“’Australians watch a lot of Australian TV and listen to Australian music and every now and then they race out to see an Australian film, so it’s hard to find a rhyme or reason for it”. (G. Maddox, 2014)
There is without a doubt a number of renowned Australian actors in the market, and a sum of famous television shows and musicians. Australian film can also be considered just as good content wise as any other USA or British film industry, so this poses the question as to why the viewers and income are so much less and the sector is struggling?
In 2007 the Australian film institutes AFI awards went to “The Home Song Stories” and “Romulus” in spite of the fact they only brought in a combined figure of less than $4 million (P. Hawker, 2007), which in the film world is extremely low. The worst Australian film blunder was in 2011 where first time film director Gale Edward’s “A Heartbeat Away” cost a total of $7 million and only brought $44,204 back on 77 screens.
As someone who rarely goes out of their way to take an interest in Australian film I decided to conduct a little research of my own and delve into the depths of Youtube to find trailers of the latest and “greatest” Australian films. It took exactly three trailers and I had had enough. The films “My Mistress”, “Wolf Creek 2” and “Drive Hard” all had the same underlying depressing and uninspiring emotions progressing from my laptop screen (…not to mention once I realised “Wolf Creek” was a horror movie after 20 seconds I slammed my laptop shut and was to scared to watch the rest of it). I can’t base the entire reason why Australian films are so unpopular on my distaste and disliking towards them, however it’s safe to assume there’s a portion of the market that are exactly like me. This is where research needs to be implemented to detect such trends.
Through audience research it is easy to identify what audiences do, however it is difficult to distinguish why they do it. Many assumptions could be made as to why Australian film doesn’t gather a large audience as American films do, such as its trying to hard to be like American film to compete in the same arena, or it lacks the American humor, however at this stage without the correct amount of research the question remains unanswered.
The most interesting aspect of audience research is qualitative research which engages with a small number of individuals to gain a complex and more in depth understanding of their thoughts and responses to a performance or film. Qualitative research is a greater approach to Australian film audience measurement than quantitative as it provides a greater understanding into the motivations, emotions, and experiences of audience members to more accurately analyze what’s going wrong with the industry. Qualitative research would undoubtedly assist in discovering exactly what Australians want to see on their screens from the own filmmakers and the current trends of why the market is in such a decrease, which as a result will improve Australian film in the future.
“Australians are clearly wanting to watch Australian content because they are watching it on television, and people offshore are celebrating our films and filmmakers, but there’s a disconnect getting them to the audience.” (Roach, 2014)
References:
P. Hawker. 2007. Rich Content, Poor Return. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/12/07/1196813026890.html. [Accessed 25 September 14].
G. Maddox. V. Roach. 2014. Local audiences snub Australian filmmakers yet Hollywood loves them. [ONLINE] Available at: . [Accessed 25 September 14].
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dalexandra 