The Australian Film Industry has been around since October 1896. The first full length feature film, in 1906 was ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang’. Australian Cinema has only become a much larger industry in like past 10 years with ‘Sanctum’ being Australia’s 10th largest film in the US Box Office history with its exceptional 3D technology and exquisite photography. ‘The Sapphires’ which also had a strong impact on Australian viewers did not reach the capacity of gross making in the US Box Office. The Australian Film Industry has become in crisis because without the Australian movies having an impact on the Australian viewers as a minimum, the money used to make the film will not have profited from the tickets bought to see the actual movie. In this essay I will explain how ‘Sanctum’ and ‘The Sapphires’ can be used in reference to the Australian Film Industry crisis and reason’s for how and why the Australian Film Industry has hit a crisis in film making. The Australian film history has been described as one of 'boom and bust' due to the unpredictable and repetitive nature of its industry; there have been in deep holes when few films were made for decades and high peaks when an oversupply of films reached the market. The 1990s proved to be a successful decade for Australian film and introduced new stars to a global audiences such as Toni Colette and Eric Bana in his first prominent role. The Australian film industry continues to make a reasonable number of films each year, but in contrast with all the other English-speaking countries, Australia has almost always found it difficult to compete with the American film industry by having a much larger home market. The most successful Australian actors and film-makers such as Hugh Jackman ... ... middle of paper ... ...e different types of movies but also the types of movies that Australia produce. As I have outlined in this essay many factors come into account when a film industry can be in crisis such as competition with similar industries, financial support to have the technology and equipment to create a movie. Although these factors may be true, globalisation has made it possible, through studios in Australian being more affordable for American directors. This then gives Australian’s the open doors that are needed to create a sophisticated film even if it is an American Australian film. Just like Rowley explains ‘in the last five years, it has been to more ‘local’ films, that aims at the Australian market and feature recognisable, everyday settings. The engagement of Hollywood genres often remains, but is no longer done in an attempt to emulate Hollywood slavishly’. (1998)
Crocodile Dundee (1986) directed by Peter Faiman and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) directed by Stephan Elliott are two Australian films that have unique plots. The expositions of both films have various similarities and differences in the context of quirky ‘Aussie’ characters, stereotypical Australian language, themes and the vast outback setting. The exposition of each film reaffirms typical Australian stereotypes.
Australia has the terrible condition of having an essentially pointless and prefabricated idea of “Aussiness” that really has no relation to our real culture or the way in which we really see ourselves. We, however subscribe to these stereotypes when trying to find some expression of our Australian identity. The feature film, The Castle, deals with issues about Australian identity in the 1990’s. The film uses techniques like camera shots, language and the use of narration to develop conflict between a decent, old fashioned suburban family, the Kerrigans and an unscrupulous corporation called Airlink. Feature films like The Castle are cultural products because they use attitudes, values and stereotypes about what it means to be Australian.
With the loss of its centralized structure, the film industry produced filmmakers with radical new ideas. The unique nature of these films was a product of the loss of unified identity.
Grainge, P., Jancovich, M., & Monteith, S. (2012). Film Histories; An introduction and reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Film-making is both an art and an industry. Many people were credited for the invention of motion picture. Some major names associated with motion picture include, Thomas Edison, Eadweard Muybridge, and the Lumiere brothers. There were several stages in the making of motion picture.
Small, Pauline. (2005) New Cinemas: journal of Contemporary Film Volume 3, Queen Mary, University of London
With the advent of television, films start progressing "by leaps and bounds." One kind of cinema is a documentary film. Thanks to the documentary film, which is simple, concise and understandable form, tell us about nature, culture, history and science, and replenished our "body of knowledge." This is the positive role of cinema in which the means of the common man gets a huge amount of information without losing its finding and processing of your precious time. It increases the overall level of culture. The story of “Australia” makes us closer to the problems of Australian native people, and still, it tells us a beautiful story of Australian people which would be erased if it had any other form except film.
... ed (BFI, 1990) we read … “contrary to all trendy journalism about the ‘New Hollywood’ and the imagined rise of artistic freedom in American films, the ‘New Hollywood’ remains as crass and commercial as the old…”
With the evolution over the past century of Australia’s screen culture, the industry through both its success and failures has fostered “An Australian film industry, [which] enables Australia to talk to itself, recognize itself and engage the attention of the world in doing so” (Dermody & Jacka, 1987, p 17). Three impactful films within Australian screen culture have been Muriel’s Wedding (House, Moorhouse & Hogan, 1994), Bra Boys (Abberton & DeSouza, 2007) and Samson and Delilah (Shelper & Thornton, 2009), which through their story, funding, release strategies and audience have become influential films for defining “Australian-ness” within Australian screen culture.
A new edition to the course lineup, this week's film classic, Sunset Boulevard. This film will focus on the culture and environment of the Hollywood studio system that produces the kind of motion pictures that the whole world recognizes as "Hollywood movies." There have been many movies from the silent era to the present that either glamorize or vilify the culture of Hollywood, typically focusing on the celebrities (both in front of and behind the camera) who populate the "dream factories" of Hollywood. But we cannot completely understand the culture of Hollywood unless we recognize that motion pictures are big business as well as entertainment, and that Hollywood necessarily includes both creative and commercial
Marchetti, Gina, and Tan Kam. Hong Kong film, Hollywood and the new global cinema no film is an island. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.
Thompson, K 2003, ‘The struggle for the expanding american film industry’, in Film history : an introduction, 2nd ed, McGraw-Hill, Boston, pp. 37-54
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.
Moviemaking is a risky business, for it is not always profitable. Only one in ten films ever recovers its initial investment from theatrical exhibition. In fact, four out of ten movies never recoup the original investment. In 2000, the average studio film cost had a total cost of over $80 million per film. No other industry in the world risks that much capital to make, finance, produce ...