By Marie-Louise Olson
Making films on deferred payments is an often essential, albeit precarious, way for novice filmmakers to break into the local industry.
Around 10 features are made each year on deferred payments, mostly by up-and-coming directors and producers, who cannot find investors or funding bodies willing to pump money into their first projects.
However, the vast majority of films on deferred payments return nothing to the people who work in them, according to the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) director of equity Simon Whipp.
“If you are going into a deferred payment film, thinking you are going to make money out of it, you’re starting with the wrong presumption,” he says.
Whipp has worked in the union for 15 years and says he has only seen a handful of successful cases where people have been paid, partly due to the type of contracts people sign.
“There are many deferred payment contracts that are appalling,” he says. “And many of them don't actually have a trigger point for when [the deferred payments] will be paid.”
The MEAA has a recommended standard contract, available on their website, which ensures the deferrals are paid whenever a sale or other commercial transaction is made for the film.
According to Whipp, if the producer does not have the money to pay the deferrals, they are required to seek a variation of the agreement.
“If a film has very minimal interest and can’t get a television sale or a distributor that is interested in picking it up and selling it into cinemas, then there is not going to be enough money to pay everybody their deferrals,” he says.
“That’s when the producer has to come back to the union and cast and ask for another arrangement.”
Katrina Fleming is producing the feature film Triple Happiness using deferred payments and says the local film industry does not have a good entry level system.
“I can see why a lot of films are made on deferrals and never make money, because it’s high risk. It’s an expensive art, and there’s no other way for people to cut their teeth and get experience,” she says.
Fleming attributes the problem to Australia's small population, which provides limited opportunities for a return on investment.
“I do not believe that filmmakers want to make films where they don't get paid. They just can’t, because the cost of filmmaking is prohibitive,” she says.
Two notable feature films were made last year using deferred payments: Van Diemen’s Land and The Marriage of Figaro.
Biker comedy The Marriage of Figaro's estimated $400,000 production budget was largely deferred and cost $60,000 upfront.
The estimated $800,000 budget for Van Diemen’s Land – a film about the notorious Australian convict Alexander Pearce – was comprised of $260,000 in cash (largely funded by auf der Heide, co-writer-actor Oscar Redding and friends and family) and more than $300,000 in deferrals.
The remainder was invested by Screen Australia to fund the 35mm film print some three months after its premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival.
Writer-director Jonathan auf der Heide is confident that working on deferred payments was the right thing to do. The film grossed more than $300,000 at the box office.
“We were completely in charge from start to finish, which is a freedom that is very rare for first-time filmmakers,” he says.
“We didn’t have a big money man telling us we needed to have a certain actor or a certain element of blood and gore. We made a film we wanted to make.”
Van Diemen's Land producer Maggie Miles says the film was organised according to awards rates, and the 25-strong cast and crew received the relevant allowances, a portion of which was deferred.
She says that, although it isn’t sustainable for the film industry, deferred payments are not necessarily a bad thing.
“I find it really fantastic that films like ours can pop up now and again and can yield opportunities for people who see it as a stepping stone to prove themselves in the industry. Some of our production partners have now got so much work that they can hardly keep up with it.”
This article originally appeared in the February 2010 issue of INSIDEFILM. The Marriage of Figaro will be released on DVD on August 25.