•
•
Go Lingo (50 ep) game show for NITV and ABC – development funding
and production investment
Handball Heroes (20 eps x 5’) interstitial for ABC3 – development
funding
Sesame Street Season 45 – 90 sec x 3 clips – production investment
The Time Shifters (26 x 24’) live action teen drama comedy series for
Network 10 – development funding
Market Travel – MIP TV, MIP Junior, Kidscreen, Asia Animation
Summit – Travel Grant
Support for shows like Go Lingo, Handball Heroes and Sesame Street
enabled these projects to progress into production – a real challenge without
screen funding, particularly in the early days of Carbon’s infancy. While these
are small productions, Carbon Media and independent producers Essential
Media and Entertainment (credits – Jack Irish, Rake, Saving Mr Banks), have
partnered to produce The Timeshifters, a 26 x 24’ live action teen comedy
drama with a AUS $15.4 million budget in Queensland. Children’s television
series like The TimeShifters are notoriously difficult to fund, due to the smaller
license fees on offer from broadcasters (as a result of limitations to monetize
due to strict advertising constraints in children’s programing slots) and a high
level of competition in the market. As a Queensland based project,
production investment from Screen Queensland (obviously subject to
application and assessment) forms an integral part of the financial plan. A
potential decrease in available production investment from local screen
agencies (in Queensland or elsewhere in Australia) puts high quality and high
ROI projects like this at risk. They simply can’t get made and/or have to move
locations to find suitable funding partners.
The benefits of all Queensland based productions small and big is the
generation of employment opportunities for local talent and production crew
and creation of training opportunities for emerging production crew – this in
turn helps to perpetuate a sustainable screen industry. A reduction in screen
funding will have a negative impact in industry sustainability – little or no jobs
leads to little or no industry as local talent and production crew head south or
overseas to look for work – a great loss to our state.
Beyond employment and training, large-scale feature films and television
series, inject economic boosts into local communities. This is true of Pirates of
the Caribbean, San Andreas, Railway Man, Big Brother and the like where
accommodation, tourism spend etc with local businesses and suppliers brings
economic benefits. Even much smaller productions like Carbon’s Handball
Heroes that was shot across multiple locations from the Torres Strait to Bondi
contribute positively to local businesses along the way and help build
communities.
In addition to the more obvious benefits the film and television industry bring
to Queensland are the indirect ones. For Carbon, this comes back to our core
vision to give Indigenous Australians a positive voice through engaging
storytelling and sharing of culture and tradition. This is true for the bulk of our
projects, with a great example in our first clip for global television giant
Sesame Street, 5 Kangaroos which achieved television history as the first
Australian content ever to be included in the show’s 44 year history.
5 Kangaroos was part of Sesame Street’s iconic Letters and Numbers
segment, aired in more than 140 countries worldwide with an audience of
millions of children and families. The clip was shot by a Queensland
production crew and featured Australia’s Indigenous pop artist, Jessica
Mauboy and children from the Yipirinya School in Alice Springs hopping and
counting their way around the desert to the number 5. Clips like this (and 7
more Carbon has produced in Queensland with local talent and production
crew), with their extensive global reach, go a long way to promote cultural
diversity, social inclusion and Indigenous culture and artwork, helping to shift
negative stereotypes about Australia’s first peoples along the way. It’s difficult
to put a dollar value on that, other than to say it’s significant.
Carbon’s ongoing relationship with Sesame Street has also brought the added
benefit of opening doors for other Australian filmmakers with a number of
producers now working with the organisation (other Queensland production
companies included). Screen Queensland funding and broad support of these
projects and relationships have played and continue to play a tangible part in
making this happen.
Film and television content that feature Indigenous stories, tradition, language
and culture and in this instance, Queensland specific Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander stories play an important role in:
•
•
•
•
Fostering inclusion and connectivity between Indigenous and nonIndigenous Australians alike
Educating and informing
Shifting and breaking down stereotypes
Perpetuating our oldest living culture
Compelling Queensland Indigenous content consumed traditionally through
theatrical release or broadcast and/or digitally on demand, as today’s
preferred consumption method, ultimately contributes towards Closing the
Gap in it’s own way. Carbons’ works alone support this hypothesis – for
example, documentary series From The Ashes and Proppanow, the mobile
app for the ABC First Footprints and our upcoming national rugby league
program for NITV to be produced in Queensland in 2016.
Compromising this through reduced screen funding in the future, will erode
these opportunities and suppress the Queensland film and television industry.
It’s a given as screen producers we must continually innovate and strive for
sustainability and growth to be viable. Done in strategic partnership with
adequately funded Screen Queensland will help continue to build a healthy
screen industry.
As a proud Indigenous Queensland screen producer and avid supporter of
Screen Queensland, I ask you take these comments into consideration as
part of your industry review.
Yours sincerely
Wayne Denning
Managing Director and Executive Producer
Carbon Media