In an environment of tumbling economies both in the US and Europe, it made sense that the International Film Production panel Saturday morning at Utopia Studios focused on which countries actively offer the best packages for filmmakers and the cultural hurdles that face any filmmaker hoping to expand their production horizons beyond the domestic film incentive packages available in the US.
The panel was moderated by film critic David D’Arcy of Screen International, the BBC, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
A surprise guest on the morning’s panel was Cary Fukunaga, the young filmmaker who directed the 2010 film adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” for Focus Pictures. Fukunaga won the best student film award at the 2004 Woodstock Film Festival and returns as a seasoned filmmaker with advice for filmmakers hoping to enter the international film scene.
Living in England for the last two years, Fukunaga said that large film budgets can often be eaten up by working in a more expensive country. He described his effort to get additional footage of the moors for “Jane Eyre” with a guerrilla film crew he thought would consist of three camera staffers. Instead, producers sent a crew of 30, including three assistants to keep the tea table from blowing away on the windswept hills.
Larry Fessenden, who shot “City Unplugged” in Estonia, touted the benefits of working in countries that offer good packages for filmmakers and hiring local crews.
“I wanted to shoot in Alaska, but they don’t have a film society. Canada didn’t work either. But then the Icelandic Film Commission got involved and gave us a sweet deal,” Fessenden said. He’d learned from his years of making horror movies in the Hudson Valley that things often go much more smoothly when you hire local crews and build community from within rather than coming in as an unknown foreign entity.
“We hired an Icelandic crew. They all knew each other and it was a remote location. But it created a robust environment for making a film and we could tap into their local knowledge,” Fessenden said. “So Get local talent. It inspires loyalty, engages the community and gets you into the rhythms of the area.”
Germany has a reputation for generous film packages, but German filmmaker Katja Esson said the strings attached to the funding can often skew the quality of the final product.
“There’s a lot of available funding, but you have to spend 150 percent of what you’re getting in the region,” Esson said, and advised extreme caution in signing contracts. She described her experiences making the film “Skydancer” about Mohawk Indians.
“You have to understand that in Germany, we’re raised with the idea of the Noble Savage. It’s different than in America,” Esson said. Her film, that was intended to follow Mohawk Indians on their reservation, had to include the iconic images of the long haired, bare chested American Indians in order to satisfy investors. This compromise on stereotypes brought some derision from Mohawks who later saw the film.
The reasons private investors are willing to fund films usually has more to do with status than monetary return. Hilla Medalia, who produced “To Die in Jerusalem” and “After the Storm” said her investors are often more interested in supporting social issues in a public way than the percentage of profit they’d later make by doing so.
“It’s good PR for them,” Medalia summed up. Fukanaga said private investors often also want the access to celebrities that their film financing affords them.
While it’s not that common for foreign film teams to come to America to shoot, Fukanaga noted that all of the films he encountered in production in the UK were being financed by Americans.
There comes a time when staying true to a film’s vision means saying no to attractive foreign packages, if only for the sanity of it.
Fessenden described a proposed American remake of the Spanish film “The Orphanage” that he planned to shoot on Cape Ann in Massachusetts. However the producers hoped to save money by dressing up a location in South Africa with New England flavor. “You’re remaking a Spanish film as American and you’re shooting in South Africa? Fortunately, the film was never made,” Fessenden sighed.
–Deborah Medenbach
