Should British filmmakers be more independent?

Mark takes a look at the future of British film funding and asks whether Cameron's "commercially successful" films should seek independent backing...

Much of the response to David Cameron's recent call for Lottery funding to be awarded to “commercially successful” films has been focused around the fact that he doesn't really know what he's talking about. Well, no, he doesn't, but his latest statement coincides with the British Film Institute's “A Future For British Film” report, which outlines a number of steps that should be taken to improve the output of British cinema.

One of the major points of the report is that major broadcasters should be encouraged to invest more in the production and distribution of home-grown films, addressing the main deficiency in the British film industry; namely that it's not an industry at all. You'll often hear talk of the Big Six studios in Hollywood, (Disney, Warner Bros, Fox, Paramount, Sony and Universal) but the UK doesn't even have one major studio to its name.

Look at the Harry Potter films, which are apparently the ideal model of British filmmaking, in Cameron's eyes. They're co-produced between the UK and the US, just like many other commercially successful British films also draw on co-funding and international co-operation to cover their budgets. Putting their success aside, the reason why the Potter films were so consistently good is because they were made in the UK, drawing on the huge national talent pool, while the marketing and distribution was left to the big guns in the US.

Hollywood is not always a creative business, but the separation of functions in the UK generally keeps creative morale high. Cameron's narrow view that filmmakers should be making more “films that people want to watch” is so patently absurd that it has already been debunked all over the place. The point of this article is to ask another question: given the general quality of Britain's cinematic output right now, should these commercially successful filmmakers benefit from Lottery funding, or should they be the ones seeking independent funding?

After all, the most infamous case of a UK Film Council movie that was designed to be commercially successful is probably Sex Lives of the Potato Men, a 2004 film which brought Gareth from The Office and that bloke from the PG Tips adverts together at last. On a budget of £1.8 million, this tripe made a grand total of £673,328 at the box office, and was used as a stick with which to beat the UKFC up until its demise last year.

If you need another example, look at the misguided Horne and Corden Hammer-spoof, Lesbian Vampire Killers, which took what was perhaps the most marketable title of all time and then singularly failed to feature vampire killers who were lesbians. At least that didn't have any public money attached to it, but it shows the potential pitfalls of calculating something based on how commercially successful it is expected to be.

Worse yet, many far better films than Sex Lives of the Potato Men and Lesbian Vampire Killers have gone on to make less money at the box office. If Lottery funding is intended, as with all other creative industries in which it is awarded, to be arts funding, doesn't it make more sense for great films like Shame or Tyrannosaur to be amortised by Lottery awards, than the apparently more commercial films?

The biggest truly independent success story in British cinema is inarguably that of Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass. To avoid compromising with Hollywood studio heads over the content of what was still unabashedly a very commercial superhero movie, Vaughn raised $30 million to make the film by himself. He planned to make the film and present it to the studios fait accompli, though he still joked on set that it would be "the most expensive home movie I ever made.”

Kick-Ass the movie still makes several adaptations away from the sometime alienating plot of Kick-Ass the comic, but these were ultimately creative decisions, and not beholden to focus groups or test screenings. The film's distribution rights were sold to Universal and Lionsgate, recouping the film's production costs even before it went on to gross over $100 million at the worldwide box office.

Quite aside from the fundamental problem of lacking an actual industry to produce films, this shows how the creative business thrives without the concerns that come with a production line. $30 million is a relatively low budget, for a superhero movie that features Nicolas Cage, but it also shows that independent films aren't necessarily synonymous with low budgets.

Elsewhere, ambitious British films like Attack the Block and Monsters have thrived upon a relatively low-budget and a micro-budget, respectively. Monsters had very high production value, making use of currently available consumer technology in its visual effects, and Attack the Block used an economical alien design that was infinitely more memorable than boring, photo-real equivalents in Battle: Los Angeles, Cowboys & Aliens and Super 8.

Films like Attack the Block are plenty marketable in their own right, and they're representative of what Cameron would like the British film industry to be. In a good way, I mean. These are films that appeal to the audiences weaned on Hollywood fare, as well as cineastes, and so they'll be better distributed in multiplexes across the UK.

And there is another problem that Cameron has overlooked- the cost of the distribution model. Although the transition to digital projection has theoretically made distribution easier for smaller films, the recent case of We Need To Talk About Kevin shows otherwise. Despite being based on Lionel Shriver's best-selling and much-acclaimed novel, the film didn't get much of a showing in multiplexes.

On a personal note, I know many people living locally, in Middlesbrough, who are anxiously awaiting the DVD release, after the three screenings at a local arthouse cinema all sold out, and the nearest cinema showing it was in Newcastle. There's a film that has plenty of people wanting to see it, but because it's not seen as a commercial story, it wasn't distributed as widely.

The cost of distribution is prohibitive even for films that everyone is talking about, based on awards season buzz or simple word-of-mouth, and it's even worse for films that are smaller than We Need To Talk About Kevin. These are films that need the Lottery funding, because films that are assured in their commercial appeal don't need the help to turn a profit.

If they took up this policy in other countries, like France, the odds are that they wouldn't have reckoned on a black-and-white silent film arriving at Middlesbrough's central multiplex last week, because it wouldn't have been seen as commercial. The kind of film that Cameron is talking about is guaranteed to make its money back in the long run, anyway. Studio tent-poles can no longer lose money in the long run. Piracy isn't making studios financially bankrupt, it's just a scapegoat for their creative bankruptcy.

Without big studios running things in the UK, filmmakers should be proudly independent. The construction of a UK film industry in the mould of Conservative economics is too ghastly to contemplate. Lottery film funding, as in other areas of arts funding, should give privilege to the arts, and not the multiplex fare. This isn't to say that Vaughn and Joe Cornish and Gareth Edwards have not made art within their own sphere, but that I'm sure they're getting on just fine without David Cameron sticking his oar in.