By Simon de Bruyn
ScreenWest plans to tighten its funding guidelines to encourage higher employment of West Australians in key production roles in state based projects, according to comments made at the state agency’s funding review forum on Friday.
According to point-by-point updates made to the WA Film and Television Institute’s Twitter feed during the forum, ScreenWest chief executive Ian Booth announced a raft of initiatives designed to ensure the agency’s programs meet its strategic plan.
Topics discussed at the meeting were:
- In four years 48 features have been given development funding and only four have gone into production;
- WA is still most successful at documentaries and children’s drama;
- There will be more focus on 360 degree commissioning and digital development;
- ScreenWest need more funding to support growth in digital and cross media but its hard to increase funding in the current economic climate;
- There was a proposal to dump big events like SSBP or AIDC in favour of small events;
- This may result in more travel assistance to let WA people go to events interstate;
- Attachment funding may allow WA filmmakers to work interstate, and there might be more long-term attachments in the future;
- Travel funding might be capped per company or per individual;
- ScreenWest could offer two $60,000 grants for business development; and,
- ScreenWest will tighten guidelines to encourage more employment of WA filmmakers in key roles such as writers, directors and cinematographers;
ScreenWest held the forum at the Perth Cultural Gallery on Friday 23 January to discuss the interim report on the ScreenWest Funding Development Program Review which was released in December 2008.
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates, which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Film Victoria, Transmission Films and Palace are some other industry parties that use Twitter for updates.