Over the past five years, we have travelled to over 20 different festivals and markets in various capacities, which also includes as a sales and marketing company. During extensive interactions with literally dozens of international content buyers, we have learnt volumes about the supply-and-demand tug-of-war for independent content.
Content, of course, covers a very broad spectrum, as do the markets and festivals we attend. From feature films to telenovelas, from social impact documentaries to reality series, there are different markets constantly demanding specific content.
Each type of content, as well as each territory and platform, has specific requirements.
However, it is clear that the biggest challenge for us as distributors is that by the time we encounter the content to take on for international sales, it is completed and cannot be adapted to the market’s demand. Producers and filmmakers in South Africa almost never work with an international sales company during the development of their content and are not encouraged to do so by the various funding agents that fund development and production.
Filmmakers are developing in a ‘South African Bubble’ and speculating on what the rest of the globe wants with no real data or input from these markets.
South African content has some key advantages however; firstly South African content has extremely high production value, mostly due to the quality of crew and gear we have readily available. We can produce on par with any country up to studio standards of quality and due to the current exchange rate, we can offer this quality at a fraction of the price the markets are used to.
A relevant lesson from the American Film Market is that internationally, the ideal production budget trend for independent films is $1 million or below and most top theatrical productions coming out of South Africa fall in that budget range. With an average of only 25% of films presented at market securing distribution, production budgets are an important determining factor which stands in our favour.
Secondly we have fresh stories and untapped creative minds which can offer something new that isn’t a rehash of a story already told before to global audiences.
What locally produced films and content need, however, in order to sell internationally is a more global and less colloquial perspective. If filmmakers want to sell their content outside of the African continent and diaspora, which only makes up a small fraction of the total global audience and, more importantly, a tiny fraction of the global buyers, then our content needs to be developed with the global market in mind.
Most US buyers and distributors for example, will not even consider content that has even the slightest amount of subtitles and the US generally does not dub any content.
It is also very clear from markets like MIPTV and MIPCOM that multiple episodic content, such as scripted and unscripted series are making far more money than once-off films. Buyers and broadcasters want to fill as many hours in their programming schedules as possible with a single meeting and acquisition contract. For example, many Scandinavian buyers and broadcasters will not take a meeting with a content provider if the desired sale is less than 10 hours.
Festival success and accolades do not necessarily mean commercial success for a film, and although festivals and accolades do assist in boosting the careers of those individuals behind the film, our sector will never be taken seriously by government and investors until we create sustainable independent content production companies that are creating jobs and paying taxes.
It is only then that our sector will see consistent funding and – only then – will the demands of producers and filmmakers for support be met.
Compiled by Mayenzeke Baza, director of International Relations for the Association for Transformation in Film and Television (ATFT), and Pascal Schmitz, founder and director of AAA Entertainment.
