4.14.2006
7. Conclusions: Brave New Film Policies
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Countries that have been successful in reaching 25% or more domestic market shares with their national films have all thrived on some kind of screen quota policy. They are also rich countries, and their audiences spend a relatively high share of income in consuming feature films (Jayakar and Waterman, 2000, p. 153-169). In 2005 France, at 34% market share, owned more than a third of its own filmscape (“Press Release: European Cinema Attendance,” 2006) based on cinema screen quotas at 35 days per quarter, TV broadcast quotas of French movies at 50% for all films showed, and strategic financial subsidies for production based on Box Office tax levies; Japan works with the natural barrier of cultural distance (the “lost in translation effect”), high competitiveness in TV and Movie animation, and past subsidies to form a network of theatres in the 60’s to exclusively screen Japanese films; Korea also works with a cultural distance barrier and a strong screen quotas of 106 days per year of Korean films in theaters (Lee and Bae, 2004, p. 166).
The main result of this exploration of the film industry is a certainty that the traditional supply chain of the film sector has morphed into a more complex and mobile structure. Production, Distribution and Exhibition as pure concepts related to the business of showing films in dark rooms after paying for a ticket existed for 50 years, from 1896 until the Second World War, when TV and economic conglomeration began their advancement riding on the crest of US driven capitalism.
Today, the film supply chain or, to use a postmodern buzzword, the film value network, is constituted by a set of fluid chains of linked trading partners and competitors, performing key functions, in a film industry that covers different mediums and places for consumption, a fluid chain of partners and competitors that change ownership from time to time, and from one conglomerate to another. This new and more complex business structure is not about getting a product processed in one link of the chain and then transported to the next one, but about releasing the product and its different versions simultaneously, still conserving some sequences, but reaching the final consumer in a variety of ways in order to extract the maximum amount of value from each new film, from its characters, and from any other asset with potential that the film can trigger. Today, film products reach consumers at many different touch points in the value chain.
Audiovisual products also make evident the division between intangible and tangible values that a product (and the human labor incorporated to it) can release. Financial value is the main tangible result of films or TV programs and the main asset to sustain an industry. The film industry is supposed to produced also cultural values, a subject that this analysis has touched marginally. Whatever their name, reflection, memory, identity, entertainment, and even social dislocation, are five examples of cultural flows that consumers of films are supposed to process (at least that’s what media scholars think in higher or lower degrees). From laughter and emotions in front of a film to political discussions, lifestyle changes, sexual behaviors and fashion trends, it is believed that cultural products, like films, can generate a social profitability effect (also social losses that, for example, legitimate censorship policies). The huge investments in Public Television and Cinema in Europe, by regulating and directing taxpayers’ money into unprofitable TV programmes and films, are based on this division between the tangible and the intangible, between the economic and the cultural.
But, as stated at the beginning of this exploration, before any cultural value emerges from a film, there has to be access to economic resources in the form of human labor to create the film, equipment to make it, and money to distribute it. Before any film can reach the public there has to be an industry to produce it. Any policy that aspires to generate cultural values has to be framed in terms of industrial support first.
The main result of this exploration of the film industry is a certainty that the traditional supply chain of the film sector has morphed into a more complex and mobile structure. Production, Distribution and Exhibition as pure concepts related to the business of showing films in dark rooms after paying for a ticket existed for 50 years, from 1896 until the Second World War, when TV and economic conglomeration began their advancement riding on the crest of US driven capitalism.
Today, the film supply chain or, to use a postmodern buzzword, the film value network, is constituted by a set of fluid chains of linked trading partners and competitors, performing key functions, in a film industry that covers different mediums and places for consumption, a fluid chain of partners and competitors that change ownership from time to time, and from one conglomerate to another. This new and more complex business structure is not about getting a product processed in one link of the chain and then transported to the next one, but about releasing the product and its different versions simultaneously, still conserving some sequences, but reaching the final consumer in a variety of ways in order to extract the maximum amount of value from each new film, from its characters, and from any other asset with potential that the film can trigger. Today, film products reach consumers at many different touch points in the value chain.
Audiovisual products also make evident the division between intangible and tangible values that a product (and the human labor incorporated to it) can release. Financial value is the main tangible result of films or TV programs and the main asset to sustain an industry. The film industry is supposed to produced also cultural values, a subject that this analysis has touched marginally. Whatever their name, reflection, memory, identity, entertainment, and even social dislocation, are five examples of cultural flows that consumers of films are supposed to process (at least that’s what media scholars think in higher or lower degrees). From laughter and emotions in front of a film to political discussions, lifestyle changes, sexual behaviors and fashion trends, it is believed that cultural products, like films, can generate a social profitability effect (also social losses that, for example, legitimate censorship policies). The huge investments in Public Television and Cinema in Europe, by regulating and directing taxpayers’ money into unprofitable TV programmes and films, are based on this division between the tangible and the intangible, between the economic and the cultural.
But, as stated at the beginning of this exploration, before any cultural value emerges from a film, there has to be access to economic resources in the form of human labor to create the film, equipment to make it, and money to distribute it. Before any film can reach the public there has to be an industry to produce it. Any policy that aspires to generate cultural values has to be framed in terms of industrial support first.
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