The Australian Directors' Guild is worried about cuts to feature film fees for some of its members and is unhappy about a lack of consultation with Screen Australia on remuneration.
Eleven years since the introduction of the Producer Offset, Screen Australia has expressed concern about an increase in applications for feature films that have unreasonably high fees.
The Federal Government's proposed changes to the Producer Offset’s ‘Gallipoli’ clause would effectively limit the ability for Australian productions shooting offshore to use non-resident Australian actors, directors and crew, and therefore opportunities to raise international finance, industry bodies have argued.
If the government were to adopt the recent House of Reps inquiry’s recommendations to level each of the offsets to 30 per cent and decouple the Location and PDV Offsets, the total value that offset-supported production adds to the Australian economy every year would grow by almost 35 per cent to $1.6 billion by 2021-22.
After 25 years as an actor Rachel Griffiths made a discovery which shocked her while negotiating her fee to produce her first film, the Michelle Payne biopic 'Ride Like a Girl': Most feature producers get paid peanuts.
That the Producer Offset be adjusted to 30 per cent for all qualifying productions, regardless of platform, is among the key recommendations to come out of the parliamentary inquiry into the growth and sustainability of the screen industry.
“I agree about not rushing into production until your script is pitch perfect but the agencies must recognise that unless you have Enterprise support (I never have), there is almost no support for producers to do this,” Maslin tells IF.
Screen Australia CEO Graeme Mason says it is incumbent to consider how the Producer Offset can be further evolved.